Best Buy and Geek Squad Took Our Computer and Ruined It

Computer Sent Off for Maintenance Work, Comes Back with Damaged Case and Never Gets Fixed

In 2004, my fiancee received a wonderful gift from her parents - a HP Pavilion zv5000 notebook with a three-year warranty from Best Buy and the Geek Squad.

It was a decent performer - it wasn't a cheap or inexpensive notebook by any stretch of the imagination.

That three-year extended warranty expired last month, and right on cue, this computer is going to have to be replaced soon. We got great use out of the warranty though, as the computer was sent off for several repairs, five of which were for exactly the same issue.

That's right - the same issue.

The issue stemmed, evidently, from a loose DC jack, but I also attribute it to a poorly designed case, poorly designed power adapters, and poorly trained Geek Squad geeks.

You see, after about four to eight weeks of usage, the DC jack would presumably become loose - we'd have to wrestle with the power cord to get the computer to charge, and at this point, the cord would start getting damaged. Then, we would take the computer into the Geek Squad office inside the Best Buy in North Little Rock, Ark., who would then send the computer off to a repair center in Kentucky for several weeks while it was "fixed."

They could not process two work orders simultaneously - as a result, to get a new AC adapter we had to wait until the computer came back from its repair. On at least one occasion this left us without an AC adapter for about two weeks. The computer has since gone through six cheap house-brand AC adapters and two HP adapters. That is about $800 worth of AC adapters per the price Geek Sqad quoted us for each one - thankfully, they picked up the tab.

One of the first times we got it back, my fiancee picked it up from the North Little Rock store. It was wrapped in plastic - she signed the paperwork and took the computer home. Later that day, she opened the plastic, and a large chunk of the front speaker grill casing, about 3 inches long, fell off. It had been broken during the repair and was deceptively positioned inside the plastic so that it would not be noticed at first glance.