Oh, no fucking way.

[amanda_lodden]

So, a few weeks ago my laptop died. I was in the middle of typing when it just powered down, and then it refused to come back on. When it did finally acknowledge that it had power, it made the horrible beeping sound that indicates a critical system failure before it even got to the power-on self test.

Never in my life have I been so glad that I bought the extended warranty. This is the second time I've used it, although the first turned out to be a manufacturer's recall and would have been fixed for free anyway.

HOWEVER... I hadn't backed up in a while. So, I coughed up $99 to have Best Buy's Geek Squad make a backup CD. I asked them to back up three things: The usual My Documents, plus C:\temp and E:\temp, because those are the directories I use for things I don't intend to store permanently, like the scanned pictures I was working on editing. I was very specific. They have a document you have to fill out, which includes a space for you to list what you want backed up. I put all three directories in that space.

Today, I picked up the backup CD. Guess what it contains? Documents and Settings. A little more than I asked for, but sure-- My Documents is in that. It does NOT contain the two \temp directories, which are the two directories that contain the files that are the most difficult to replace (some of which can't be replaced at all).

Tomorrow, Geek Squad and I will be having a little chat about my $99, and how displeased I am with the results.

Comments

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Judging by my experiences with Best Buy in general (and my friend's experience working temporarily for their Geek Squad), you're frankly better off paying the money to Your Friend's Kid Who's Really Good With Computers (TM). Anyone in IT who has a modicum of sense can get a better-paying job pretty much anywhere else.

Admittedly, I've always hung around computer geeks so I'm lucky enough to have a fair number of resources in that arena. But seriously, that's some pretty basic stuff (I'm pretty sure even I could have done it in five minutes, just from what I've learned through osmosis) and the fact that they messed it up says volumes about the quality of service they're frankly overcharging you for.

[amanda_lodden.livejournal.com]

What irritates me most is that I have the skills and the necessary cables to have done it myself, except that they Frown(tm) on opening the case yourself (which is necessary to get at the hard drive), and I didn't want them to decide I'd voided the warranty.

$99 was way too steep to begin with, but I had no choice-- they send the warranty repairs to a service center, and if they decide to replace the laptop rather than repair it (which is likely, given that the problem looks suspiciously like a motherboard failure), I wouldn't get the drive back. It was pay them to open the case, or a high risk of not getting ANYTHING back.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Ahh, that makes sense. Or really, it doesn't - how sad is it that removing a hard drive from a laptop yourself voids a warranty but paying quote-unquote "professionals" to do it doesn't, especially when you're more competent than said professionals several hundred times over?