CompUSA vs Best Buy

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My son’s laptop started shutting off for no reason last week. For a guy who spends as much time online as he does, that’s a tragedy. And a tragedy for me, too — because I could just see how repairing the laptop could cost more than the laptop was worth, and nothing bugs me as much as throwing away good stuff just because it costs too much to fix.
Well, random shutdowns sounded to me like overheating — except that it booted up fine with a Linux Live CD. I opened it up — but not all the way, unfortunately — and everything seemed to be in order with the memory, hard drive and stuff. I ran Memtest86+, the memory tester for x86 architectures, and everything checked out. But when we tried to get into Windows — phwap, black screen of nothingness.
My son brought his laptop to CompUSA, and there the people did not listen to our tests and what-not — they said it would cost them $80 to try and reinstall Windows, and $120 to investigate any problem that might show up, and then they’d be able to see how much it would cost to fix.
My son picked up his computer and walked out of the place. He told me they didn’t listen to anything he said.
This weekend, we took it down to the local Best Buy — I’d be hearing bad things about their Geek Squad, but what the heck. The took the laptop, put it on a test rig, called us up about two hours later and said it was in fact an overheating problem, they cleaned it out and it seemed to be working fine, we should pick it up. Two hours — on a Sunday — $59.
We also bought Hot Shots Tennis for the PS2 (Wii Sports Tennis is okay, but there’s not much there aside from being a cool party game), Shadows of the Colossus PS2 for my son, and Final Fantasy III DS for me. An extra hundred bucks of software because Best Buy’s Geek Squad LISTENED to us, FIXED the problem FAST and DIDN’T OVERCHARGE.
That’s how you make your customers happy.
Stores differ. The ones we went to were both in Manchester, CT.

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16 thoughts on “CompUSA vs Best Buy”

  1. Glad to hear they were able to resolve it. Sad how some places know they have customers btw. a rock and ahard place when it comes to fixing computers. Most people don’t know anything about resolving computer issues and will pay whatever to have it fixed, not knowing any better. Sounds like CompUSA really takes advantage of their customers.

  2. They must have changed their policies since I tried to use them. I went to a geeksquad outlet two years ago when I couldn’t figure out why my computer kept giving me “OS not found” messages and refusing to boot. They offered to look into it… for $200. I said, “No thanks,” took it home, did some more research, and figured out it was faulty hard drive connection. $200 to troubleshoot a computer is ridiculous.

  3. I actually run my own business, and always have return customers…as I follow a simple rule…
    $35 an hour for repair…pure and simple…and if cannot be fixed…only one hour of service…no matter how much time I spent…and of course cost of parts, but with my 25% markup…which usually equals best buy prices…
    You gotta know how to treat the customer, and they will always return…and may buy their next computer or services from you even..
    Cheers!

  4. It could be I won the Best Buy lottery and got a good one — but the one where I live really impressed me and the price was right, whereas the CompUSA one just seemed like money grabbers. I hate going to stores to fix my computers, but I don’t know much about laptops and just needed to get it working.
    Ironically, I got it home, reinstalled Windows (we’d wiped it, thinking viruses and besides, you have to reinstall Windows every year or so anyway to keep it healthy), and it worked great. Installed 92 Windows Updates this morning and now it bluescreens with a driver error.
    Sigh. Just can’t win. So tonight comes some fun trying to figure out which update caused the error…
    Why can’t devs just write their games in Mac OSX or Linux so I wouldn’t ever have to use Windows again.

  7. I’ve read again and again about how extended warranties are rip-offs. I didn’t have one for the laptop. I bought it in California at Fry’s, and they don’t even HAVE Fry’s in Connecticut (business opportunity there, if you ask me). But there’s a certain peace of mind in knowing that if you DO have problems, someone will fix them. It’s just that they charge so much for comprehensive ones.

  9. Yeah, it’s working great. No lag, etc. I don’t know why he isn’t bluescreening — perhaps he hasn’t done a full restart — but as long as it works, I won’t touch it. SOX stuff, you know. CMMi. Very corporate IT. I’m learning.

  12. Oh – I’ve heard of sarbanes-oxley. Never heard it referred to as SOX. know exactly what iti is but I ghink it’s how businesses are made to conduct business to avoid conflict of interest or something. I suppose I should read the link you provided. blech, reading, literacy – gasp!
    P.S. Jazzmin is in love with the guitar hero – she played it all evening last night and rushed to get ready this morning so she could get in a few songs before she left. She wants to get to the “turning japanese” level she said. Is that song even on guitar hero 2?

  15. Tipa – Overheating makes sense despite the Linux troubleshooting you did. Windows puts quite a bit more strain on the processor, so it would heat more than it would loading the relatively slim Linux distro.
    Cameron Sorden – To clarify, the $200 charge isn’t really just for troubleshooting. It comprises the $59 diagnostic fee that was charged to Tipa, plus a flat fee for software repairs. In your case, it was almost certainly a bad HDD based on the error message, but the $200 charge still would have been the correct one, in addition to the cost of a new drive. In that case, the software repair portion would pay for reloading the OS and original apps and installing any service packs or updates, as well as applying proprietary customizations that Geek Squad has developed internally. It should have been explained to you that way, and you should have been told that if it turned out to be bad HW, we could either get your approval on the spot, or contact you with the diagnosis and you’d make your decision at that time. If you decided not to do the work, we’d refund all but the $59 diagnostic portion of the fee. If this wasn’t properly explained, it’s a training failure, not an issue with the pricing structure itself.

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