I worked at a geek squad "precinct" for a few months during 2005. The article is right in outlining the fact that GS agents don't receive much training AND that the service is expensive. However, I believe that GS does provide a valuable service. The majority of people reading this article probably have some sort of technical skill, be it programming or simply being able to burn a CD. A great deal of Best Buy customers do not even have these sort of skills. GS does a good job of taking care of customer's issues (for the most part). Yes, I think the services could be cheaper, but that's debatable.
During the months I worked for GS, I would say that 75% of the work I did was installing anti-virus/spyware software on new computers. Both of these are fairly trivial actions for a tech saavy person, but yet again the majority of GS customers don't know what settings to use, etc.
Geek Squad Value
I worked at a geek squad "precinct" for a few months during 2005. The article is right in outlining the fact that GS agents don't receive much training AND that the service is expensive. However, I believe that GS does provide a valuable service. The majority of people reading this article probably have some sort of technical skill, be it programming or simply being able to burn a CD. A great deal of Best Buy customers do not even have these sort of skills. GS does a good job of taking care of customer's issues (for the most part). Yes, I think the services could be cheaper, but that's debatable.
During the months I worked for GS, I would say that 75% of the work I did was installing anti-virus/spyware software on new computers. Both of these are fairly trivial actions for a tech saavy person, but yet again the majority of GS customers don't know what settings to use, etc.