Geek Squad Charges $415 to replace a harddrive, doesnt retrieve data.

[gunslinger]

The thing is the big shops like best buy and staples don't make their money from fixing computers they make their money by pushing hardware upgrades and norton/mcafee.

 

[dracken]

The thing is the big shops like best buy and staples don't make their money from fixing computers they make their money by pushing hardware upgrades and norton/mcafee.

True, as long as they are truthful about it. Sometimes it is cheaper to buy a new machine. As long as they tell you up front about a minimum charge I don't have a problem with that, even if it is a simple fix.

 

[nonchalant]

I did a job recently and was told by the customer she didnt like the last guy she had out as he'd charged her $150. I quoted $125 to take it away, format and reinstall, return, and setup on-site. When I asked what the last guy did for $150 she said "he didnt do anything apart from look at it and tell her she needed to format and reinstall..herself..

Oh and she also mentioned the guy was from Geeks are Us or something..(perhaps she meant geek squad?)

 

[cmonova]

Reload

Worse case scenerio if we do a reload we charge $170. That is for the reload, windows updates, virus software, spyware software etc. Plus, we save their data.
And actually we are one of the lowest priced in the area.

 

[tartis]

On-Site residential service $75 per hour with a $75 minimum charge. Commercial On-Site $90 per hour with a $90 minimum charge. No time to wait, pickup and drop service for $35 plus labor.

 

[SandTech]

On-Site residential service $75 per hour with a $75 minimum charge. Commercial On-Site $90 per hour with a $90 minimum charge. No time to wait, pickup and drop service for $35 plus labor.

You need to set up distance regulation into your pricing.
Specially with a truck like your. 30miles away wont make you much $$

 

[Cybjun]

lather, rinse & repeat

I had a customer in yesterday with this same situation as the guy in this article but $620~ on a desktop with a failed hard drive. They couldnt get any data, installed a 1tb hard drive to replace a 320gb drive for a grandmother that didnt even own a digital camera or an ipod. She did have lots of documents for a local charity that she volunteers for.

She brought the PC to my shop because a neighbor recommended me to her. All she wanted was to have her email setup in outlook again but she started telling me about this repair. I asked her to bring in her reported failed drive, I didnt even need to use data recovery software to access it got all her data.

After getting all the data she just had me redo all the work that Best buy had done, loaded windows on a new drive I sold her (320gb because that was more then she needed) place all her document back to the original locations, setup her outlook & even restored her wallpaper to boot for less then half what Best Buy charged. I had everything done within 1 day what took best buy 5 days to do. she picked up the computer right before I closed today.

I was actually going over to Best Buy to pickup a movie after I got of work and ran into here in the customer service line. (I was able to help her get a full refund) Its was kinda hard for them to question my repair considering I actually trained the stores service manager back when I worked for BBY. needless to say I have a new customer for life

 

[Jonathan]

Nothing Geek Squad does (or fails to do) ever surprises me. They are sales people first, techs second.