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Posted: Mar 22 2010 04:00 pm

PUNTERS' WATCHDOG Consumerist magazine has hauled US electronics big box retailer Best Buy's Geek Squad over the coals for offering technically challenged consumers an allegedly bogus 3D service.

Apparently there is a Geek Squad package to hook up your new 3D TV and Blu-ray player and sync your 3D glasses as part of the set up.

While the connection hookup service seems fair enough, many are wondering what you might need to do to sync 3D glasses.

Apparently Geek Squad staff have received advanced technical training in the art of syncing 3D glasses.

When asked about what they do, one said that the glasses need to be synced with the Blu-ray player. The second claimed that the 3D glasses needing to sync to the player via the USB port within the glasses. Another said that you need to acquire the glasses' IP address to sync with the Blu-ray player.

Eh? Samsung battery powered glasses "sync" to the 3D content wirelessly via an infra-red pulse emitted by the TV. There are no USB ports in the glasses and they don't connect to the Internet, so there is no need for an IP address.

All we can think of is that the Geek Squad's 3D glasses "optimising" service means cleaning the lenses with nice soft piece of cloth.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 04:39 pm

the geek squad in general is a bogus service

Posted: Mar 22 2010 04:43 pm

username wrote:

the geek squad in general is a bogus service

Seconded.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 04:55 pm

Meh, fuck that.

I just bought a laptop from Best Buy and the guy tried to sell me an extended warranty. It was a 2-year warrenty for $150. The laptop I got only cost like $600. I told the guy no, and he got all snarky/condescending about it, telling me how sorry I'm gonna be. Sorry buddy, but I'm not paying 25% more for the fucking thing just for an extended warranty. If it dies in 3 years, I figure I got my money's worth anyway.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 05:03 pm

Funny you bring this up. My sis bought a computer from Best Buy, and got the whole warranty thing. Well, she brings it home from school for spring break, and the thing is totally almost nonfunctional--infected with spyware, McAfee won't update (I know it sucks, but her school forces all the students to use it), file associations all screwed up...in short, its a mess in spite of the house keeping I taught her how to do on it.

She and mom want to take it to GS. I refuse to let them because I know from painful experience they will take the computer, wipe the hard drive (without consulting her first), and claim they "did all they could."

Fuck that.

Instead, I spent all weekend meticulously cleaning the thing out (which involved much uninstalling and reinstalling of programs.) Still, the data is safe and I'm almost done. (For some reason, no matter how many times I cleanly uninstall and reinstall McAfee Virus Scan, it errors every time it tries to update. I have yet to figure out why, but once I do, I'm done.)

tl;dr: Fuck Geek Squad. If I want something fixed, I'll do it myself or send it back to the manufacturer if its a hardware issue. They don't touch my family's stuff.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 06:32 pm

Next thing they will try to sell is eyeball calibration for optimal enjoyment. Seriously until the tech advances enough that you can enjoy 3d movies without peripherals I find the whole home market for the technology kind of sparse. I remember in the late 90's, early 2000's high end video cards were coming with the 3D glasses etc...and for the most part it was one headache inducing experience and I can only imagine how much they are going to roll you at Best Buy for additional and replacement glasses, because you know damn well the set is only going to come with 2.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 07:06 pm

How about this great service? For only 130 dollars, we will plug in your game system!

Posted: Mar 22 2010 07:10 pm

Holy shit, you have to be kidding me.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 07:43 pm

Berserk007 wrote:

Next thing they will try to sell is eyeball calibration for optimal enjoyment. Seriously until the tech advances enough that you can enjoy 3d movies without peripherals I find the whole home market for the technology kind of sparse. I remember in the late 90's, early 2000's high end video cards were coming with the 3D glasses etc...and for the most part it was one headache inducing experience and I can only imagine how much they are going to roll you at Best Buy for additional and replacement glasses, because you know damn well the set is only going to come with 2.

I agree. Wearing the glasses in the theater for a 2 hour movie is one thing. But I can't see many people wanting to sit at home and watch the news with those things on.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 07:49 pm

Ash Burton wrote:

How about this great service? For only 130 dollars, we will plug in your game system!

now thats a good deal.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 07:57 pm

A few years ago my dad bought a decent HDTV from Best Buy. Before the guy let us take it off the shelf, though, he lectured us on why we should spend $100 to have the thing "calibrated" in our home. If only I could get paid to read off a datasheet and change a few settings on initial power-on like that.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 08:34 pm

Well the calibration is a lot more detailed than that but yes it is way over priced ($300), it will increase the life of the TV though. Do a lot of searching for your make and model TV and you may find a basic calibration run down for it, although the additional functions will not be there. The one plus side is if you are not happy with the calibration it is 100% refundable, they just don't like to tell you that up front, luckily I had a pretty cool guy do mine. As some may know I had a little adventure with HDtv's lately lol

Posted: Mar 22 2010 08:54 pm

Typically in the manual there is a section that reads "Optimal Performance" or "Optimal Settings" I don't really know what is all entailed in the "Callibration" of a TV but it SOUNDS like messing with the TV settings to get the best looking picture.

I took my laptop to Best Buy like 3 years ago because my friend jammed his MicroSD card in the SD card slot and it wouldn't come out. My computer then would refuse to turn on because of it. I told them this issue and they said "No thats not the problem, it needs a System Recovery and some Anti-Virus added. I've seen this problem a hundred times. You can drop it off it'll probably be a week." - Cost $250 - 7 days
Sure enough I took it to a local guy who opened up the Laptop took out the card and boom it started. $10 - 5 Minutes

I swear to god all you have to know is a little about electronics to be in the "Geek Squad".

Posted: Mar 22 2010 09:07 pm

Yeah generally speaking the in house guys are completely clueless it's all about milking as much money as they can get from you. It's hard to exactly describe the calibration process, they put a sensor center on the tv screen, and run diagnostics through a laptop hooked in the pc port in the tv, it takes about an hour, but yeah when it comes down to it they are just messing with it for optimal picture.

I remember when I bought a pc from them not that long ago, the machine was experiencing some kind of problem and it was slowing the entire machine down, and this stupid geek squad staff person went on and on about pop ups and did I click on anything. Look ..I said I have the built in free trial anti virus, this PC is a week old, fix it or I am just going to return it. I left it and came back the next day, they more or less said well there is a hard drive problem we are going to have to wipe and reinstall the OS blah blah blah basicly just blowing smoke up my arse, finally I just returned it and said the hell with ever buying computers from retailers ever again.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 10:17 pm

If the attendant described it as a precise process that requires proprietary tools instead of making it sound like a guy comes to my house and turns some dials to his satisfaction, I may have considered it.

Posted: Mar 22 2010 10:18 pm

Lol yeah i hear you there

Posted: Mar 22 2010 10:35 pm

This also brings up the instance I had when I bought a Plasma TV 5 years ago and the guy at Best Buy stating he didn't feel comfortable selling me the TV if I didn't buy the "Gold Standard Power Grid" (aka a Surge Protector with more recepticals then I needed) I told him I would come back later and buy it but I was in a hurry. Fucking asshat...

Posted: Mar 22 2010 11:12 pm

This is part of why I buy most of my stuff through online services like amazon. Sometimes though I need to see/hear/ feel the product(s) before I buy,

Posted: Mar 22 2010 11:13 pm

It's funny you bring that up because when i was in there testing a game system on the tvs there, 2 guys were practically screaming (in a joking way) at a women about buying a $100 power strip, at first I though it was somewhat funny then I thought it was very annoying and really fucking rude. Situations like that remind me of what I told my old boss at Software Etc (game stop) a long time ago when he bitched me out about preorders "We sell video games man, we are not used car salesmen. So when a customer says no, that's it".

As much as BB employees like to say we don't make commission you can trust us line, it doesn't change the fact that they probably have add on sales quota. Overall the vast majority of retail sales is getting sleazier and sleazier with it's sales and unfortunately the bulk of customers are not informed enough to ask the right questions to be able to call them on their bullshit.

Posted: Mar 23 2010 03:23 am

My brother and sister both work retail. They tell me they do whatever they have to to make service plan quotas.

Posted: Mar 23 2010 10:53 am

my friend use to work @ jc penneys and they always had to offer the JC penney card. they didnt have a quota, but a 'recommendation' which is basically the same thing.

cops have the same thing too. they dont have a quota of tickets to give out, but a 'recommendation'

2010 SLF Tag Champ Joined: Jun 07 2006 Posts: 12294

Ice2SeeYou wrote:

Meh, fuck that.

I just bought a laptop from Best Buy and the guy tried to sell me an extended warranty. It was a 2-year warrenty for $150. The laptop I got only cost like $600. I told the guy no, and he got all snarky/condescending about it, telling me how sorry I'm gonna be. Sorry buddy, but I'm not paying 25% more for the fucking thing just for an extended warranty. If it dies in 3 years, I figure I got my money's worth anyway.

that same warranty at sams would have been like eighty bucks.

2010 SLF Tag Champ Joined: Jun 07 2006 Posts: 12294

Berserk007 wrote:

As much as BB employees like to say we don't make commission you can trust us line, it doesn't change the fact that they probably have add on sales quota. Overall the vast majority of retail sales is getting sleazier and sleazier with it's sales and unfortunately the bulk of customers are not informed enough to ask the right questions to be able to call them on their bullshit.

I can assure you as a former employee that best buy salesmen DO NOT make any sort of comission or add on pay. Quite the opposite. If you don't sell ENOUGH you get in trouble.

Posted: Mar 23 2010 02:33 pm

Yeah that's almost exactly what I said in my last post and in previous. However the BB guys say " We don't make commission" a lot in an attempt to build a trust with the customer which I think is hokey. Those floor salespeople are doing whatever it takes to cut a paycheck ( I can understand that for the most part, however some go way over the line), I just think this whole corporate model for this type of sales and manipulative add on sales is just sleazy as all hell. Not to mention for the most part the CS is a joke.

Title: Hugh Joined: Sep 23 2007 Posts: 1591

FNJ wrote:

I can assure you as a former employee that best buy salesmen DO NOT make any sort of comission or add on pay. Quite the opposite. If you don't sell ENOUGH you get in trouble.

How is getting in trouble for not selling enough the opposite of getting a bonus for selling a lot?