Complaint / Review
Geek Squad
Poor Service with Standard Service Contract - Replace Defective Memory on new laptop

I purchased two laptops in early April, having just had my home PC fail. During the purchase I was sold a standard service contract with the sales pitch being that I would get fixed anything that went wrong for two years.

I took the machine home, and it partially worked for about a week. Then blue screens appeared periodically and with increasing frequency until it would no longer boot. I took it back - within the 30 day window for a replacement, and they said they would have it back in about 5 days. When I called on day 5 they still had not got to it. I finally got it back on day 12 after a call during dinner on Mother's day.

I picked it up Monday at 5:00 and brought it home. It crashed within 15 minutes of usage. I was busy that week and didn't get it back to best buy until Thursday. They said since it had been in before they would "expedite" it. 6 days later when I called, they said they would need to send it out, that it had bad memory (an easy job to replace memory on these machines I would think). So I called about a week later and they said it would be back Tuesday June 2nd. So I called June 3rd and they said it was done, but needed to be shipped back and would hopefully be back by the weekend. I stopped by on Monday and they said it was in transit. I should expect it by the end of the week.

When I stopped by I spoke to the manager, she said that the standard service contract was put into queues to be fixed, and they were non-pulsed about the length of time to fix the machine (two months now). Apparently this is routine. Even the Premium service has a service standard of 10 days, and I suspect they routinely exceed that.

I have learned that:
1. Geek Squad does not track customer service metrics and have no incentives or management oversight for providing good customer service.
2. Only very routine maintenance is performed in local stores. The Geek Squad sends out a machine without much thought.
3. Best Buy Management does not really care if your experience is good or poor once the machine has been sold.

Conclusion - Best Buy and Geek Squad are not focused on customer service. Use them only if you can do without your computer for extended periods of time. I can not recommend them.