A reader works out a bit of frustration:
To reinforce their title of Scions of Entropy, one of the cats jumped on my laptop’s keyboard yesterday, jamming down the “p” key. This pretty much locked the whole thing up, as all the machine had CPU room for was typing a “p” every half-second or so. Of course I rebooted, then performed many other fruitless rituals over my computer. No luck. I even tried prying off the key and disassembling the rocker inside. I basically took the keypad all the way down to its printed chip, and it was still happily “p”ing all over my display, to the exclusion of all else.
So, I took my laptop to Best Buy to talk to the Geek Squad: Lug in the machine. Wait in line for 20 minutes. (Mind you, there was no line. Just me waiting behind the “Wait here” sign. About every 5 minutes or so, someone at the merchandise return window would lean over to tell me someone would be right with me. That person had no line either. He was just hangin’ around back there not going and looking for the Geek squad staff that would be helping me any minute now.) Finally, a technician shows up and takes a look at my machine, which was happily “p”ing on his counter. Breaks off stuff that wasn’t broken before. (The P key and the two little plastic components under it were already off, but I figured with any luck they could be snapped back into place. The Geeks at Best Buy ripped off the clear silicone pad that springs the key back up to a neutral position once you stop pressing it. That’s a piece that definitely won’t snap back into place. And I don’t have the piece any more. They just threw it on the floor, then looked to see if I was watching. I was.)
So, the Best Buy Geek has no idea how to fix anything. Says the present keyboard can’t be disabled. Says it’ll cost $200 to send the machine to Kentucky, where they’ll take 6-8 weeks to look at it, then they’ll call me with an estimate of how much additional cash and time it’ll take to fix it, if they even can. Or, I can buy a new $500-$1500 laptop, and they’ll ONLY charge me $110 to transfer the data from the old laptop to the new one. If they can figure out how to transfer the data without use of a keyboard, that is.
Oh yeah, and every last one of the non-apple machines that Best Buy sells has Windows 8 on it. Because NO ONE still sells Windows 7, they say. You just can’t get it anywhere, they say. So you have to use the much, much crappier Win 8 interface, they say.
Compare that to Computer Revolution (formerly Computer Renaissance): I took my laptop over to them the next morning. In about 5 minutes, they unhooked the built-in keyboard so I can take it home and plug in a peripheral, and they ordered me a new keyboard component. It should arrive in 5-7 days. Then I’ll bring the laptop back to them and they’ll put it in while I wait. Total bill: $79.00.
Oh, and guess what? They have computers for sale too, if your old one is just too far gone to salvage. And if you buy from Computer Revolution, they’ll very happily install Windows 7 on any machine you choose, if it doesn’t already have it installed, which the vast majority of theirs do.
Did I mention that I’m never going back to Best Buy for computer stuff ever again?
It’s impossible to know if the front line folks are poorly trained or are trained to simply deny the truths as noted here, but someone somewhere is lying in the interests of increasing revenues and (presumably) profits. Is this considered ethical by the Business Schools of our country?
Should it be?
