We have (had, I guess) Tweeter around here. I've never patronized it, but I definitely remember the commercials.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Best Buy was very savvy to start the ramping up and promoting of their "Geek Squad". I think that this is going to be more the face of electronics in the future. There is already so much interconnection between devices and appliances in your house and the software is increasingly complicated. This will only increase. The days of walking into a store and buying an appliance which will work independently of any other appliance (just a frustrated husband putting screws in the right places, instructions folded out in front of him) are coming to an end.

Best Buy was in a good position because they already had national brand name recognition. I'd imagine that competition will spring up, however. I have no use for "tech experts", and therefore no personal experience with "Geek Squad", but most accounts of them that I read/hear suggest marginal at best competence. It will be interesting to see what happens if some other nationally recognized brand became known not just for sending a warm body or a 2nd year IT student, but an actual technical professional out to your place.

That's the competition I envision - Geek Squad is like Hyundai and you'll have newcomers representing Chevy and then Cadillac. This already exists (you can hire a freelancer or contractor), but I imagine someone will take it "national".

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

fucking wow.....man they are , well were all over the place here, but I have to say, that their model wasn't one I liked, and shopped elsewhere when I could, usually Fryes or Best BUY even more.

I actually liked Compusa but they are all gone out here....

the profit margins are very slim in this business.... customer service is key.

and yes Dr Trips agreed geek squad will be a staple one day......


I recall a joke e mail couple of years ago referring to circuit city “customer service nazis”.......their customer service was the pits.

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"The captain has turned off the `No Dubbing' sign. You are free to speak any language you choose."

Don't worry, they can get new jobs easily!

To Whom It May Concern,

If so then I weap for the computer consumer.

The Reality of the Geek Squad « brotherpeacemaker

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

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Well, my take is that you'll see outfits emerge where there is a higher level of competence. Since Geek Squad (for now) has no competition on any brand/national level, they can get away with training joe-shmoes off the street for a few weeks and then calling them "professionals". Once the competition increases.... not so much.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

They are out there and have been for years but you are mixing up two vastly different markets. Geek Squad is not intended to get really nuts and bolts and never will as the need for that is very limited. They serve low end PC owners with simple issues. If something is all that broken then its near as cheap to buy a new one. High end PC owners would never go to Best Buy to buy their unit.

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Socialism doesn't create a rising tide that lifts all boats. It drains the lake and teaches the boat riders not to help themselves by rowing.

Jesus loves you, allah wants you dead

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others."

Ayn Rand

Yeah, if they force me with a higher salary.

Kramer

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“We should never be more vigilant than at the moment a new dogma is being installed. … The left has been swept along, entranced by the allure of weather as revolutionary agent, naïvely conceiving of global warming as a crisis that will force radical social changes on capitalism.”

TheNation, June 7, 2007

To Whom It May Concern,

In other words, your in favor of forcing them to keep you employed without consideration for their bottom line. However, your not in favor of them forcing you to stay when your leaving affects their bottom line.

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

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According to the link from Best Buy (the Geek Squad website is currently down, lol): Computer Setup & Services - BestBuy

The major service categories offered are networking and internet setup, computer and hardware setup, computer repair and diagnostic, and remote services (presumably software help). If there is a definition for "[getting] nuts and bolts", I'd say that pretty well covers it.

I think that the "mixing up" of which you accuse me is actually happening on your end, and involves mistaking "low end" with "simple" and "high end" with "complex" (the only substantial differences between "low end" and "high end" PC's are atomic parts - from a complexity standpoint, there is generally little difference). If you have malicious software preventing you from loading the OS on your old, nearly worthless computer, and you desperately need/want pictures or personal financial information stored on the computer, the fact that you could replace it for $100 on Craigslist isn't exactly the crux of the problem. The advent of massive processing on the cheap has necessarily introduced high levels of complexity to inexpensive problems, and the software angle makes your technology setup way more than the sum of its inexpensive parts.

And, I've acknowledged that competitors exist to the Geek Squad, after a fashion. But, they are generally disparate and have no national branding/affiliation the way Geek Squad is affiliated with Best Buy. That is the savvy of Best Buy as a company. My point is that other organizations will probably take that model and try to get a segment of the "distributed IT services" market. And, this will be made easier by virtue of the fact that Geek Squad doesn't do it particularly competently. If the tech shows up and says "what's a router", you don't have Radio Shack's "Dork Squad" to call as an option, the way you could walk out of a Best Buy and into a Radio Shack if you didn't like the salesman you were dealing with. At this point, you call your brother's buddy who "knows computers" instead, and watch as he putters around with it for free and maybe gets it working.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

I am sure glad that I know a lot about repairing PC's. I would not want to be in the position of having a broken PC while not knowing anything about it.

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5% of the total surface of the Netherlands is used to grow hemp

I'm in favor of forcing them keeping people employed when the employees are doing their jobs and the company is making a profit.

I'm not in favor of forcing companies to keep people when they are doing their jobs but the company is losing money.

I'm especially not in favor of companies firing people when they are doing their jobs and the company is making money.

Kramer

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“We should never be more vigilant than at the moment a new dogma is being installed. … The left has been swept along, entranced by the allure of weather as revolutionary agent, naïvely conceiving of global warming as a crisis that will force radical social changes on capitalism.”

TheNation, June 7, 2007

You are not going to have Geek Squad working on your motherboard or extracting data from your damaged hard drives, they'll point you over to sales. But there are firms that do offer those services for people who need them. My brother for example who had to get that informmation back for business purposes. If you needed those services you would know where to get them. Most don't and if they though they did would immediately balk at the prices. Geek Squad will load your software, de-bug your machine with their canned debugging software, add cards, memory and stuff any one could do with a screwdriver and a little confidence. Its a valuable service for a large number of customers.

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Socialism doesn't create a rising tide that lifts all boats. It drains the lake and teaches the boat riders not to help themselves by rowing.

Jesus loves you, allah wants you dead

"Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others."

Ayn Rand

I agree that a lot of them would "balk at the price" for bona fide expertise (though some might pay regardless, depending on the "criticality"). And, I also can't personally testify to the knowledge of the Geek Squad (or lack thereof) as I've never used them. My only experience was actually two weeks ago, when I was in a Best Buy looking at some video cards which happened to be next to the Geek Squad desk. A woman was describing an error message she was getting and that her computer wouldn't boot up. The Geek Squad tech estimated something like $100 and I felt kind of bad for the woman - I could have told her how to fix the problem in 10 minutes. But, I didn't imagine my meddling would have been welcome, much less appreciated, so I kept my mouth shut. Of course, the desk operator was probably reading some kind of chart for the estimates - maybe the actual tech got out there, re-seated the cable connecting the hard drive to the motherboard and charged him $30 for the trip or something... who knows?

Nonetheless, I participate in various technical/programming forums, and the opinion of the Geek Squad (and Geek Squad horror stories) are remarkable. I immediately attribute a lot of this to the snotty nature of a lot of technical people, but it's too widespread to dismiss. Additionally, there were various former (and I think one current) Geek Squad members "dishing" about how they were surrounded with and managed by incompetence.

I think that this is a fairly easy business model with which to compete. There is no guarantee that anything you mentioned (running virus software, hooking up components, installing internal cards, etc) won't explode into something much more complicated than anticipated, which puts the techs in a very awkward position. They can either concede that they aren't qualified to handle it (most honest/noble approach, IMO, but horrible for their reputation), try to handle it and fuck up (a definite gamble), or try to trick the user into thinking they've solved the problem or into thinking that some piece of hardware is bad. My money is on the last option without exception - that's a technical stalwart across the board (oh, there's nothing wrong with my software - it's the 8 different computers you've tried it on!)

But, paying money to a tech only to come and tell you that you're problem can't get fixed and you have to give someone else more money is not an ideal solution. It allows you to save face and not be thought of as incompetent, but it devalues your service in the eyes of customers. I think this is where an outfit like that is ripe for the picking. If they advertise as technical experts and the expert claim is dubious, another outfit can make more money with more expertise. And, if you have a large outfit functioning as "distributed IT", you can charge customers $100 per hour, and still offer the techs $25+ per hour, which is a significant enough salary to lure entry level to mid level people with actual expertise, instead of high school kids and people looking to change it up from retail and liking the idea of $10-$12 per hour.

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

In case anyone was curious, I just found an interesting thread about the Geek Squad:

- How much should I ask from the Geek Squad?

This was the quote (from an employee that struck me as the best summary):

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"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson