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Show me the cost of paying somebody to upgrade your iOS device for you.

Falls under the Tablet Setup category if we're talking about iPads, or Device Setup if iPod or iPhone, since you want to nag about iDevices.. $29.99 and up, in either case.

It's been fun, but arguing with the same troll all night has gotten to be quite boring by now, so I'm going to go back to spending time with my wife now that I've cleared that up.

Show me the cost of paying somebody to upgrade your iOS device for you.

Falls under the Tablet Setup category if we're talking about iPads, or Device Setup if iPod or iPhone, since you want to nag about iDevices.. $29.99 and up, in either case.

It's been fun, but arguing with the same troll all night has gotten to be quite boring by now, so I'm going to go back to spending time with my wife now that I've cleared that up.

From what I hear they are made up of several CIA agents.

I assume Best Buy won't sue Buy More for its Nerd Herd that mocks Geek Squad. ;)

Check the Geek Squad about page

Geek Squad Chief Inspector Robert Stephens founded Geek Squad with $200 and a bicycle in Minneapolis in 1994. Today, Geek Squad is the preeminent local tech support service.

In 2002, Geek Squad entered into joint operation with Best Buy and expanded nationally in 2004 - providing consumers nationwide with a unified, fully owned task force to help them manage their growing dependence on technology.

Dear Valued Best Buy Customer,

On March 31, we were informed by Epsilon, a company we use to send emails to our customers, that files containing the email addresses of some Best Buy customers were accessed without authorization.

We have been assured by Epsilon that the only information that may have been obtained was your email address and that the accessed files did not include any other information. A rigorous assessment by Epsilon determined that no other information is at risk. We are actively investigating to confirm this.

For your security, however, we wanted to call this matter to your attention. We ask that you remain alert to any unusual or suspicious emails. As our experts at Geek Squad would tell you, be very cautious when opening links or attachments from unknown senders.

In keeping with best industry security practices, Best Buy will never ask you to provide or confirm any information, including credit card numbers, unless you are on our secure e-commerce site, www.bestbuy.com. If you receive an email asking for personal information, delete it. It did not come from Best Buy.

Our service provider has reported this incident to the appropriate authorities.

We regret this has taken place and for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We take your privacy very seriously, and we will continue to work diligently to protect your personal information. For more information on keeping your data safe, please visit:
http://www.geeksquad.com/do-it-yourself/tech-tip/six-steps-to-keeping-your-data-safe.aspx.

Sincerely,

Barry Judge
Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer
Best Buy

I like that they turned it into an opportunity to plug Geek Squad as well.

No we don't... Geek squad car. It is basically the same, isn't it?

Let's celebrate the rise of this sort of universal "accessibility" which leads to more viruses, more "PC" stores like Best Buy/Geek Squad and in general the decline of the computer. Yeah, its great if you are like Geek Squad and can charge $50 to plug in a USB cable and install drivers ( see http://www.geeksquad.com/services/computer/service.aspx?id=2927 ) for everyone else? It is a nightmare.

You mean to tell me the kind of shop that would charge $50 to install a stick of RAM might behave in a less than ethical manner? NO!

Seems silly to you, but by your logic you are stupid to hire a plumber and pay $150 to fix a broken pipe over the weekend. Or stupid to hire someone to dig a trench for you when you already own a shovel and have two hands.

Seriously, most of the people who take their computer to GS don't have the first clue how to install RAM, and if they attempted to do so would end up ruining the RAM, and probably the rest of the computer at the same time.

Since you're so smug about it, open up a shop across from Best Buy and see if you can live on charging $10 to install RAM. Oh, and don't forget you'll be liable if something goes wrong, and if you have employees you'll have to pay them if you have business or not, plus insurance, workman's comp, etc.
You seem to be under the illusion that all you are paying for is the time to install the RAM. You're not. And figure that if I take something to Best Buy, and they royally hose my system, they have a lot of money for me if I sue them... the local shop might not ever give you a penny even with a judgement against them.

Do I hate the GS to the core of my soul? Yes, I do. My opinion is that they are, in general, completely overpriced, incredibly incompetent, and horribly corrupt. I can't count how many times I've "fixed" a GS job on a friends freshly re-installed OS by simply installing the rest of the drivers from the OEM disk.

But simply being overpriced does not make someone unethical.

You mean to tell me the kind of shop that would charge $50 to install a stick of RAM might behave in a less than ethical manner? NO!

Haha what!? You build up an entire argument based on the fact that his only choice is to actually buy another PC and then shit on your own face in the end? Why!? Of course he should pay someone to fix it, if it's a perfectly functioning PC with a missing hard drive, why wouldn't he!? You're weird man.

Because this friend knows so little about computers that they're going to end up asking the Geek Squad, or a similar outfit, to do it for them. They're going to need their hard drive swapped out ($100 for the part, $50 for the labor), data mirrored ($160), they'll probably get convinced they need their operating system reinstalled ($130), primary office suite reinstalled ($50), and antivirus software ($30). Of course, all these numbers are presuming they still hold the disks and license keys the various software started with. At a cost of $520 for a machine that's probably at least 2 years old, they might notice in the store that they could just get a brand new system for less than that.

Higher than the already ludicrous prices they charge? Seriously, $40 to install a bit of RAM or $80 to "Add a compatible electronic device to your wired or wireless network with this electronic device setup service for Mac or PC." is outlandishly expensive for something that should take all of (or less than, frankly) 5 minutes.

"So, what would the going contractor rates have cost the company for all the break-fix type work you've been doing, not to mention the preventative actions?"

Exactly. If your position wasn't there, who would step in and make the repairs? Contractors, geek squad or similar.

To calculate what you are worth, simply keep a log of all the tech support calls you do in a week. Anytime you help someone, regardless of how small, or restart a server or fix a printer or do anything tech support related at all, write it down. Then call some tech support contractors and ask how much they would charge for the various tasks, but pretend you're dumb and you're really having that problem, ask them how long it will take to get to your office. Remember to calculate the length of time it takes them to arrive as loss productivity for the employee or employees, because a printer problem affecting the entire office means no one can work. Then do the math.

I think you'll quickly see your monthly paycheck would be spent almost daily if they were to call contractors all the time, and the amount of money the DBA is saving will look like nothing compared to your position.

...A family friend once told me (after the fact) that they charged her $90 to back up all of her data to a CD, which consisted of a couple dozen family photos and a few papers...

In related news Jay Maris is now very probably out of work and totally unemployable.


Don't feel bad for him there are wonderful career opportunities at:

McDonalds
UPS
Burger King
Geek Squad


Personally I'm rooting for him getting a position at Geek Squad. The humiliation of having to ride around in that car and wear those clothes is a good start to some sort of punishment.

Do you guarantee your service?

Affirmative! If you're not satisfied with your service, please contact the Geek Squad location where the service was performed. We guarantee our services for 90 days for Geek Squad Precincts and stores. On-site services are guaranteed for 30 days. Remote services are guaranteed for five days. If there is a problem with the service we provided and you notify us within the stated time period, we will work to remedy your problem quickly and at no additional cost. For further details, please see the Terms of Service found at a location near you.

Do you guarantee your service?

Affirmative! If you're not satisfied with your service, please contact the Geek Squad location where the service was performed. We guarantee our services for 90 days for Geek Squad Precincts and stores. On-site services are guaranteed for 30 days. Remote services are guaranteed for five days. If there is a problem with the service we provided and you notify us within the stated time period, we will work to remedy your problem quickly and at no additional cost. For further details, please see the Terms of Service found at a location near you.

But, they do have badges. :)

I also love how they have a rank of "Double Agent". That's the title of someone a customer could trust.

We also offer a data backup - AND its in our Terms of Service - BOTH on our website AND THE PAPERWORK GIVEN TO THE CUSTOMER.

http://www.geeksquad.com/termsofservice/

Yes, some of our Agents are real Timmies (the ones who think they know what they're doing, but don't) but show me a company that's NEVER hired an incompetent person, with that amount of scale.

Seriously, everyone bitches about how bad Geek Squad is. For the most part, we get it right. One in a few goes bad - it's bound to happen. Any tech who's actually done any work in the field (on-site or carry-in or whatever) has lost something at some point.

Nobody's perfect. Cut us a break - not like were advertising to YOU. We target those who can't operate/fix their computers.

Yes, I happen to have some input at the corporate level (as well as work there), and I'm doing my best to improve things, as everything can always be made better.

I think it's pretty obvious they're here to repair our poor fashion sense! Remember, dressing like an extra from Revenge of the Nerds is the first step towards mastering your computer!

The upper management team of my company has made a decision that the IT department will work with employee's home computers and laptops. Despite every possible explanation of liability and the loss of proprietary information, the decision was made in order to satisfy a 'need' that the employees have expressed.

Do you guys get to wear the slender black neckties, white short-sleeved button ups, and drive Volkswagen Beetles to work? Hmmm...

They're apparently very proud

There's no company out there that is going to support third-party products... that one is just dumb.

True, to an extent. Some companies, however, do support third-party hardware. For a fee. And they make quite the tidy profit from that, too. Most people (joe sixpack, not ubergeeks like us) are quite willing to pay between $50 and $200 to a company to get a computer problem fixed. Just look at Dell's new Helpdesk support, or GeekSquad. People pay for that level of service, and it is quite readily available.

I agree, though, no manufacturer in thier right mind will provide this level of service for free on a system that only cost $300. They used to be able to (Dell used to support pretty much anything, as long as it was hooked to a Dell computer, but that was when they could make profit on the system itself.) These days the profit margin is in the add-ons, not the system.

Disclaimer: I do work for Dell.

If you look at the list of things geek squad does (http://www.geeksquad.com/_assets/pdf/GS_Home_Pric es.pdf), you'll see that all of those jobs require less than 3 hours (with the exception of data transfer in some cases).

I listed a range of prices you could expect to get, and based on certain jobs, charging $100 an hour is less than geek squad. They charge $160 to install a hard drive, which even with formatting shouldn't take more than an hour (I assume less than 200gigs).

On another note, by travel costs, I meant only those associated with gas, not your own time.

Download your official Star Wars Excuse Note to give to your employer / school / etc.

Dear Geek Squad:

There's a moroon on a public website spouting off that Yahoo! is distributing viruses. People have commented that he is most likely wrong. But he has left his contact information, and claims to be a Geek Squad representative.

As an investor in Yahoo!, I find it disturbing that someone would spread possibly false rumors about the company that I have invested in, potentially damaging the reputation of the company and my investment value.

Please investigate. The posting can be found at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=143968&thresho ld=0&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=thread&cid=12064858 . The users email address is (supposedly) kaldur.dauthur@gmail.com

Thank you.

If you really live in New York City, you've got over a million households that bring in over $75,000 a year. I'm sure charging $150 for a house visit and $70 for each additional hour would not be out of the realm of what they can do.

Why not have that rate out there? If no one wants to pay it, you're in the same boat. If people pay it, now you're making more money than before. Hell, charge 10% more than the Geek Squad with people knowing they will get some good service. Now your visits are 3 to 4x what they were before...

Still not worth it?

That's not necessarily true. I used to work for the Geek Squad, one of the companies mentioned in the article, and I used to get treated to near-rock star status whenever anyone found out about it. It's all about image, in the end, and Geek Squad (well, really its founder, Robert Stephens) has it in spades. I left the company back in 2001 after they decided to lay off all their part-time employees, and I now work as a program manager at a pretty big software development company, but when people talk about cool tech jobs, Geek Squad is always the one I really trot out.

"sad if contruction " - wrong spelling of construction.

"How many times has a geek been called at home at 3AM in the morning because the printer wont print? " Here in MPLS we have a couple of larger companies that do 24/7 on site computer support. See Geek Squad.

"more or less important then what " - Should have used the word 'than' instead.

"Me..I was layed off almost a year ago and I dont EVER plan to work again. " - Awesome goals man!

I wasn't saying that carrying bricks around is less important than coding or anything else computer related. I guess what I was trying to imply, was that it would be sad if a formal college education in a tech field did not pay as much as it does to simply "carry" things. I have a lot of respect for skilled tradesman.

They have an image and attitude. Their company cars bear a "Geek Squad" logo. Their people wear white shirts and ties and pocket protectors. They even have a black SWAT van for major problems.

It's too bad they're still a small company. They should be everywhere, like Roto-Rooter(tm).

They're hiring.

If they don't pay, you print "Past Due" on the bill next month, and send it again. Add 1.5% per month as a past due fee.

If they still don't pay after 90 days, you file a claim in small claims court. Very seldom do things reach that point. If you go to court, and you did the work, you'll get a judgement in your favor. Then either they pay, or you find out where their bank account is and get an order attaching it.

I have to tell this to some of my artists friends now and then. They're always doing little jobs for small businesses and not getting paid. All have been paid by the second invoice.

The one time I went back and did a job for a previous employer, I charged them about a thousand dollars for a weekend. And that was in the 1970s.

Surprisingly, you won't be hated for this. You'll b e respected.

Ok. As irritating as it is, I am going to have to do a point by point rebuttal here. Sorry in advance.

Point One half of Apple's current lineup of computers, the iMac and the iBook (2 computers that I bet make up the bulk of their sales) have NO expansion slots. No PCI slots on the iMac, and no PCMCIA slots on the laptops.

Rebuttal And this is bad why? The vast majority of people in the world out there DO NOT upgrade their computers. EVER. I worked at a computer repair firm for two years, and I would guess that not more than a quarter of PC users actually get new cards installed into their computers. This, contrary to what most people on slashdot feel, is not a limitation for the vast majority of users. Here, think of it like this. Most PC users, when they're adding new stuff to their computers, will get things that can be plugged into serial, parallel, and usb ports. Not PCI. Not AGP. Not (god forbid) ISA.

Point This is nothing more than a stupid, short-sighted attempt by Apple to make the computer not last as long. In essence, your choices become: 1: buy the much more expensive TiBook or G4 tower, or 2: buy the cheap one and it's obsolete, FAST.

RebuttalAnd this is different from those microtower Dells, Compaq iPaqs, etc, in what way exactly? Furthermore, with laptops, what the hell is the point of a PC card slot on a laptop that has video out, firewire, usb, 10/100 ethernet, AirPort (802.11b), and a 56k modem built-in? I actually just bought a TiBook 3-4 days ago (it's still on its way), and I don't have any notion of what I'll actually use the PC card slot on it for. I've been using an indigo iBook for the last 14 months, and I am currently replacing it only because I am starting to find the screen size limiting (it's a pain to use Project Builder and Interface Builder in 800x600 pixels).

Point Apple has end-of-lifed the video cards used in the first generation iMac - users of those computers are never going to get accelerated video drivers in OS X. If those were cheapo PCs with slots, you could at least throw a nicer video card in there and solve the problem.

Rebuttal Ok. OS X is big. It's a dog on anything less than a 366 MHz G3 with at least 128MB RAM. The original iMac (the bondi blue variety) has a 233MHz G3 processor, and came with 32 mb RAM. The average person is NOT going to run OS X on that thing. They'd be absolutely nuts to do it. Apple knows this. That's a big reason why they will not bother writing accelerated video card drivers for the bondi iMac. No one would use them (or at least they shouldn't). If these people really want to run OS X, they should sell their Bondi iMac off for $350 or $400, or whatever they go for, and pick up the $799 iMac.

PointAnd don't bother posting that it doesn't matter that there aren't any expansion slots because "everything comes built in". Tell that to first generation iBook or iMac owners who like to use the iPod - "sorry, FireWire only". Those computers are less than two years old, and already becoming obsolete.

Rebuttal Ha. Yeah right. I hate to break it to you, but if you can't afford to pick up a new computer every two or three years (the iMac will be 4 next August, and the iBook came out ~one year after the iMac) there is no way in hell you could afford an iPod. The iPod is a toy for those with too much money. Don't get me wrong on this, I'd love to have one, but there's no way in hell I can afford one until I'm out of college (I bought the TiBook because it'll serve a definite purpose. besides, I bought an AVC Soul Player a year ago). These people aren't going to go out and spend $400 on the iPod unless they could afford a new computer anyway. Besides, it doesn't matter, since everything comes built-in anyways, right? ;-)

Point Would you like to have USB 2.0? I will, and I can add it to my 3 year old Dell notebook via a card and it will work fine. The Apple iBook you buy TODAY can't be expanded with a single new tech. beyond what it ships with. Now which comp. is aging faster, the Apple, or the Dell? Even crummy $700 PCs and $1100 laptops have PCI/PCMCIA.

Rebuttal Yet people continue buying iBooks, with their 400 Mbit firewire ports that have devices available for the port today. What idiots! Can you even buy a USB 2.0 card yet? By the way, take a look at your P.S. statement. Hell, I'll quote it here. P.S. I don't want to hear about how you can add all sorts of nifty expansion option via FireWire. I don't want 5 boxes hanging off my computer. But wait, you still want 5 USB 2.0 devices hanging off your computer? I'm confused. It must be because I'm one of those gullible anti-windows mac users (I'm typing this on my self-built coppermine-core system running XP pro right now.).

Point PCI and PCMCIA slots let you add all sorts of stuff to your computer, in effect, "future-proofing" it by allowing you to expand rather than buy a new computer. A computer without expansion options hardly qualifies as "a computer that ages slower than PCs."

Point I just did a search on Micro Warehouse for pc card, and as you can see, basically everything listed is a wireless ethernet card, an ethernet card, a modem, or a usb controller. I HAVE ALL OF THOSE THINGS BUILT INTO MY IBOOK. Jeez. About the only thing I would find useful to buy for a pc card slot would be one of those pc card hard drives (that ibm makes). Even then, I'd rather just burn a cd with the built-in burner. More people have cd-rom drives than pc card slots. Furthermore, let's take a look at the cards I have in my PC right now. 1. An ATI Xpert 2000 (AGP 4x). 2. An SB Live (PCI). 3. A Linksys 10/100BaseT Ethernet card (PCI). 4. A firewire card. There is really nothing else that I am planning on ever adding to this computer. Sure, there are a lot of people out there who need second monitors, but none of them would buy an iMac anyways. They wouldn't be served well by a 15" monitor. The iMac is a consumer machine. The iBook (supposedly) is too (although most business types would probably be fine having one). The Power Mac G4 is a professional machine. Same thing goes for the Powerbook G4. You don't hear people complaining that their Dell Dimension 2100's won't let them install a burner inside the case. If you did, you'd probably ridicule them for not buying a higher-end machine.

You know what, I will go on using my Apple laptop, my Intel/Microsoft desktop, and the god-awful Sun Blade 100 I get stuck using at school, and you can go on using whatever you want to. We'll just call it even.

Okay, I think this is too funny for words.

I love my uncle. When I was six he gave me a Commodore 64 to play with. Hell yeah I played with it. I programmed to make the thing talk. And games too. It was great fun. So when I'm seven he gets me an XT because he just got the ungodly fast 386, and all I can say is "damn"! So I played with the xt for a few months, then I took it apart and put it back together.

* And it worked

When dads work upgraded to even faster pentiums & 486's, I got myself a case with a 386 mobo and chip. Yeah guess what happened. Since I knew how the XT worked, I transferred all the components across. Now this 386 was fast, so I got compuserve and the internet, I hung out in chat rooms and computer bulletin boards.

Well as you can imagine, I am now 15, custom build computers, have unix, macOS, windows, and V2 experience, do web design (I know html, dhtml, and am learning WAP, HDML, and XML, and code entirely in notepad), Troubleshoot for peoples computers, have my own websites at Nerdnetwork.net and Greenbuggy.com.

I find the article funny because right now, where I'm standing, My nerdnetwork.net website has only been up for a few months and has several times more hits than dads engineering group. I have 5 separate email addresses, where my dad has only one. My mom and sisters have no email addresses and little internet experience. Whenever I go to moms work her employers come up to me and offer me lunch at leanne chins if I fix whatever problem their network or iMac has.

And my gracious uncle dan has already offered me a job at a computer business where he owns part of it.

But I'm thinking about working at Geeksquad because they have cooler company cars. If only I could drive.



Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net