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Chris J writes:

I recently left (fired, actually, for telling an incompetent boob I could train a dog to do a better job when he smarted off to me) what the Geek Squad and Best Buy hailed as the 'World's Largest Repair Center', aka 'Geek Squad City', in Louisville, KY. This facility was featured on '60 Minutes' in January and had a widely publicized grand opening in October of 2006. While the media has done a fine job of providing free advertising for Best Buy, I feel compelled to expose the complete lack of qualified personnel who work on the laptops and desktops that are sent for repairs, and to highlight the focus of the managers who guide them.

This facility was actually opened in August of 2006, with the primary intent of consolidating several other repair centers under one roof and to eliminate the need to use third party repair centers. Its main focus is laptop repair, as most desktop boxes don't require specialized parts or as much technical expertise to repair and can be done in-store or in an owner's home. Being a local resident and having worked on PC's since the days of the 8088 in addition to running an EBay-based laptop sales business, I applied and was hired as an 'agent' to participate in this grand venture, hereafter referred to as 'the nightmare'.

So allow me, dear editors, to take you on a grand tour of this highly touted new era in laptop and desktop repair courtesy of the Geek Squad. Let's say you've just taken your prized laptop or desktop to Best Buy, and the folks at the Geek Squad determine it needs to be sent out for repairs. Your unit is boxed up and sent off to Louisville for repairs and hopefully someone at the store gave you some idea of how long the repairs will take.

A couple of days later, it arrives at this shiny new repair facility. The units are checked in, and sorted by type (laptop or desktop) and brand. So far, so good, nothing unexpected there. Then racks full of units awaiting repairs are wheeled out to 'teams' consisting of 10-12 agents whose supposed specialty is your brand of computer. My job was to manage one such team. Here's where the nightmare really begins.

Once at the center, a senior agent will look at the notes from the store and try to diagnose the issue with your unit. These senior agents are more often than not uncertified, and the vast majority working in this center never have taken a laptop apart before until this center opened. This diagnosis is only as good as the agent who holds it, as there are no 'procedures' in place to follow for getting an accurate assessment of what repair is needed. Oh, and let me also mention that this 'senior agent' has no access to any manufacturer technical data for your unit. Oh sure, he might 'Google' something up, but this facility has no media on hand for a reference. No repair guides, no service center manuals, nada. The only diagnostic 'tool' distributed by the company is a little CD-ROM full of software that, in most cases, Joe User at home can download for free, or for very little cash. Stuff like C-Cleaner, PC-Check, Memtest, the Drive Fitness Test, that sort of thing. It's just neatly packaged with some other stuff under a clean interface. Ho-hum.

So what if your unit doesn't power up? Or, has no video and one can't run this snake-oil CD of common remedies? Well dear reader, my heart goes out to you. While this facility is equipped with some electronic testing equipment, they don't train anyone in its use. There is no class for 'basic multi-meter use' or 'oscilloscope 101', so unless you're seen this equipment elsewhere, you are SOL. In fact the only training that ANY new hire gets is in the 'culture' and 'history' of the Geek Squad. (Read: Company propaganda). There is no 'new model' training when new laptops or desktops are released, there is no 'diagnostics training', nothing. So at this point, Agent Johnny makes his recommendation or 'best guess' and parts are ordered.

It gets even better after parts are delivered. Your pride and joy gets placed into the hands of Agent Timmy for repairs. Now while some of the repair agents actually came from stores, most were, up until they were hired, working drive-through windows at your local Mickey D's. No, I am not kidding. Of the 6 agents on my team that actually performed the repairs, only 1 came from a store. One came from fast food, one from the military, one from retail sales, and two from local help desk positions. None, not ONE, had ever worked on a laptop. From talking with the managers of the other thirty-odd teams under this roof, this was pretty consistent across the board.

So here's Agent Timmy. He has your laptop, and let's say it needs an internal board replaced. So he opens up a technical manual, or pulls up an exploded view to see how to do it, right? WRONG. He's armed with a power screwdriver, some prying tools and told to be like Nike and 'just do it'. Of course, this often leads to other parts being damaged or broken from improper repairs. And when it happens - trust me, this isn't an 'IF', it DOES happen, and pretty often - then Timmy has to order more parts to cover what he damaged trying to fix the real issues. And then, sometimes those parts aren't replaced at all. Ones that are damaged cosmetically are often covered up, repaired using Super Glue (yes, seriously), or swapped out with parts from dead units. After what may take several days, or even WEEKS if parts are ordered from an outside vendor, Timmy has replaced the faulty part in your laptop. If said part didn't fix it, guess what? You start the process all over again, but this time with an added challenge for the senior agent doing the diagnosis.

The parts being installed on your laptop by and large are used. Oh sure, they are marketed as 'refurbished' but are sold to the Geek Squad from vendors that do no more than disassemble broken laptops and resell supposedly 'good' used parts. In my personal experience it was common to see as many as 15-20 parts a DAY come in with obvious defects or damage, or are just plain wrong for a given application. So now our senior man has to determine if A) The part is good, but didn't fix the issue or B) Is this 'new' part defective too? Easy, he'll just refer to a technical manual, or use his diagnostic equipment to make this assessment. Oh wait, he can't because he has no manuals and hasn't been trained to do anything other than wear a clip on tie.
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At this point, the fun begins. Said senior agent may decide to reformat your data and reinstall your operating system in hopes that your problems will be cured. He may also decide to send your computer back to you with a recommendations you have the operating system serviced (for an ADDITIONAL fee) because it's most likely a virus or something causing your problem. This is common, in my experience, even when testing shows no sign of infections. Or the agent may employ what I like to call 'shotgun diagnostics' and 'spray' your computer with several new parts at once, hoping that one of them will actually fix your issues. This is another common solution, unfortunately.

Hopefully, after several go rounds like this, your unit is ready to go back to you. It may or may not look as good as it did when you sent it (as covered by their disclaimer stating 'refurbished' parts are used for repairs) depending on how knowledgeable agent Timmy was on screwdriver use. With any luck at all they fixed your problems and you're happy. But there are other factors weighing in on the quality of your repair.

The Geek Squad is in the business of making money. To be profitable, they focus on generating high productivity from their employees and keeping costs low. As at team manager, I was present during both daily and weekly management meetings where these factors were pushed to the exclusion of all else. At the time of my leaving, employees were being written up, counseled, and moved or threatened with termination if their performances didn't improve. You see, the company needs to move 'x' number of units per day through the facility, at an average cost of repairs under 'x' to be profitable. What they didn't, and still don't do, is train their employees to be able to meet these numbers. What they did do was introduce new methods for getting money from your pocket, which is material for another article in and of itself.

Now Agent Timmy is starting to feel the stress of losing his job if he takes too long to fix your laptop. He knows he has to fix 'x' numbers or face daily ridicule, write-ups, or termination. (The manager who oversaw the six teams on our product line 'called out' the 'losers' in daily spreadsheets). And the number Timmy has to meet are for completed units that he repaired and worked fine, this doesn't count ones that need to be sent back for further diagnosis. The senior agents are held to diagnosing 'x' units per day also or face the same ridicule. So if you send in your computer with a problem that is sporadic or inconsistent, be prepared to get it back the same way you sent it, as the senior agents simply don't have time to waste on your problem. Also, the repairs must be done in the cheapest way possible to meet management goals. This opens up another huge can of worms due to a policy Best Buy has.

Included in the extended service plan (PSP in company lingo) that they try to sell you is a clause that states if you have to send your computer in for more than three repairs, they'll exchange your computer for another one as a 'no-lemon' type of thing. Guess what happens to a lot of these units? You guessed it, they come to us, where a team of people (not agents) disassemble them and make the component parts available to repair teams. They aren't tested, usually, and may or may not have been removed in a clean, electronically safe environment. They also will usually bear signs of use, scuffs, dings, and wear. (Again, the reference to 'refurbished parts' is their CYA for this) So in the interest of keeping repair costs low, the use of these 'free' parts the company already owns is recommended. Nice.

So there you have it, in a nutshell. Your computers are diagnosed and repaired by folks possessing the skills they walked in the door with. They don't use manuals, most aren't certified and they receive zero company technical training. They are repaired using parts of questionable quality and origin by people who are driven to meet production numbers and not quality figures. Oh sure, quality of repairs is tracked as well, but the quality testing is done by persons who didn't qualify as 'agents' - so how accurate is that number?

There is a reason you still see local shops in strip malls and converted houses advertising quality repairs at reasonable prices, and this is one of the bigger ones. In the Geek Squad's case, marketing has fully triumphed over any sense of competence.

Just thought I'd share, thanks for your time.

Sincerely,

Chris Johnson

I had worked for Geek Squad for over a year, and Best Buy a year and a half before that and was recently let go. Back when they started scanning computers, they said they found downloaded music and movies on our machine and we were to send them the hard drives. So we boxed them up and sent them out.

 

A month or so later the interrogations happened. We all had our turn, and when it was mine, I walked into a room with the table pushed against the wall and two chairs in the middle of the room sitting two feet apart with nothing in between.

 

Our store's loss prevention manager and the district loss prevention manager was there, and I reached out to shake his hand. He shook mine, looked me in the eyes and said "I already know if you are going to tell me the truth or not," with an intimidating grip on my hand still. Then we sat down, our knees inches apart. He asked me how long I had worked there, and how many hours a week I worked, why I liked working there. He didn't really care why, he just wanted to tell me why he liked working for Best Buy. He told me, "Well, I used to be a cop, and when you're a cop everything you do is reactive, you can't really stop people from committing crimes. Here I normally get to come in and make sure processes are in place so we don't have problems. But here we have a problem, and now I have to be reactive and be a cop again."

From there he asked me all sorts of questions about why there was music on our computer and where it came from, which was mostly us backing up customer's music because they paid us to, and my coworkers and I bringing in our i-Pods, which was ok with all the levels of management in the store. He even made a joke about how that wasn't "SOP" (the Best Buy bible), but he knew that our store LP manager was ok with it. It was ok because they trusted us. I was asked why we had Linux ISOS, which made me laugh. Also, during the interview anytime I was asked a question, I don't know wasn't an acceptable answer. At one point I stopped answering him because I was just sitting there saying I don't know. Then he had me write down everything I knew about in the precinct and sign it at the bottom. The district manager told me he would read it over afterwards to make sure it was "what they needed." I filled out the paper, signed it and gave it to him. Then they told me if I talked to anyone about what happened I would be fired.

Then the interesting began. My supervisor immediately started looking for another position at one of the 3 new stores opening in our area. He got one and put in his two week notice and stopped caring about his job. Everything started falling apart, then he left so we had no supervisor. So I put in my two week notice and found another job. The thing was our supervisor didn't know anything about fixing computers. All he cared about was "selling our services" to people so he would meet his budgets and then tell us techs to fix whatever the customer wrote down which more than once included "retrieve deleted files" which yes we could have done if we were allowed to use the software, but we weren't. So he left and everything got better. And I talked to my general manager about staying, and he told me he saw how I had helped being a leader once our supervisor left and he was impressed and would like to see me move up in the company. A few days later we had a new supervisor who was a really nice guy and knew his stuff about computer fixing.

Now, I know you guys know about Jonny Utah (internally Geek Squad drops the 'h' so they don't get sued). Well I despise Jonny Utah. The entire time I worked there we were given goals of a certain number of computers which were to be fixed by Jonny Utah each week. The goal was seven. Most of the time we didn't hit our Jonny Utah goals because we were able to fix all the computers we brought in ourselves without needing help. I disliked it because:

1) I didn't get to work on the customer's computer
2) Someone in another country that does not have the same privacy laws as the United States was fixing our customer's computers.
3) Anytime we asked where the Jonny Utah guys were located we were told either it was "Top Secret" or "An undisclosed cave in a mountain on a remote island." Seriously.
4) We did a much better job than Jonny ever. We had so many people bring computers back that those guys "fixed" still having problems or hardware issues that you can't really fix over a remote connection.

On October 18th, the day after my birthday I came into work early and the entire district staff (probably 6 or 7 people) were hanging out in our area where we fix computers talking to my friend who was one of the other full time techs. I went into the break room to eat my lunch and my buddy came in and told me the district guys were asking him if he would be offended if he had to go out on the floor and sell Geek Squad services instead of fixing computers, and having Jonny Utah fix more of the computers. I clocked in and five minutes later was told by my general manager that I was being let go for having music and movies and unapproved software on the computer.

So whatever I don't work there anymore, I'm not crying. But I wish people would realize that Geek Squad isn't worth what you pay. Best Buy's rules kept us from being great computer techs. They wouldn't let us use linux in the store to do data backups because that required an extra $1500 (not exaggerating) from the customer and we had to UPS the drive to California. We weren't allowed to do laptop repair in the store, even though I'm capable of handling a soldering iron to reattach people's DC power jacks. And they'll tell you this is because they are sending them to the "laptop techs" or whatever, but most of the time that stuff would come back broke anyways and customer's would yell at us. It was a horrible situation for everyone and I think shows that not everything can work on a large scale. For someone like me computer repair is easy. I could have done so much more than they expected of me and brought in so much more money for them and made customers a lot happier not having to wait two days for a guy to put his laptop on the UPS truck. But that's the thing. Geek Squad doesn't want me. They want someone who will take your money and have someone in another country actually do the work. To sell you a $59 diagnostic fee to call you the next day and say "yeah, your laptop is completely dead just like you told us, come buy a new one."

I hope people start realizing that Geek Squad is nothing more than marketing. You see the tie and the white shirt and you assume that the agent knows what they're talking about. The truth is most of them don't. There are no tests. There is very little training and that is mostly on how to sell things. In fact my old supervisor had a motto I heard him use way too often: Perception is reality.