I'll Never Shop At BEST BUY Again !

I have purchased some small-ticket items at Best Buy in the past -- items like CDs. At that time, it looked like it might be a good place to buy a bigger-ticket item like a computer. After all, they had a Geek Squad that made their own repairs. I could not have been more wrong!

My daughter has been wanting her own laptop computer for quite a while now. We're not a rich family, so she had to wait until she had the money. Last month, she received a tax refund that put her over the top. Since she finally had the money, we went down to Best Buy. She picked out an $800 Dell laptop and paid cash for it.

At the checkout, they convinced her that their Geek Squad could "clean up" the program and make it run "much faster", and it would only cost her $40. She paid the extra $40, and that seems to be the start of her descent into computer hell.

The first few days were OK. But immediately after their 14-day return period expired, her computer began to lock-up and put up this blue screen. We thought surely Best Buy would fix whatever was wrong, so we took it back to them. After all, when we bought the laptop there was a paper in it saying the Geek Squad had a contract to handle warranty items for Dell.

Imagine our surprise when the infamous Geek Squad told us we would have to return the computer to Dell. We explained we had bought the computer from them, and showed them the paper that said they would do any warranty work for Dell -- all to no avail. They had the audacity to tell us they didn't have a contract with Dell.

We called Dell, and they said Best Buy would fix it. We told Best Buy what they said, and they repeated that we would have to mail the computer back to Dell. After getting bounced back and forth several times, we got Dell back on the phone and made them talk to each other. That did no good at all. Both remained entrenched in their opinion that the other should be the one to fix the problem.

Finally, we talked the Geek Squad into at least looking at the computer and telling us what the problem was. After keeping the computer overnight, Best Buy informed us that it was a software problem. This meant neither Best Buy nor Dell was responsible, and we would have to get Microsoft to fix it. They wanted us to believe it was a flaw in Microsoft Vista.

Now I didn't believe that for a minute. I have a cheaper laptop of my own that has been running Vista for over six months with no problems at all. The only difference is that I bought it at a different place, so the Geek Squad wasn't able to "clean it up" and make it "run faster".

I feel like Best Buy has just stolen $840 dollars from my daughter. Whether it's a hardware or software problem doesn't matter. If it's a hardware problem, then they are shirking their warranty obligations. If it's a software problem, then they are refusing to fix a problem they created themselves (since they are the only ones that have messed with the software).

I have learned a couple of things from this experience:

1. Best Buy will NOT back up the products they sell, and they will NOT honor their warranty obligations. This shocked me. Hell, even Wal-Mart, with all their problems, will back up the products they sell.

2. The Geek Squad are NOT the computer professionals that they claim to be. I should have known that a discount store would not be willing to pay the salaries required to get real computer professionals.

I will never set foot in a Best Buy store again. I urge anyone looking to buy a computer not to do so at a Best Buy. I learned the hard way that it would have been cheaper to spend more money at a real computer store -- one that knew what they were doing and would back up their products.

I now consider Best Buy to be just a group of unethical thieves.