Computer sprawl at Geek Squad City

A "secret agent" works on repairing a laptop at Geek Squad City, the company's giant facility near Louisville.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

BROOKS, Ky.--At Geek Squad City, it's no accident that everywhere you look are well-groomed young people in dark pants, white shirts, and narrow black ties.

Since its founding by Robert Stephens in Minnesota in 1994, Geek Squad has always been run on a very stylized kind-of-Mormon-missionary, kind-of-G-Men motif. That's why my host for a tour of the Geek Squad City facilities was Anthony Hadfield, who bears the job title "deputy director for counterintelligence."

I've come to the well-known computer repair company's giant facility just south of Louisville as part of Road Trip 2008.

Employees' cute job titles aside, Geek Squad City is an extremely impressive operation. More than 700 technicians work in two shifts from 5 a.m. until midnight to take the more than 3,000 computers a day that stream in from nationwide Best Buy locations (Best Buy bought Geek Squad several years ago), turn them around in a single day, and then get them back to their owners within a week.

Geek Squad City is organized with a municipal theme: the giant repair warehouse is called "downtown," its executive suite is known as the "city council" area, and within downtown, each aisle is called 1st Ave., 2nd Ave., and so on.

While Geek Squad is headquartered in Minnesota, the Geek Squad City facility is located here because it's just a few miles away from Louisville, where UPS has its world distribution center. That makes it possible for Geek Squad to expedite the receiving and then return shipping of the thousands of computers that come in each week, with the first machines arriving at 5 a.m., and the last ones going out at 9:30 p.m.

These racks are used to sort--by brand--laptops for delivery to technicians who will attempt to repair them within a day.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

According to Hadfield, what really differentiates Geek Squad City from other computer repair facilities is its parts center, which stocks a $7 million supply of everything needed to fix just about any computer model that comes in. It uses a specialized delivery system--which I wasn't allowed to photograph--and the goal is to get technicians' parts orders to them within 15 minutes.

On each "avenue" of downtown, you see rack after rack after rack, known as "bread racks," of laptops, sorted by brand, just waiting to be repaired by the white-shirted so-called secret agent repairmen and women. In fact, each aisle, or avenue, is divided by brand of computer, and each technician specializes in one brand or another.

Hadfield said the most common repair needs are broken DC jacks and hard drives.

"The more you move (a laptop), the more problems you can possibly have," Hadfield said, "and the better the chance of error."

The "downtown" area of Geek Squad City is organized with a municipal motif. For example, the executive suite is known as the "city council" section and the manager who runs the facility is the "mayor."

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

Once a computer is fixed, it is loaded onto one of several conveyor belts, which all merge with a single larger belt that carries the machines into the shipping department.

There, workers take special boxes, load the computers into them, and pop on a UPS mailing label. Within minutes, the machines are in a stack of completely indistinguishable brown packages, all of which are expected back in the hands of their owners within a couple of days.

One thing Geek Squad agents do that's probably well-appreciated by computer owners is include a sheet of paper that explains exactly what was wrong with the machines and what the technicians did to fix them.

"They really want to know what happened and why they had to be without" their computer, Hadfield said. "So we explain, 'Your hard drive was replaced.' Or 'your motherboard was replaced,' and what that means so that they can prevent it" in the future.

In Geek Squad City's shipping department, an "agent" stacks laptops that have been repaired and boxed and are now about to be sent back to their owners.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

[thundermustard]

Everytime I have ever bought anything from Best Buy, they try and get me to buy the extended warranty. Their pitch is that if anything goes wrong, bring it in and I get a NEW one. Not that it would be sent out to Ky. So when I bought an iPod 13 months ago I sprang for the extended warranty.
Took it in for a dead battery and they said I had to leave it for service. I explained that I had been told I would get a new one. No dice, had to leave it.
Went over and bought a new iPod cause I was leaving on 10 day road trip. The salesman gave me the same line, buy a warranty and they will give me a NEW one if anything goes wrong.
Lied to again by Best Buy.
Wrote the BBB and Best Buy sent me a $60 gift card (the cost of the original warranty)
Oh by the way, they didn't fix my iPod, it dies after a night of being off, so it is gone again.
Be smart, buy with a credit card that extends your warranty by one year for free.

[Xiibo]

Not to be a fanboy or a troll, but if you would have bought your iPod from Apple with the extended Apple warranty (via a store or the intenet) or even bought the extended Apple warranty after you purchased the iPod, Apple does ship a brand new iPod after a defect is found. I did this myself when the hard drive failed in mine. Got a brand new one in the mail in 5 days.

Best Buys warranties ahve always been trouble. They push their employees to sell them because it has an extremely high profit margin. They'll look for every possible way to not perform the work you paid for.

[thundermustard]

I agree wholeheartedly Xlibo.
I fell for their lies and I just wanted to let others know they lied a year ago and they lied last week.
Almost every credit card extends the warranty for up to a year. Buy from anyone, use your credit card and if it breaks within 24 months great, if not then buy a new one.
Don't buy Best Buy's PSP's. They suck.
As I mentioned they replaced the battery within making sure it was good, it wasn't and I am going on three weeks without my iPod.

[vanillacokehead]

hmmm. wonder if the "agents" at the "city" use their USB keys to pilfer data from the computers like the field "agents" reportedly do.

[ChadS512]

I worked at Best Buy from 1997 to late 1998, so little over a year. There was no Geek Squad at my store at that time. Also, the first half of my employeement it was truely a fun place to work. They never pressured me to sale warranties( PSP, PRP) Although I still sold them because I thought they truely were a good deal,at that time, because they really did replace most items straight out of the store. Not computers and high dollar items of course. I was the week by week in the top 3 in warranty sales in the store. Well all that changed. We had on of our great Saturday morning meetings and management stated " We will start having Qoutas for warranties per week" they go on hinting around this: "and if that qouta is not met then you get a right up." Which i thought at the time was absurd. The qouta depended on your department. But i did seen them range from 20-65 per person in a week. Which is alot to put on a relaxed employee. Meaning its alot easyer to help customers when you do not have the Devil in you head manager screaming "you better sale that 10 dollar PRP on that 25 dollar item!" Well I have moved on to WAY better things since that BS experience. What i would say is. When buying an item use common sense. If it is a $1500.00 computer and they want to sell you the 300 dollar warranty for 4-5 years then do it. But 300 dollar item and a 150 dollar warranty for 3 years ..then no. I still visit best buy from time to time but very rarely do i buy anything from there. I am not sure how they treat their employees now but remember that stereo you are buying may be that salesmans first or last write up! lol Have a great day!

[minonda]

The lesson here is, don't buy from Best Buy. I don't have an extended-warranty horror story to tell, but I do have the experience of spending about $3000 at Best Buy over a period of 3 months, and finding that once they had my money they didn't care whether I was a satisfied customer or not. That was in 2006, and I have never bought another thing from them since. I make sure to tell anyone who mentions them that Best Buy is the devil, and doesn't care about its customers. The place doesn't deserve to be in business. I get all my stuff from New Egg now.

[palavering]

I have had two HP laptops over a few years go bad. I had purchased extended warranties, so I returned them to Best Buy. The first one was sent out and returned unrepaired by HP (not the geek squad). When it returned again unrepaired, they let me choose a new laptop. A year later, the new laptop was sent out for a problem, and it took two tries before HP fixed it. Neither laptop was ever sent to the geek squad. So, Best Buy has treated me fairly. I just wish HP had a better service department. What about the geek squad? I think we can assume that they are simply parts' changers!

[thelemurking]

There are so many Geek Squad horror stories where they have lost laptops, charged insane rates for copying data from one hard drive to another and so on. Pretty much the only thing I buy from there is DVDs and that's even rare now. I am like minonda, it's all about New Egg! I have been 110% happy with them since I discovered them many years ago.

Seems every place is offering extended warranties, from Circuit City to Office Depot. The best is when they try to get you to buy a warranty plan for a CD, DVD or PS3 game.

[techtype]

I don't think there is a problem of warranty work or replacement, that a person has to think, "So much for the warranty over a three or four year warrant is going to cost me so much." say $150.00 over a four year period on a $700.00 electronic item, divide that up over the four year period it comes to $37.50 a year. It doesn't sound like much, but think economy of scale. It adds up to big money for the appliance company because most electronics will out live the extended warranty. Also when dealing with any company, get what ever is said in writing. Dealt with a local appliance company once for an AC/DC 13 inch portable Color TV. Asked whether it came with a power pack and was assured that it did, but unfortunately they had run out of them and would I come next to pick it up, sure. But before I left I had the salesman write across the receipt, "Includes power pack" and left the store. Following week I went back to get my power pack and handed another salesman my receipt and asked for my power pack, he replied, "But it doesn't come with a power pack!!!" The other salesman that had originally wrote up the order told the other salesman to go get me a power pack. Because he had heard me say that I would get hold of the State Attorney General and file a complaint with them, that I had it writing. I also told the sales person that if I took that route I would end up with the power pack and then some.

[pfletcher]

I wouldn't trust Geek Squad to feed next door's cat..... the only benefit they have over off-shoring to India is you can see them cringe when you yell at them for asking dumb questions

[maxikyd]

I also had a bad experience with the Geek Squad. I bought the extended warrantee on an eMachine laptop and it began to have the overheating problem that plagued so many eMachines laptop. Took it in for repair, and they had to "send it off" to the main repair facility. When the machine was returned to me, it rattled and didn't work at all. I called the store and they said to "bring it in" roughly 260 miles away. When I finally did make it back to the store, they voided my warrantee, refunded the remainder of the extended warrantee, and left me with a dead laptop.

They get away with this sort of treatment, because no one wants to complain to a faceless corporation and we ASSUME that we're the only one being treated in such a manner; we also ASSUME that we must somehow deserve this treatment.

I repair electronics myself, but up until this point had shied away from laptops. As the writer from Minnesota said, NEWEGG ROCKS. Ultimately, I purchased repair parts from Newegg and Ebay, and repaired my laptop myself.

I do not recomend GS repairs. One of my customers came in with a 'dead hard drive' in their tower that needed replaced. All it really needed was a complete system restore. GS just wanted to make another sale.

My recommendation, find a local repair person whom you trust, and who stands behind the work performed, and stick with them.

[JohnMcGrew]

The reality is that most of the items found at your big-box electronics places (Best Buy, Curcuit City, etc) are sold at near cost. The profit is almost entirely made from selling the "extended warranties", hence the pressure put on the sales people. From a purely economic standpoint, it does not make sense to spend 10% or more for warranties on items that depriciate as quckly as consumer electronics do. By the time your $700 e-machine craps out, it's only worth $100 anyway. If the stories are accurate, they rarely "replace" the item. What you get back is a repaired $100 computer that is likely to crap out again. Save the money and spend it on the next replacement.

[magnoliablosssom]

I would not but anything from Best Buy. I have never bought anything at this point, and do not planned to in the future. One of my experiences with them was over a computer case. I had found one I liked. There was no price on it so I ask one of the employees the price. He left and came with the price. I then went to checkout and was told that it was actually double what he told me. It turns out he gave me their cost. The point of this is the he should have been sure of the cost before telling me.

[Vidal Avila]

best buy employees dont get discounts on computers...especially 50 percent...you simply posted a comment to make best buy look bad

[i_made_this]

I love BestBuy! They have the best price in town on new release DVD's - some days, when they have even THREE new titles I want, I'll give them upwards of $15 for a sale - I kid you not - I trust them with three new release DVD's others are selluing for over $60 at $15. So, what is this Geek Squard thing? You mean they sell pc's and laptops? Holy smoke, ain't that the limit. Online at Systemax for me - they own other brands like TigerDirect, CompUSA, Ultra and so forth. All I know is it's fun working with them - I customize my rig, study their sites and put in the order online if my custom requirements match an available set-up - if not, I phone them to handle it and they're happy to do so. They'll put your rig together dirt cheaper with better quality parts than the OEM's or the OEM salesforce at BestBuy and Walmart, but they're at their best when not dealing with a BestBuy type of system buyer. You thinking of buying that AMD Quad Core 9850 with Dual Crossfire 3870's or that Intel Extreme Duo or Quad Core 9000 series CPU with Dual SLI 8000 or 9000 series GPU's? Don't buy it. Get a quote from a Systemax tech first - you could be very surprised. But the real fun starts post-sale with them - you'll find no fairer OEM and they all speak American, in the bargain baby!

[templetonrl]

Went to Best Buy with a copy of their internet ad for a computer. They could not pull the same ad from the internet in the store so they refused to honor the price. Months later Best Buy got in trouble for having a special internet set up JUST for the stores, ONE THAT WOULD NOT PULL UP THE PRICES ON THE REGULAR INTERNET, SO THEY DID NOT HAVE TO MATCH THEM! They are crooks!

[compudoc318]

I own a small cpu repair company in a large city with tons of geek squads. They drive so much business my way with their inflated prices. And at least a few times a week, i get machines they couldnt fix, and i fix them with no problems!! Thanks geek squad for your inferior service and terrible prices!! By the way, is it possible to take a cpu there without them demanding you need to buy spysweeper and trend micro....lol....what a joke.

[mulberrybush]

They don't even have cubes and most don't even have chairs. *** is up with that?

[Marlio]

Well I took my computer back to Best buy to be repaired, after the 3 year warranty expired.
They put two new drives in it, which took two weeks, and I brought it home.
After one month it crashed again so I took it to a local computer repair shop, and the problem was a power supply and they needed to clean it up.

So I decided while it was in there, to have the motherboard switched out for a 64 bit and to oput more ram in it and a new processor. Money will be worth even less, 7 months from now, so will probably be glad you did it....I bought a compaq x computer but play alot of mmorph games and download a lot of music... But next time, I think I will just buy another Gateway computer....

[OldDogEyes]

User "minonda" is right -- don't buy from "worst" buy... First off, they seldom have the top sku's of any line .. take their TV's ... always the middle sku's, never the high-end models. Works for them as most of the folks who shop @ "worst" buy aren't very sophisticated ... Oh, and if you do buy from them, take the time to recognize the difference between a "Product Replacement Plan" and a "Product Service Plan" ... One replaces, the other fixes.

[vashthebest]

I purchased a Gateway laptop from Best Buy and also got the extended warranty. One year later, my disc drive stops working. So I take it to Best Buy and they direct me to the Geek Squad kiosk. I give them all my information and tell them whats wrong with my laptop. They said that they were going to have to send it in for repairs. Three weeks later still no laptop. I go to Best Buy and they said it got damaged in shipping so they had to send it back. This happened six other consecutive times with the same laptop. Four months later, I get my laptop back. In the end they ended up having to replace the motherboard, the LCD screen, the hard drive, the disc drive, and the track pad. All from minor damage during shipping. All my data was erased from my laptop. I asked them about that and they said that all my data was on a set of discs at the repair center and that they would call me after they received them. I never got a call. The customer service was absolutely terrible and it took four months to fix something that should have taken 1 to 2 weeks. I am extremely dissapointed and will for sure not get the warranty again. I do not recomend it to anyone.

[Composer_1777]

Geek squad is a rip-off company, exploiting the average computer user.

[geeksquad1215]

you people need to just calm down what you think best buy is burgerking you can have it your way. i dont thik so if you didnt surf porn your pc wouldnt break down and click on every link that pop up you wouldnt have problems.