A 1-3/4 year old Toshiba Laptop purchased at Best Buy in July had a hard-disk failure in March. Because it is being repaired under warranty (Best Buy extended) I was forced to use Geek Squad or pay for the repairs myself if I chose not to use Geek Squad.
I thought I made a mistake by also complaining that the Laptop had a shutdown/overheating problem, because they sent it to a central repair center. It took 11 days until the PC was returned to the store. I gave them the recovery CD that came with the PC to restore my operating system.
About 6 hours after they got the CD, I got a call that they could not load the new hard disk because the disk was corrupt and I would need to order a new CD from Toshiba. I picked up my PC and went home.
Once home, I tried using the CD and it was not corrupt - it was trying to inform the the new hard drive had a bad boot sector and was getting a write error. I verified this by trying other tools to partition and format the disk and got the same write error on the boot sector.
Refusing to accept this "new" hard disk, I took the PC back to Best Buy / Geek Squad to have it replaced again. For the second time, they had to send it to central repair because they did not know how to replace the hard drive with one of the ones they had in stock in the store.
Since this is warranty work and not costing me, it is not really a ripoff but I felt the need to share my experience with their incompetence, hopefully to spare others the hassle.
Here are some points to be aware of
- these "experts" did not know how to open the laptop to replace the disk drive, thus it had to be sent out for repair
- they will quote 5-7 days when they send it out, however, I was called when the repair center was done and it took 4 more days to get to the store (11 days total)
- they did not test their installation (could have been an easy verification if they just partitioned and formated the new disk)
- they refuse to send the damaged disk back to the customer (mine had financial data on it - so I will be watchng my credit reports very carefully). They claimed they are required to send it back to the manufacturer.
- they did not understand the error message when restoring the hard drive from the recovery CD and assumed the CD was corrupt.
My recommendation for Best Buy / Geek Squad is: do not buy Best Buy's extended warranty - try to get one from the manufacturer. Avoid Geek Squad at all costs. Their prices are outrageous and their knowledge is limited.
I have been in the IT business for 30 years and have built and diagnosed many PC problems. I only used the Geek Squad / Best Buy because I felt I should not pay if it was under warranty. I am in my 14th day with no PC and do not see an end in sight.
Although I complained to the store manager, no apology nor compensation was offered.
I have also taken it to the President of Best Buy (Brian Dunn) to try and get satisfaction.
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