So they have cool little cars, impressive commercials, and wear nerdy looking clothes. They still suck. Twice I have gone to Geek Squad with a computer problem and twice I encountered a teenager who knows less about computers than I do. The first time was the disk problem… OK, I really didn’t expect them to open up the disk and recover the data but I did expect them to make more than a minimal effort. In fact, the Geek Squad guy did nothing more than what I was able to do myself. He pulled the drive and put it in another PC where it still didn’t work. Duh… I told him the disk was fried. I expected a little more like maybe swapping the electronics on the drive and seeing if that might do something. But that would have required some technical know-how and that does not seem to be what geek Squad is about.

OK, how about the second problem which happened last week with my daughter’s PC. According to the lights on the back of the PC, the processor failed. So I called Geek Squad on the phone and they said, “Sure, no problem, bring it in, we can fix that.” Well, actually after I dragged the PC over there I discovered that if I buy a new processor from Dell they will put it in for me. For $50. They wouldn’t even bother checking the computer to make sure it really was the processor or even order the processor themselves. Putting in a processor may sound scary but if you can plug in a toaster without electrocuting yourself, you can put a new processor in a computer. It is about 5 minutes worth of work. So Geek Squad will be happy to put in the processor, with no guarantee that the processor is actually the problem, at the equivalent rate of $600 per hour. Nice work if you can get it.

They will install a hard drive at $40 (after you buy the hard drive). What does installing a new hard drive entail? Open the PC, slide the hard drive into a slot, and plug two cables into the hard drive. Close the PC and start her up. Less that 5 minutes work. They will install a memory chip for $30. Again, less than 5 minutes for you to do it yourself. They will install anti-virus software for $30 plus the cost of the software. Are you telling me that someone might own a computer and not know how to put a disk in their CD player because that is all Geek Squad will do for you. For $170 they will remove any viruses and spyware and add a firewall and some virus protection. $170!!! I cleaned up my sister’s PC which was infected with both spyware and viruses without using anything other than some free anti-spyware software and 90-day free version of Norton.

Geek Squad is a rip-off. They charge outrageous amounts for the simplest work but are incapable of doing anything more than what anyone can do with just a little advice or assistance from a random teenager.