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Raelyn Campbell is infuriated by the rudeness and dishonesty of Best Buy and their "Geek Squad".  (Source: MSNBC)
Frustrated with what she sees as incompetence of Best Buy "Geek Squad" staffers who admittedly lost her computer, one woman files a whopper of a suit

The saga of one crazy suit began with Best Buy customer Raelyn Campbell's purchase of a laptop computer from a local Best Buy store in the D.C. area.  A Best Buy staffer talked her into buying a $300 extended warranty.  The warranty includes coverage by Best Buy's service technicians -- "Geek Squad" -- for three years, and replacements of defective hardware free of charge.

Her laptop indeed experienced hardware malfunctions within a year when her on/off switch broke.  At that point, Campbell breathed a sigh of relief that she purchased the warranty and took her laptop in to Best Buy.  She turned in her laptop in May and was told that it would be up and running within two to six weeks.  This was a major inconvenience to her, as she was a frequent business traveler, but she figured she just should stay optimistic that it came as soon as possible.

In July an 'Agent David Goodfellow’ told Campbell that the laptop would be "ready within days".  A call several days later informed her that the laptop was not ready, and was in fact still at the repair center.  The rest of the month concluded with continued assurances that it was going to leave the repair center in no time.

By August, she returned from a business trip to Asia and still had heard no new word from Best Buy. Feeling concerned she called the store and asked to speak to the manager.  She was told the manager was in a meeting, so she left a message.  Her phone call was never returned.  She eventually tried calling again and another employee 'Cicero' listened to her story and searched the store records, and informed her that he discovered that "[The laptop] never appears to have left the store."

A few days later he called her back and informed her that it appeared that the laptop was lost in store, without ever having been shipped out.  While Campbell says that 'Cicero' was considerate and helpful, she was extremely angry that the other store employees had been apparently outright lying to her. 

While 'Cicero' promised that he'd try to get the store to compensate her, nothing happened.  After weeks of calling, Campbell was finally informed that she could accept a $900 dollar gift card, far less than the $1,100 she paid for the laptop and $300 she paid for the warranty.  Angered and insulted, she wrote a frustrated letter to Best Buy's management detailing the situation, on August 24.   She rejected the offer and demanded $2,100 in cash.

Best Buy outright refused her demands and she heard nothing from them by October.  So Campbell told her friends and family members to write Best Buy and complain.  Her friends did and received a surprising response from the store's general manager, Robert Delissio in the form of a surly email.  In the email Delissio stated, "For every customer that has had an unpleasant experience I can show you hundreds who have had a great experience. I have been in retail for a long time and the one conclusion I have come to is that not every customer can be satisfied.  Does my store have opportunities? Absolutely! What I can say is that we strive to deliver the experience that every customer deserves to receive."

Further infuriated, Campbell contacted the Washington, D.C., attorney general's office, who contacted the store.  The store caved a bit and offered her an increased offer of $1,100 credit refund and a $500 gift card.

That's when Campbell discovered that her identity could be at risk due to private documents she stored on the computer.  Shocked and infuriated with Best Buy's lack of helpfulness, she found a lawyer and filed a $54 million dollar lawsuit against Best Buy for losing her property and opening her to identity theft.

Best Buy has since upped their offer to Campbell to $2,500 cash if she signed a confidentiality agreement.  Campbell refused.  She says she realizes she probably won't win a multi-million dollar settlement, but she does want substantial damages for store negligence and an honest "explanation as to how my computer could have been stolen from a secure area" within the store.  She also demands a company promise that they will institute training for their employees on identity theft issues.

Campbell admitted a major goal of the suit is to draw attention, to what she feel is atrocious customer service.  Campbell strongly believes in this role as a legal champion, stating, "I can't help but wonder how many other people have had their computer stolen (or) lost by Best Buy and then been bullied into accepting lowball compensation offers for replacement expenses and no compensation for identity theft protection expenses."

Best Buy's legal representatives have refused to comment on the case.


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2 to 6 weeks??
By Desslok on 2/13/2008 11:50:35 AM , Rating: 3
Is this a normal downtime for a broken on/off switch???




RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 2/13/2008 11:51:42 AM , Rating: 5
Yeah, that should have raised a red flag there. What a crock of ****


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By DamnBrit520 on 2/13/2008 12:15:57 PM , Rating: 5
I used to work at a Best Buy... it shouldn't take that long to fix obviously but you're forgetting that they can't fix anything "hardware" in the store so they had to ship it to the service center where it goes into the queue of laptops to be fixed. Add that all together and you see why: 1. It's a long time and 2. It's very variable and 3. The store 'squad guys only saw it packaged up for shipment and then never saw it again.

So the 'squad not having a clue doesn't surprise me, what surprises me about this story is the store manager... in my experience the 3 store managers I had would have been freaked out that they lost a customer's laptop and would have given her a new one just to keep her from reporting that to the Better Business Bureau. Services, like Geeksquad, were/are the major growth area so bad rep. is a serious problem.

Anyways my $.02


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By AlvinCool on 2/13/2008 12:23:56 PM , Rating: 5
Yeah it's hard for me to think that a company as big as best buy wouldn't have just given her a new laptop and a real apology. At the very least they should do that now along with other perks including allowing her to personally fire the manager that spoke to her like that. You know she could do it like Donald Trump.

I've got side customers and some have tried the geek squad. But later they called me back and are willing to wait for good service. I didn't understand it till now. I mean I don't have a car that drops from the sky or anything fancy like that, but I really fix their problems and care about their business data.


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By fic2 on 2/13/2008 1:51:19 PM , Rating: 5
A friend of mine does windows admin consulting. He said that geek squad is his best advertisement. He has had some clients go there and they always come back at which point he raises that clients rate since he has to fix the problems the geek squad created.


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By marsbound2024 on 2/13/2008 3:16:45 PM , Rating: 5
I work at Best Buy in the Geek Squad myself. I can completely agree with what you are saying. To be honest, the service center has caused me numerous frustrations and I have told my leadership about it time and time again. If this incident happened at our location, I would EASILY see that my managers would quickly have given her a replacement laptop and we would have just eaten that cost. The store manager at that location should flat out be fired. What a horrible manager. The guy obviously doesn't respect the customers that enter his store and spend their hard-earned money on products and Best Buy services. If I saw the guy, I'd easily tell him that his location was one of who knows how many stores (maybe not many, maybe quite a few) that are responsible for utterly destroying Best Buy's reputation.

Nonetheless, if the same incident happened at my location without proper interference and handling by my managers, I would just quit. Why would I want to work in an environment where my leadership was out of touch with the importance of our customer-base?

Anyways, unless there are some serious changes within the hierarchy of Geek Squad (precincts, service centers, leadership), I think these issues will continue to present themselves.


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By exanimas on 2/15/2008 3:36:01 PM , Rating: 2
I hear you. I also work at Geek Squad and the service centers are ridiculous. The worst part is, nothing is going to change. The big shots that make the decisions like what 3rd party companies should we use as service centers don't have to deal with it when an honest customer who bought a service plan gets their computer sent back DOA 3 times in a row. Who does? We do. The people using this job as a way to make money for college earning under $20/hour.

The more stories I hear about other Best Buys and their employees, the more I think that the store I work in is an exception. We've gave this one customer a new laptop after the service center damaged theirs and sent it back, and it didn't take months of the customer's time/energy. I saw the damage, reported it to a manager, and he told me to take care of the guy. That's the way things should be.

I guess most of you are right though, big corporations will keep doing this kind of thing because there's enough people out there that will put up with this BS and continue to go to places like these.

Oh, and about the article, this lady is nuts asking for $54M for a lost laptop and her troubles. I'll agree to the $2100 she asked at one point ($1100 laptop + $300 service plan +$700 for her troubles), but asking for that much money is a waste of time for the people in our legal system. People that file such frivolous law suits should be fined for being so stupid. /therapysession


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By spluurfg on 2/18/2008 6:32:15 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
The big shots that make the decisions like what 3rd party companies should we use as service centers don't have to deal with it when an honest customer who bought a service plan gets their computer sent back DOA 3 times in a row. Who does? We do.


Ask yourself this -- does the manager who decides which services centers you use get a bonus or any form of incentive depending on how well those service centers perform? Probably not. They probably get a bonus if they cut costs. In my experience, it doesn't seem like these sorts of problems in any company will ever get sorted out unless it affects the relevant decision makers' bottom line. Think about the parking wardens in Westminster. They are the most god-darn efficient SOB's on the planet, because they get a commission for every ticket they write.


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By Darkefire on 2/18/2008 9:17:55 PM , Rating: 2
$54 million does sound rather ridiculous, but she isn't actually intending to win this lawsuit. Best Buy essentially gave her the runaround, lied to her at every turn, cost her who knows how many productive hours (most people in business are joined at the hip with their laptops), was flat-out rude when she complained, and then finally offered her a pittance as some sort of retarded consolation prize. The logical thing to do in this case is call the BBB (which I assume she did), and then sue. And if you want to make a point, really hit them where it hurts, you make as big a stink as possible. A $54M lawsuit does the trick nicely. This way lots of news outlets pick up the story, and everybody that looks at the newslink thinking, as I did, "Oh, let's look at the stupid redneck trying to squeeze a paycheck out of big business," will instead get a story about how Best Buy is a pack of crooks in blue shirts.

Now she has the benefit of not only damaging their image as a reputable service center (and thus hurting their bottom line), but they're going to start throwing money at her to make this go away the longer it drags out. Extended warranties are Best Buy's big money-makers, and since practically everyone who reads the story will qualify as a lost sale, they stand to lose a bundle. That's a win-win in my book, and while I wish it didn't have to clog up the court system in the process, it is at heart not frivolous. Just my take on it.


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By Proteusza on 2/13/2008 12:06:53 PM , Rating: 4
I was gonna say! Remind me never to buy an extended warranty - look at what it got her. 2-6 weeks for any repair is just too much. For $300 I would expect priority repairs, completed within 1 week.


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By encryptkeeper on 2/13/2008 12:20:01 PM , Rating: 2
The problem is Best Buy doesn't fix laptops in the individual stores. They always have to be sent off, put in a queue in some other location 5 or 6 states away. Best Buy spends the money to employ these guys, so why not just fix them on a store level instead of risking losing someone's machine?


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By encryptkeeper on 2/13/2008 12:43:44 PM , Rating: 2
I have just been corrected. It was actually 3 weeks.

This doesn't change the fact that the best way to avoid a situation like this is to remove any personal info from a computer when you take it in to be serviced. You wouldn't leave your wallet or purse inside your car when you take it in to have the oil changed would you?


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By MAIA on 2/13/2008 12:58:50 PM , Rating: 3
That's true ... but please enlighten me: Can you disconnect an hard drive from a laptop as easilly as taking your purse from inside your car ?

or

You really have to backup and erase all personal info before sending a laptop to fix a power button ? ... and i think, what if the button just broke and the damn thing could be switched on ?


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By Wightout on 2/13/2008 1:35:30 PM , Rating: 2
I know a few guys at Circuit City who would spend breaks going thru peoples computers that were in for repairs.

If they found any "content" they liked or wanted they would burn it for themselves.

It is about as creepy as going down and getting your film developed. Someone else was seeing all of your photos and family moments.

These companies either need to warn customers about person information being lost or manipulated with or impose a rather strict penalty for any employee caught doing such a thing.


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By aharris on 2/13/2008 3:05:53 PM , Rating: 2
When I used to work for Geek Squad, I'd always offer to remove the hard drive of a computer for a client before we'd send it off. If you know what you're doing, it can take less than 2 minutes to remove, and sometimes the repair center would tie the issue back to a software problem, in which case they'd wipe/reload the drive to provide the fix. Best Buy wasn't as bad with the wiping as manufacturers' repair centers, but it still happens.

Sucks for the customer - I don't think $54mil is justifiable, but she should receive some serious compensation for the whole ordeal.


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By borismkv on 2/13/2008 5:05:14 PM , Rating: 2
Depends on the laptop. Sometimes it's easier, sometimes it's like pulling teeth.

That said, small computer shops are often a lot better at handling personal information than a giant like Best Buy/Geeksquad, simply because one screwup can lead to bankruptcy. But then, maybe that's just my own experience from working in those shops for half my life.


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By HighWing on 2/15/2008 11:37:02 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Best Buy spends the money to employ these guys, so why not just fix them on a store level instead of risking losing someone's machine?


I'm guessing you haven't actually worked on a laptop before. fixing a laptop is not exactly the same as fixing a desktop. Almost all desktops come apart the same way. You pull the case off and you now have access to everything inside the computer. However, pulling the case of a laptop can vary from brand to brand and even model to model. On top of that, the process of then getting to certain parts of the laptop still involves more work depending on the laptop. Finally, one wrong move, or too much pressure can cause more damage to the laptop. That reason alone, for a big business like Best Buy, you want to make sure the person working on a laptop is trained to work on laptops. Which is where the repair centers come in place. It's cheaper to just make a central location to ship all store repairs to then to train and staff a person on site. Granted I don't agree with that, but thats the way things work.


RE: 2 to 6 weeks??
By soxfan on 2/14/2008 7:59:37 AM , Rating: 2
extended warrantys on electronics are rarely worth the $$. There are stats out there showing that electronic devices are most likely to either a) operate for their expected lifetime, or b) crap out in the first year (which is usually covered under the std warranty).