Bestbuy taking advantage of special needs

[BuzzKillington]

My girlfriend's brother is mentally disabled and happened to get a virus on his laptop. He took it to geek squad and they quoted him 200 dollars to get rid of the virus.

I guess one way or another it ended up being 350 dollars because they said it needed a new hard drive too...

I told him I'd fix it for free but I was busy so I'd do it asap. He got impatient after 20 minutes and took it to Bestbuy.

^#&@ing disgusting that they're taking advantage of handicapped people. I would have loved to had taken a look at it before it went in so I could have facts to back up an ass ripping although I still plan to go have a chat with them.

NOTE: The laptop was only 300 bucks to begin with and is only 3 or 4 months old.

[Zephik]

Best Buy is only good for browsing. They're **** for everything else, especially their "IT Department".

That is just outrageous though. You can buy a whole new laptop/netbook for how much they charged him! That is an insane amount of money for a virus removal.

I can see $200 pretty easy for a new HDD/OS replacement, depending on the size of the HDD. $100 would buy a pretty nice laptop hard drive and I don't think you can even get windows for under $80.

But in any case, it sure in the **** doesn't need a new hard drive because of a virus. Thats just outrageous and completely lazy as hell.

Good luck with dealing with them! They don't deserve the flies that land on poo for how they take advantage of people like that.

[luciusad2004]

I don't think its so much that they take advantage of people w/ special needs as it is they take advantage of everyone and anyone who doesn't know much about computers. A lot of people who aren't in the know just expect to pay a fortune when getting their computers "fixed" by "professionals." I don't think i would ever take a computer somewhere to be fixed unless i was completely stumped.. But even then i would just back up what i need and reinstall my OS if i absolutely couldn't figure out the problem.

[XcOM]

check the S.M.A.R.T data on the drive, check the installiation date, also check the dates in the log, it will tell you when it was made, first used etc, then go back to them if it isn't a new drive, also ask for the old one back, if they didn't say it was part exchange they have to give it back to you even if it is broken!

Needless to say i will be writting to the head of bestbuy, even if they are in a different country

[NightrainSrt4]

I used to work at BB in computers. Offered a position in GeekSquad but had my surgery then so quit straight up anyway. It's really not the employees falt for a lot of the stuff I hear. They are pressured so much to make dep. budget. Managers taking you into back rooms/corner of dep. to rip you a new one if your not getting attachment rates you should be. I often got the most flack, even though I was pulling in the highest numbers constantly. I know it's not the same in every BB, but I can't see it being much different, as the business is the same everywhere and the dep. needs to sell those things to make it.

I even talked to the HR in our store and they pretty much stated that it was normal and the managers must have had a bad day (almost every day?), and that it was just stress to make budget/numbers.

It sucked and I felt horrible. Being the better seller there meant I had to pick my customers. I felt like a predator or something, but had to to not get ripped a new one. That meant avoiding the foreign people and techies, whose attachments were notoriously low (and let the crappier salesguys get those as they can't land extras anyway), and scout the easier targets and sell them crap I felt they didn't "really" need.

When I asked the store manager about how I felt about selling what wasn't needed I was told, "Everyone needs every thing that there is in that department. Name something someone doesn't need in some way or another. So you sell it all to everyone, no excuses". AVG, ZoneAlarm, Spybot, MalwareBytes, anything like that was off limits to even talk about, which I kind of understand. But force me to sell inferior products and charge them 100+ for it all is ridiculous.

Which is why I hate having worked there. I'd rather have not left media dep. But you get forced to when you get dragged over there by a customer and make a sale with every attachment and home network setup (which this person actually needed), after spending a year stacking cd's/dvd's.

[TheGreatSatan]

^Well said! +Rep

[hinow41]

Ugh I hate bestbuy. A 4gb usb flash drive is $29 the same one on newegg is $7. They screw everyone over. My friend was returning something to them and the ladie infront of us asked how much it would be to get wifi. He said around $200. My friend jumped into the conversation and just schooled the guy. lol The lady stopped talking to the best buy guy and then we showed her what she needed it came to about $40.

[Bopher]

I feel for you Nightrain. I started working for CC during a Christmas hire. I started in the small electronics dept. Got the chance to move to TVs which included Home Audio and Camcorders. Lots of commission sales to get. My thing wasn't TVs though, it was the camcorders. I could sell those things with accessories and service plans like there was no tomorrow but my TV numbers were low. I hated selling those cause it was much harder to sell the extras especially the ones I knew people didn't need. Because I didn't have the TV numbers I was booted back to small electronic and lost out on my one good TV sale. Didn't even get a thank you from the associate who got the final huge ticket.

[NightrainSrt4]

Ya, BB is funny. Treated me pretty poorly when the department didn't make the numbers but when I had to leave for my surgery they were begging me to stay. They actually didn't take me off payroll for almost 2 years. I was in the system, and on schedule, even though I had filed all necessary paperwork before my surgery.

They begged me to keep working after the surgery, lol, not even caring that it was a surgery where something serious could have happened. Oh well, out of that place.

I do miss the discount though. Being able to pick up cables and such for pennies when you need them was nice lol.

[Bopher]

I do miss the discount though. Being able to pick up cables and such for pennies when you need them was nice lol.

yeah I miss the CC discount, half of the road shop stuff would be somewhere around 50% at discount.