I’m sure most people reading this have seen their ads on television and other places, and sure yeah, they look good. LOOK GOOD. That’s about it. First off, an example. This is totally worth the watch.

(Video - 4:56 - 9.4mb).

If you’re too lazy to watch it, here’s a summary - the news guy bought a BRAND NEW dell, and unplugged one small cable inside it, disabling CD audio. Then, they took it to two local shops, both of which correctly diagnosed and repaired the problem for less then 70$. Next, they broke it again, took it best buy’s Geek Squad. THEY diagnosed it (JUST DIAGNOSED, NOT FIXED) as having spyware/adware and driver issues! WHAT! Not only that, it cost 70$! To actually FIX it, it would been another 130$!. They confronted the the manager, who, basically avoided answering, then went and asked the actual technician who diagnosed the computer. Neither could produce an answer, and neither gave an explanation.

Now, here’s my experiences. After reading how crappy they are, I decided it would be better not to deal with paid services. So, I contacted them with their live chat thing, which, is another epic fail - you have to download it EVERY time you want to yell at them - and it’s not just a simple web interface, it’s an entire application you download. Any idiot who knows a decent web language could make a web interface for this for free. 

So anyways, I finally got in contact with them, and talked to an “Agent Salisbury”. (Mmmm… Salisbury…) I described the wifi driver error I’ve been having on my dell laptop (NO problems on my mac, TYVM), and he said….

[2:53 PM] Agent Salisbury says: This is a Software error that Could mean almost anything, You would need to bring this into the store so we can look in the Event Viewer and Determine the problem

So there’s an app that can be used to diagnose stuff? Cool I bet I could do it.

[2:57 PM] Agent Salisbury says: I apologize, i cannot give technical information, However if you check Google for Event Viewer, This will Give you steps on how to bring this up

[12:30 PM] Agent John says: Our in home service is $299.99 plus tax, which of course is a flat rate. It  comes with our 30 day in-home guarantee, meaning if the same problem reoccurs after we have left, we will come back to fix it in your home at no additional cost to you. 

Towards the end of my shift, I was called over to help install a security and customization package on a newly purchased computer. For those who do not understand, a security package is the ability for a customer to wait an extra 30 to 45 minutes for their computer, plus pay an additional fee on top of the cost of software they could have installed themselves. Customization is the word we used rather than, “We are going to uninstall all of the useless garbage that computer manufacturers pre-install on your computer.”

However, the situation almost immediately graduated from frustrating to infuriating. One of the three folders I had marked on the form was the “My Documents” folder. The icon for this folder on the hard drive indicated that the file size was 1 KB. The technicians at Best Buy had NOT backed up the “My Documents” folder, as I had requested: they had backed up only the shortcut. None of the files within the folder had actually been transferred.

 I was finally told that if my iPod did not come in the next day that I would be getting a brand new one. It came the next day.

….

A new iPod! I was very excited. In one week I got an iPod in the mail. The box said it was a refurbished 4th generation. Not exactly new. Oh well. Then I opened the box.

….

Well, I tried to turn it on, and the hard drive was also dead. Not just dead, but you could feel all of the parts inside shaking around!

….

I pointed at the box with a “Quality Tested” sticker printed on it (twice), and he just laughed