As Part 1 of this exercise was the first time I have actually aired my grievances with the Geek Squad (aside from my recounting the latest developments to my coworkers, family, & friends), I wanted to see how others were faring with their services.
From what I have found online through the resources provided for Week 2, it seems that the overall consensus is split. Some praise the Geek Squad while others share my disdain. Most of the resources discuss the Geek Squad in general while Yelp was the only site where I found specific mention of the Emeryville branch. I found How Sociable? to be the most helpful & informative in my search as it provides the statistics regarding any mentions (the good, the bad, & the ugly) of the Geek Squad as well as links to the specific sites.
On the Geek Squad homepage the company encourages customers to "follow us" via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Twelpforce. In checking out these various resources I noticed that any two-sided communication between the agents & the customers mostly takes place through the Facebook page and Twelpforce. However, Twelpforce appears to be a more general Best Buy service rather than that of the Geek Squad specifically. The Geek Squad does have a Twitter account but it appears to mainly consist of advertisements & brief tidbits of information that is deemed newsworthy. Geek Squad posts a mix of videos on the YouTube account. Some of the videos are meant to amuse viewers while others consist of an agent(s) giving do-it-yourself advice on issues customers might face. The latest video has an agent named William advising customers on how to react/respond to any Gawker passwords they might have that have been compromised by hackers.
When customers posted recent questions to the Facebook page more often than not an agent with the initials of AP would respond with a word of advice in a very timely manner. Many times the advice would mainly take the form of encouraging the customer to contact or visit their local Geek Squad location. When customers would express their dissatisfaction with the level of service they had received and/or are receiving AP's timely response would include an apology as well as an e-mail request for the customer's name, phone number, purchase plan, and a service order number. AP would also say that he/she would look into it ASAP. While the "conversations" I saw on Facebook are somewhat encouraging I was disappointed but, unfortunately, not all that surprised that the communications through the other social media tools seem to be far less reciprocal & rather superficial.
I'm so 'glad' you posted this awful experience. My mother just went through a similar horrific time with them, and I was so amazed at how incompetent Best Buy and their Geek Squad really is. My mother had her PC brought in to be fixed, and it must have taken about three months, with lovely services such as not calling her back and losing a recovery disk that they were supposed to have had in the first place. My mother said that's the last time she's getting anything there, and I'm inclined to agree.
ReplyDeleteHi, Basya! Yeah, this is definitely my first & last experience with the Geek Squad. I now have my laptop back in my possession & it appears to be functioning correctly. However, I still had some difficulty when I went to pick it up yesterday. At first the agent (the same one who "helped" me on Monday) spent a long time fiddling on their computer which troubled me as I assumed he would merely have to pull up my record & get my computer from the back. He finally went in the back & came back out about 5 minutes later...empty-handed. From what I gathered he was having difficulty figuring out where my computer was or where it stood in the scheme of things. Finally, after I refreshed his memory on what sort of service was supposedly being done with it he went to the back again. He didn't emerge for another 20 minutes. Supposedly, he was running some final updates but I think he might've been re-installing the operating system (which was supposed to have taken place on Monday). Anyway, long story short (oops, too late), it really seems like for every "good" experience someone has with Geek Squad someone else has had a truly horrific experience. Unfortunately, it also seems like they often take advantage of or at least jerk along those of us that aren't as technologically savvy as themselves.
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