My laptop would not boot up on November 6. I took it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy and they charged me $59.00 to "diagnose" the issue.
I was fine with the cost, sounded reasonable. I called them back a week later after leaving 2 messages to call me back to let me know what is up with my laptop. I finally waited until someone would actually talk to me about it.
I was told my motherboard was bad. They told me a new one would be around $300-$700 to replace it. One employee even said if it was him he would just buy a new laptop and not worry about replacing the motherboard due to cost. My laptop is 16 months old and out of warranty but was still new enough I didn't see dropping another $1400 to replace the entire computer.
I went to Best Buy the following day to discuss with them how long it would take to repair and was THEN told that it was actually my hard drive and NOT my motherboard that needed replaced. I asked nicely how it changed from one day to the other. I was told that they had mistakingly read someone else's report to me with the same last name and assured me that is was only my hard drive and that my motherboard was fine.
I then purchased a new hard drive at Best Buy for $149.00 and took it to them to install. They charged me another $39.00 which I was fine with as well. They said to give them 2 days and it would be done.
This as on a Monday, I called them back that Friday as I had not heard from them. I was then told they need my recovery disk to complete the installation. I took it in that Saturday morning. I was told that by Tuesday they would have it all installed and ready to pick up.
I went over that Tuesday at lunch to pick it up and was told that XP did not install from my disks and that I would need to purchase XP, at around $200.00.
At that point I called a local computer service company who I was referred to by a friend and told him exactly what I was told. He said I was the 3rd customer in 2 weeks that was told they had a faulty motherboard by Geek Squad who actually didn't and came to him.
He also stated that if I had my Microsoft # and info on my computer that I DID NOT have to buy XP again. He was correct. He installed XP and checked out the "work" they did and it only took about 3 hrs. To fix my issue.
The Geek Squad had my laptop for over a month by the time it was all said and done. They constantly tried to get me to buy Best Buy products to "fix" my issue. Even one time telling me that it would be best to scrap my laptop and get a new one from Best Buy. All I needed was a hard drive which was reasonably inexpensive and easy to install. They blatantly tried to push XP on me for no reason.
I realize they are part of the Best Buy family, but when cross-selling products is more important than doing what they are supposed to do (diagnose and repair issues) there is a high relevancy of a conflict of interest. I used to buy all of my electronics at Best Buy. But this has really tainted my perception of their company.
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