Geeksquad!

[darkblade1.livejournal.com]

You know those geek squad guys...


"Were just going to wipe out your hard drive, all fixed!"

Yes..you know them. Where the customer gets home and calls me up saying their internet doesn't work, and lo and behold they have no drivers! Since I'm the help desk for internet, I'm magically suppose to have those necessary drivers!

Anybody know how much they pay those people? I mean honestly, if I wiped hard drives all day then I would love to get out of help desk and avoid all of this stress. :/


I might get flamed for the question, but it's more of a rant against them.

Comments

[inahandbasket]

Geeksquad used to be the shiznit.
Now they're owned by best-buy.
I used to recommend them, now I tell people to avoid them like the plague.

[tth.livejournal.com]

I work for a help desk that services a fortune 50 company. I am fortunately or should say unfortunately the training coordinator for the desk. We have had two new hires in the last eight months who use to work for the G Squad. One was fired for being incompetent, rude, and generally a terrible worker. The other one freaked out and decided that computes was no longer her forte, or communicating with humans.

When they were not part of the big box electronics chain they had standards and paid very well. They now at least in my area they are only paid standard retail.

[darkblade1.livejournal.com]

I think I'm pretty much dedicated to computers for life. There's just something about them which is just...love.

[linguafranca.livejournal.com]

My husband just started a job as a Geek Squad geek. He says that they're required to install drivers before marking a customer's computer as done. Some people are just incompetent.

[darkblade1.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, it seems to be only this one office location down south. We'll say it's close to the border of Mexico. I'm just looking for something else that might be able to pay me more than $14 an hour. This helldesk is way too stressful. Not that another job won't...but this one, sucks. I haven't had a raise in...forever.

[jecook]

Speaking from all sides of the IT fence (corporate support, retail suppor,t and being the end user):

That person had an incompetent technician. Unfortunately, if the earlier comments above are correct, that's all that they are paying for, apparently.

[greeklady.livejournal.com]

Don't know how the geek squad works. I just know they are assholes on the freeway. (driving style)

I just know I don't ever want to go to someones home where you don't know what the hell they are putting on their machines. I rather stay in a corporate environment for desktop support. At least you have hardware and software standards and you can slap people when they download bs.

[swwinchester.livejournal.com]

As a former Geek Squad operative who's still in touch with a current Geek Squad field agent ...

A : They pay is dick. Seriously. I've made more installing carpet than I did as a tech with them (They started me at $8 an hour, and while I ended at $13 odd, I started at $14 an hour for the laying of carpet ... BEFORE that job).

B : The customers suck ass ... but we all knew that.

C : The technical standards are NONEXISTANT outside of certain groups. You walk in, answer a few questions about RAM, and you're a tech. No required certifications or anything.

Now then. With that said, there's next-to-no QC on the Geek Squad Hires at Store Level (The QC is far superior at the higher levels or in 'pre-Best-Buy markets' - in the markets where your Geek Squad is IN a Best Buy Store ... Your Geek Squad WAS the Best Buy Techs there, and that's always been hit or miss).

So yeah. Geek Squad, except for a VERY limited set of Markets (Minneapolis, San Diego) is to be avoided, by and large, unless you personally know the field agents / store agents.

[kalium.livejournal.com]

No required certifications or anything.

Since when is a cert worth a lot? I've got a few, and I know exactly how much they're worth: next to nothing.

[swwinchester.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* Let me put it this way : A cert's worth something when it can actually get you in the door.

Techs and wannabes know Certs mean dick about a person's abilities.
Managment Drones, however, don't know this ... they think cert = knowledge - and they're the ones you have to impress to get HIRED.

*flatly* I wouldn't be stuck working as a Pharmacy Technician counting pills to pay my rent if I had a cert - no one else locally will hire me on for anything without at least A+.

[kalium.livejournal.com]

I guess that makes me lucky. Where I work (University of Michigan), my boss is a technical guy. Management is his problem.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

ha!

i was in the middle of fixing a comp for a friend at a company. a friend of the boss knew someone who worked at geek squad, and he came over as i was in the middle of it. i explained everything i had done, and all the symptoms. he left to go get a cig and never came back.

later the friend told me that he had walked out the door, said that i knew far more than he did and just left... lol

[swwinchester.livejournal.com]

In defense of the Squadder there - 90% of Geek Squad Agents qualify as "Entry Level Technicians". The other 10% are actually DAMN good, and you generally find one such tech per district.

They're (usually) Better than the end-user, but I'd say that 3/4 of this community's regulars would out-skill that 80% in a heartbeat, and at least this one knew when he ran into a superior tech on the job (as opposed to most of the blowhards I worked with who would still shoot thier mouths off).

[combat-taco.livejournal.com]

I work for a competing company, get paid three times as much :D

[residentgeek.livejournal.com]

GS charged a friend of my coworker's $300 to come out twice and try to reinstall Windows XP on the hard drive. She ended up with two copies of XP on her drive - one copy that wouldn't boot at all, and a second copy that was just the install, and nothing else. She finally brought it to me, I hosed the hard drive, installed a fresh copy of XP with her own disk, amd reinstalled all her stuff. I only charged her $40 because I felt so sorry for her.

I haven't heard any good reports about GS here, but they're basically the Best Buy techs that got converted. They tend to have outrageous pricing schemes and their quality of work has been pretty low. I hope they're better in other areas of the country, because around here they suck.