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Best Buy 'Geek Squad' Accused of Pirating Software
Alien54 writes "Texas software company Winternals Software LP has sued Best Buy Co. Inc. in federal court, alleging that the nation's largest consumer electronics retailer was using unlicensed versions of its diagnostic equipment. Best Buy's Geek Squad, is alleged to be using pirated versions of the software since talks on a commercial licensing agreement broke off. A restraining order has been granted."
A slightly related comment - I used to work at a PC repair shop next to Best Buy. We would get a constant stream of customers that would be sent from Best Buy to our store after *they* broke the machine! Sometimes they would even walk right out after getting a machine from the customer and bring it to us. I laughed out loud when I started to see these geek squad commercials. I can just imagine now the peeps at geek squad that use format and reload as their way tp fix any problem the computer has.
I knew the Geek Squad was a fake the first time I saw a commercial... There was a girl. That was all I needed.
Hey,
I used to work at the Best Buy in Miamisburg Ohio about a year ago, and I can tell you that the majority of the time, no one in the 'squad' ever used the so-called MRI disc (This is the tool disk that came from the corporate office for our use) because the tools on it were so poor that we would not be able to actually do the job.
About half of us used a variety of bootable Linux distros such as Knoppix and SLAX to perform diagnosis and recovery. Sometimes, the best way is the traditional way - the command line.
I personally used to use this bootable distros to prove points to customers who sometimes had a clue about what was wrong, and this would make an excellent way to show the ineffectiveness of various products and utilities designed to protect users from malware, spyware, etc.
After enough time, I myself started to create my own set of utilities (some nothing more than fancy perl scripts that I could run off a thumb drive) to do my dirty work for me.
Most of the time, Best Buy was totally committed to the idea of sell, sell, sell, while trying to improve their image. The ironic part of this was that our own store manager never could seemingly comprend the simple fact that good service sells and will generate more repeat customers and new customers via word-of-mouth than the stupid service plans, the countless harassment of customers that the geek squad personnel is supposed to be doing to buy plans, etc.
Sometimes, a true geek has to take whatever job that they can get. In this part of Ohio, for the longest time, gigs like Best Buy paid the bills or gave someone something to do while they went off and pursued the next software development contract for instance, or go to school.
Please remember Slashdot readers, that not all the techs that work for Best Buy are compelte idiots. Just most of them. And for myself, I must have been lucky, because I found a store with some guys that were actually competent and able to go on to better careers just like I did.
That computer was worked on by an egotistical maniac with a revenge demon on his shoulder!
Having worked computer service in the past, my 2 cents..
Piracy was absolutely rampant behind the counter. The policy was: so long as the customer doesn't see it, it's all good. Some stuff was frowned on, like copying a customer's key to XP and the like, and we were strict on the MS licensing rules (w/customers) except for the boss's friends, who got whatever they wanted.
We used 3 different diagnostic programs, and the rumour was that we'd paid for one copy of one of them a long time ago. We were encouraged to warez (does anybody still say that?) new apps to make our job go smoother, and we must have had a dozen different pirated data recovery suites lying around. So this is not really surprising, if the enviroment at BB is anything like what I knew.
The biggest problem with the service side of things is that anyone who is any good at the job is qualified for much much better things. Servicing PC's is an entry level job that requires an enourmous working knowledge to do well. Any monkey can run a ram diagnostic and format/reinstall, but anything more complex, like virus/spyware removal, intermittant h/w failure, dealing with customers, even just data backup: These all require a skill set that pays better elsewhere. As a jumping off point for geeks, its a great education, but it don't pay what its worth. Hardly a shock that this leads to less-than-professional conduct...
I've worked on the Geek Squad for about 8 months, and most of these comments are totally false. 1.)NO employee of bestbuy, including the geek squad, works on commission. 2.)There is a geek squad forum at www.geeksquadforums.com, however it is moderated by a corporate manager and pirated software isn't allowed. 3.)I can't speak for any other stores, but I'm positive that our store stopped using Winternals products 6 months ago. 4.)Again, I can't speak for otehr stores, but my store doesn't simply reformat machines. In my 8 months, working on hundreds of machines, I can count the number of machines I've reformatted on my fingers. Most of these comments are simply people speculating about what they *think* it *might* be like - please don't comment without any backing to it.
Not that i'm going to try to defend Best Buy but I can pretty much tell you exactly what happened since I do work for them.
Best Buy/Geek Squad is strictly against using non-licensed tools. Pirating is a big no no and I have written people up for it and they were eventually fired for using pirated software. We only use OEM discs if a key is provided on the side of the machine or a valid license is presented. We will refuse work unless the customer can present a valid XP license or a set of recovery discs specific to that machine. Most stores have a large collection of discs already, if they need a model we have a system in place to order them directly from the manufacturer.
When Best Buy purchased Geek Squad, this was made EXTREMELY CLEAR. Every piece of software that is approved to use, we have a valid license agreement with that comopany. We have a list that specifically states what's licensed and what's not. We don't have a "forum' of illegal software so I have no idea where that idea came from.
Here's what happened with Winterals. All stores were given evaluation version to test out ERD Commander and when the trial expired Best Buy decided not to license this software and they developed their own disc based on Bart's PE which is completely different from ERD Commander. All on-site agents were told to evalute this software and state why we should license it and what features we wanted. In the end, we told that licensing was off and we have to discontinue all use of Winternals products immediately. All stores were sent a paper communication, a mass email and it was generally posted in all stores. We were told to destroy all discs since they were useless anyone without a valid license file.
Basically, Winternals is pissed because they lost an 850 store contract with Best Buy, not including all field agents and stand-alone locations. This suit happened pretty much exactly after Best Buy stopped our trial with Winternals and decided to go with our own disc. It would have been a lot of money for Winternals so i'd be pretty pissed off too.
Again, not saying everyone is perfect. There are always a few idiots that use pirated software in any business and mom and pop shops are famous for this. It was either one rogue store breaking the rules like idiots or a completely baseless lawsuit like everything else in America.
Bad Geek squad, no windows Aero theme for them.
This is entirely true. We were often told to "solve the problem however you can" by managers. Why? Because there pretty much =wasn't= a "geek squad" budget. It is treated as an extension of the PC/Home Office department and basically is used to placate customers who have had their machines screwed up at the service centers. We weren't technicians, we were negotiators. We HAD no budget. In fact, Store 323, North Avenue in Chicago uses pirated software for its diagnostics, on every machine that comes in. It is copied and distributed to the technicians, the other employees, their friends, ANYBODY. The passcode to get it to work, is, ironically "323". The "Geek Squad" agents have shitty jobs, utterly shitty. It wasn't "we're provding you with pirated software to do your job because we're cheap" it was "find your own pirated software to do your job because we're too cheap to buy any AND too lazy to even do the pirating"
Why am I not posting anonymous coward when Im giving them such obvious information as to who I am?
Because I'm not afraid of telling the truth.
Fuck you, best buy
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
This rant has been brought to you by the letter Arrrrrrrrr!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Windows is very deterministic and easy to troubleshoot if you take the time to learn. It has distinct startup and shutdown procedures, driver installation, file system behavior, thread and process management, etc. These are all publicly documented, if you care to learn about them. Buy a copy of Windows Internals and you'll be amazed at what you didn't know. There are tools and utilities to automate all kinds of useful activities from the command-line, and if these tools don't exist, the APIs are very well documented on MSDN for how to create them.
Ever heard of that management console snap-in called Event Viewer? You might want to look into that. And as for debugging applications or even kernel-mode device drivers, Windows has some of the best freely available debugging facilities of any platform.
Read about Windows System File Protection. Run "sfc.exe /scannow" to validate your system files on XP/2k3. It uses hashes, not checksums.
Task manager? Tlist.exe?
It's pretty clear that you don't know much about Windows, which seems to be a common thread here on Slashdot. You'd rather trash Windows than spend the time to learn about what you don't know. It's easier to write off Windows as "unexplainable" just because you are too lazy to look behind the GUI.