Geek Squad Repair Time

[Hebe Newnam]

I want to share my experience regarding latest visit to best buy's geek squad ( NY 5th Ave ) vs Apple store ( NY 5th Ave) . I had very low volume issue on my iphone 6s and was not able to hear anything while making calls . Whereas it was working absolutely fine with headphones / Loud speaker . So i scheduled nearest apple support store visit which was best buy's geek squad . The lady was so casual and she ran diagnostic in my phone and said receiver is faulty and we need to replace it and it will cost 99$ + taxes . it would take 2 hours . She also restored all my settings. I was not satisfied so i scheduled another visit to Apple store this time . The guy in store ran same diagnostic and said sir something wrong in it but i would like to clean it properly and give a shot . He also said if the receiver is faulty we will replace it in 59$ + taxes . He went inside ,cleaned it properly and Bingo ,the phone's volume was working fine . It costs me nothing for assistance and i was pretty happy.

Past that GeekSquad is a scam, they enforce a 3 hr repair time for any fix, so if you computer was unplugged and that was the problem you will be charged for 3 hrs of labor. They are an Apple Authorized Repair center, and there are 100 others in NYC, they are an alternative to Apple if you don't have an Apple Store near you or you just want another provider to assist you, but Apple did not outsource anyone in lieu of their own support.

In all fairness to GS, or at least the techs, not all stores are this bad, nor was it always like this. I worked for the 'Buy for 4+ years, originally hired on with GS part-time with the promise of a FT position. After 8 months I was forced to a FT position on the sales floor, only to see 3 people hired on FT at GS without an offer to me.

Mostly true. When I was there you could go Part-time, Full-time, Senior, Supe. Managers typically were not from GS, and the GS sup often came from another department. Senior was about the highest GS position, and that was just one of the 2 full-time employees.

They do this. NBC did a segments on local computer repair places while I was working at GS, and GS came out looking really bad. I believe what they did was loosen an IDE cable on a hard drive and then bring it to 5-10 local places. Only one got it right and charged nothing. I think GS just did Diag, HDD replacement and Backup for like $300.

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You get a text message or email that says you were or will be charged hundreds of dollars to renew your Geek Squad membership. If you want to dispute the charge or cancel your membership, the message says you must call a phone number within 24 hours.

Some scammers may ask for your bank account information to refund your money, then fake a transaction and make it look like they accidentally refunded you too much. To pay them back, they tell you to buy gift cards and give them the gift card numbers and PINs.

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I also, on my other phone, recieve daily, numerous emails to one of my main accounts, and they are email addressed with an email with my name but added to and it's no email address of mine. I will report them as spam first thing. I do not ever click on the words in the email. Which are always large words in bright sky blue highlighted color! I also recieve daily messages from these same 5 numbers. Just last 4 #s are changed up. I get 5 to up to 20 a day!. Same thing I report spam and then block number. But not able to stop these daily messages and emails!!! They continue daily. I do not understand how they are getting thru my blocks!!I've also recieved receiptsvfrom aGeek Squad and also Amazon. They would not allow me to cancel the large orders. Or the membership. I just didn't call back

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I didn't see anything about how to identify these messages as fraud. I had a GS contract, so at first I thought it was for real. Then I checked the sender's address and could see immediately it was not a valid Geek Squad address.

This happened to me last year. I did not lose anything to the scammers; but because they told me they took money from my bank, I became confused and rushed to my bank to stop payment on any withdrawal from them and it cost me $30. Actually, my bank scammed me also, because they did not tell me there would be a $30 bank charge to stop payment. I did not know that, but they should have told me anyway, instead of all of that cat and mouse smiling they do. Just a life lesson.

I get these email notices 2-3 times a year advising that my bank account is being charged for Geek Squad tech membership. I just ignore them but check my bank accounts for 2-4 weeks looking for any suspicious charges. So far, all clean.

why does the federal trade commission , with all their power and money, allow these 2 bit scammers to thrive and exist and continue to prosper to this day ? Take them all down and prosecute these thieves, DO IT NOW !!!

I have received two such emails. The first thanking me for my payment and the second telling me to activate their services. I ignored both knowing that I had never used nor requested anything from Geek Squad. Thanks for all the good info provided.

They hit me last year. Pretended they were calling from Amazon and wanted to put money back into my checking account. I believed it to be legit and followed along for a while. Then it hit me. Why would Amazon refund me money that I did not deserve. Immediately called my bank and even though it was Friday after hours someone did pick up. Went to the bank on Monday and told them what happened. She pulled up my checking and savings account numbers and handed me the printout. I knew immediately that they had gotten into the account since I don't usually keep that much money in checking -- $5,000. Had to close the accounts and reopen...even credit cards that were attached. What a nightmare.

Totally unrelated, we are in the aftermath of hurricane Ian and someone called from Comcast/Xfinity, remotely got into my computer - got suspicious and called Comcast. Advised what happened. The man I spoke with did not give me a yes or no as to whether the caller was legit. DON'T TRUST ANYONE IS NOW MY MOTO!

I received a email from Geek Squad with a authorization code for $349.99 from my account. I do have a Geek Squad account which alerted me to call their customer service because a just renewed my subscription a few months ago. Something wasn't right. Geek Squad was aware of these scams and asked me to report this to this website.

Just got one of these. I wasted 10 minutes trying to see if in fact I had signed for something like this with Bestbuy.I should have just Googled Geeksquad scam instead.
BTW I would think Bestbuy might want to make mention of these scams but who knows it might generate more of them than it swats down.

II have gottden several of these "notices" from scamers claming to be from GeekSquad. In your articles you give an link (REPORTFRAUD.FTC.GOV) report these attemts to scam us. I have tried several times to report these but get messages to "correct the email address".
Any suggestions?

The address www.ReportFraud.ftc.gov is a website where you can report fraud. When you see that in our blogs, click on the link and it will take you to the website where you can report. Or type www.ReportFraud.ftc.gov in the search bar of your computer and to the website. Thank you for reporting the scam attempts you see.

In February this year I suffered an over $3,000 loss to a fake Norton Antivirus company. They made transfers from my bank checking and savings accounts to various people. This was going on while I was on a flight from AZ to CA as my daughter gave me a 75th birthday party. I called and reported it to the bank then when I got back home I went into the bank and spoke with the bank manager. He told me I ok'd the transfers (?) and I was held responsible. Later someone advised me to call the Attorney General's office, I did and they sent me a senior tool kit regarding scammers, also I could have actually recovered the loss had I acted right away and had that information.

I just got one of these Geek Squad emails today! I get emailed PDF invoices all day for work so I didn't think about it at first and opened the PDF file. But when I saw it was from "Geek Squad" I forwarded it to my husband and asked him if we actually owed it. He showed me later that the email address it was sent from was gmail- not what Best Buy would actually use. Could I have gotten a virus from opening the PDF file?

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