Testimonial #109: Serious rant

Time for a rant!

Right now I am so pissed off I am shaking. Today I go into Best Buy with a vengeance.

But before I get into that, the bitter beginning of my tale:

Last year, I made a deal with my parents to acquire a laptop for Christmas. The deal was I would pay for a goodly portion of this laptop and my parents would pay for the rest. This laptop was going to be for college and for my writing. And so my parents journeyed to Best Buy, where they found a computer that fulfilled my needs. It had a 220 GB hard drive. It had 2 GB of RAM. It had a 1.9 GHZ processor. It had a wireless card. It had Vista. On Christmas, I was the happiest boy alive.

And did I mention the warranty? It was $300. Three years of guaranteed hardware repairs. It was sold to my parents as this pinnacle of protection, that if I walked into any Best Buy in America and said that my battery was going out, they'd immediately hand me a new one.

Blissfully, I filled the device with all sorts of lovely programs, music, and writing. It was the greatest thing in the world.

I had acquired a wireless router from a friend. I had got it working, but soon into the use of its WiFi internet on my laptop, I noticed a problem-- I couldn't stay connected.

I jumped to the conclusion that, because the router was secondhand, it had problems. I soon gave up on it and was limited to internet access via an Ethernet cable. I was disappointed, but I made do with what I had.

Eventually, I began using the WiFi internet of others, such as Nick. After a short period of time, I began to notice that once again I kept disconnecting from the internet, even as Nick sat beside me on his laptop having no difficulties whatsoever. I made the connection that my wireless card must be bad, so finally I sent my dad on a journey to the store we purchased it at to have Geek Squad investigate. He returned from the journey with the news that "They couldn't find any problems with it. The guy even connected to their network and got into Google and stuff." Though slightly perplexed, I accepted this.

And then, the problem continued. The next time I made the journey myself. Once again, Geek Squad didn't look into my problem any deeper than trying to connect to their network. They just blew me off when I insisted that it was an off-and-on problem, lying to me, stating that they couldn't do anything unless they could see the problem.

A week or so later, I returned, making the same complaint. Once again, I was blown off.

Feeling that those jerks weren't taking me seriously because I was just a high school student, I made the journey once more, this time taking my father along to accompany me. This time, we were helped by a different Geek Squad guy than ever before. He actually looked into the issue, eventually bringing out a problem with the wireless card's drivers. He fixed this issue and sent us on our way. I thought the problem was over-- I had finally had the opportunity to deal with competence.

Hell followed.

I began having the problems again. I now knew where to find my drivers and how to update them. I checked them out, updating them. The wireless worked shakily.

Then I moved up to Logan. I dealt with the mediocrity of my wireless connection, and eventually purchased an Ethernet cable to be able to get on to the internet for homework and the like for the time being. The wireless got worse and worse, so I brought it in to the local Best Buy. Once again, I had to deal with incompetence. The first time I came in I was blown off because it connected to their network.

The second time I came in, just a few days later, I was helped by the same guy as before. This time, I had a window that indicated that my wireless network adapter "was having driver or hardware related issues." He couldn't just BS his way out of this one. The guy then uninstalled my driver and reinstalled it. He told me to come back if there were any more problems.

I came back an hour later. Once again, this guy tried to brush me off with a "I have to see it not working" move.

The next day I made sure I talked to someone else. This guy actually listened to my problems in full (oh, did I mention that I've also had good ol' Blue Screens every now and then, too?). He informed me that with issues like that they would probably have to send it out to the BB service center and my computer would be gone for a couple of weeks, maybe more because of how many people had their computers out right then. I declined sending it out right then because my stuff wasn't all backed up and right then my workload would have made it quite difficult to deal with not having the computer.

Finally, when I deemed it reasonable to send out my computer for that long, I brought my computer back in. They did a diagnostic on it and they found that "there's no hardware problems." They "found some viruses" that were "infecting my drivers" and to repair it they'd have to wipe my hard drive and reinstall Vista. Because this was a "software issue" it "wasn't covered by my warranty and accordingly it would be a fee of $130 to get it fixed." I got my parents, pissed that this wasn't under the ultra-expensive warranty they had purchased, to send me the money to get it fixed. Soon I had a computer, a hard drive empty that I had to spend hours re-filling, back in my possession. Just to be safe, I asked the guy I picked my computer up from what their guarantee on their work was. He said they guaranteed it for 30 days.

The first time I turned the computer on, it crashed within 30 seconds. That was a sign of bad things to come. In retrospect, I should have walked right back in and got them to fix it again. I decided to just take the crash with a grain of salt and would see what would happen. It crashed two or three more times, and when my wireless started acting up again, not finding networks as indicated by the little window before had before the repair. Since I was safely within the 30 days of the last repair, I brought it back and demanded they fix it again. They did their little diagnosis again, still finding no hardware issues. They reinstalled some Windows drivers and then tried to place the blame of my issues on the fact that I had modded my log-in screen. I mockingly mentioned the fact that it had crashed far too fast for it to be the problem.

I picked up the repaired computer. As I did so, I asked about if I would be able to get a replacement computer if they problem came up again. The guy I picked up from said yes, if it was the same issue, I would qualify for a new computer. Last night, my computer was working wonderfully. The next morning the wireless internet was going very slow. An hour ago, it stopped working altogether, bringing up the same message of not being able to find networks because of hardware/driver issues. I, for the sake of argument, unmodified my log-in screen and uninstalled the program that allowed me to do it. I still was having the problem. I then picked up my phone and called Best Buy. The Geek Squad guy, who I have spoken to on several occasions now, sounded quite confused, stating that it not working "made no sense." I agreed. He said for me to bring it in so they could maybe check out Gateway's website to see if there are issues with that particular computer model. I said that was fair, but brought up the promise that had been made to me last night of a new computer if they couldn't get it working. The Geek Squad guy then tried to tell me that I had been misinformed, that they would have to send it in to the service center THREE TIMES on HARDWARE ISSUES before they could replace my computer. So, in other words, somebody lied to me.

I went in and asked to speak to a manager. The manager acted very helpful, got a Geek Squad guy over who was familiar with my case, looked over all the papers I had brought in, and listed to my long rant about how I had been screwed up to that point. When I mentioned the promise the guy had made me concerning a new computer, he just glanced it off with "Well, I don't know exactly what he said, so I can't really say if he was lying to you or not." He said they would overnight it to the service center for me with a long note explaining all the crap they'd already done to it so they'd actually replace the card instead of saying to do what they'd already done to it. I asked what would happen if I still had the problem after the repair. He didn't really give me a straight answer, trying to say that it would be fixed after the service center. I pushed the question, and he said that we'd "get something worked out" if that was the case, implying he'd pull some strings. As the Geek Squad guy was checking it in to be sent out, he sent me off by reassuring me that if there were more problems he was "sure we'll get something worked out for you, man."

It went off. After nearly two weeks, I started to get a little nervous. I called them to see if they had any idea how much longer it was going to be. They responded that they had it in. I was pretty pissed off-- for all I knew they had it for a solid week and hadn't called me. I rushed over and picked it up. They had done a "firmware update" on my wireless card, not replaced it like they were supposed to. Regardless, I was excited to get it back-- finally, my nightmares would be over! After cussing at my computer (you see, they had messed up settings like proxy servers and the like for no apparent reason, and accordingly it was a pain in the butt to get connecting to the internet correctly figured out-- I still can't get half of my web-related programs to connect!), I finally got the internet going. It lasted one night just to return to the same problem as before.

I returned to the store, this time furious. I demanded to speak to the manager. He talked to me, ignoring his former vague promises to help me out if there were further problems. He just wanted to send it to the service center again. I told him that wouldn't do me any good-- I need a working computer TODAY- I have homework, including a final paper due soon-, not in 4 weeks (because it would take 2 MORE TIMES of being sent out for him to be able to replace it). He said it'd just be two weeks, probably less than that, and my problems would be fixed. I told him that wouldn't do me any good. He had the gall to make the offer, "If you have the funds available to you, and this would be really pushing policies, I could let you buy a new laptop and just return it when we get this one back from repair." Yeah, like I'd get my money back. They'd find some reason they couldn't take it back. Plus, I don't have $500+ to just throw out-- I'm a poor college student! I had my dad call into the service center for me while I was in the store. He called me back and told me that they weren't even counting the repair as an official repair because it was just their firmware update! So, in other words, the manager was lying to me straight up! I went back to talk to the slimeball, but he had left, telling Geek Squad to tell me what he had earlier. I then told them I was going to go through Gateway to try and get it repaired-- it was still under their warranty, but I wanted my money for the $130 repair back. They told me they couldn't give it to me, but instead they could do the repairs again. Yeah, a lot of good that's gonna do me, since it hadn't worked the first dozen times.

This nightmare is yet to be resolved. I'm going to try to send the computer to Gateway ASAP. I'm planning on returning to Best Buy to try and fight for my repair money (if not the money for the worthless warranty, too). There's no way I'm just gonna let them get away with that amount of money if I can do anything about it. I'll even call a lawyer on the matter if I need to.

Hope this re-emphasizes how terrible this company is and how you should avoid them (unless you are picketing them!) at all costs, CH


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