Lindsay bought me a laptop from Best Buy our first Christmas together in 2005. I used that laptop for two and a half years until I started having problems with it: the sound wasn't working anymore and it would crash while running certain programs. I decided to get it fixed during the summer because I wouldn't need it for school. Good thing I gave myself all summer to get it fixed.
First I took it into Best Buy in American Fork, UT on May 20th. They sent it out for repairs.
I got it back in Mountain View, CA on June 6th. Although it was working, some of the parts they used to repair it with were the wrong ones (and much cheaper wrong ones). On top of that some of the programs I used didn't work. So they sent it back out to get the right parts.
Two weeks later, I got it back in Milpitas, CA on June 20th. This time, everything seemed fine: the sound was working and it had the right parts. So I took it home and used it for about 10 minutes. The next morning, Saturday, I started it up to make plans with Lindsay for the day. It turned on and 5 seconds later turned off. Try as I might, I couldn't get it to turn back on. So, back to Best Buy. They couldn't get it to turn on either, so they sent it back out for repairs.
Another two weeks later, I picked it back up in Milpitas on July 2nd. Once again, my laptop was starting up, the sound was working and it had the right parts. So I took it home, turned it on and tried to check my email. No dice. My laptop wasn't picking up the Internet at all. I tried to fix the problem on my own but couldn't. So, yet again, I headed back to Best Buy and dropped it off for them to fix the problem at their local store.
A couple of days later, I got a call telling me they couldn't work on the laptop because I had Linux (another operating system) installed as well as Windows. So, on July 9th, I picked it back up to remove Linux. On my own, I figured out what the problem was and it wasn't what I expected. So I removed Linux, made a back up of my files, and went back to Best Buy for the fifth time. I explained the actual problem to them and they sent it back out for repairs.
Now into August, I heard back from Best Buy that my laptop was a "lemon" (basically, a dud, a busted computer) and that I was eligible to get it replaced with a new computer. So on August 8th I made my 10th and final visit to Best Buy and picked up a new laptop.
To give you even more perspective as to how ridiculous this whole thing was: we bought the original laptop for $1,099 plus $200 for the service plan. Every time they repaired my laptop, they replaced the entire motherboard (which is one of the most expensive parts of a computer). Collectively they spent $1,839 just on parts for the repairs. The new laptop I received was $1,000. Taking into account shipping costs and the time spent by employees working on my laptop, they spent over $3,000 on getting my computer repaired!
I got the better end of the deal. My new laptop is a much better computer than what I had before! It's faster, has much more memory, more storage, better graphics, and comes with Vista.
The moral of the story isn't that you should buy your laptops from Best Buy, but that you should spend the money and get the service plan!
Here's a shot of my new laptop:
2 comments:
I like the way your new computer looks. Was that the "Geek Squad", with the cool looking cars that say Geek, that tried to fix your computer?
Yeah, that was the Geek Squad. The people in the store weren't the people who worked on my computers though. They always sent it out to some service center in California.
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