SteveSilver.net

Don't Trust the Geek Squad

Now for a computer/tech support nightmare on par with Jeff Jarvis vs. Dell:

I was having Spyware problems last week, and after wrestling with that for a few days and downloading a couple of anti-spyware tools, I thought I had the problem licked. But the only remaining bug was that every time I opened my iTunes, it would quit without warning 30 seconds later. No error message, no explanation of what might be wrong. I called Apple tech support, and they told me to upgrade the software and to install Windows Service Pack 2. I did both but still, the problem persisted.

So Saturday afternoon I called up Best Buy's Geek Squad, thinking they might be able to solve the pesky problem. Over the course of the next three hours, the technician had me go through all sorts of "solutions," all of which were sure to work but none of which actually did, until finally she told me to run a "system restore" to a few days before. The restore stalled halfway through, after which I was told to restart the computer- which, over and over, produced an error message that crashed it. And now I can't even turn it on.

Two subsequent representatives failed to solve the problem, until they warned that I "may lose data" if I proceeded further. So essentially, I paid $25 for them to waste four hours of my time and make my computer worse- when all I'd wanted them to do in the first place was fix my iTunes. Sort of like going in for a nose job and ending up in a coma. I'll update later on whether or not it feels like waking up.