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Could I ask a favor - can we stop throwing Australian computer retailer’s names around in this thread unless they are actually relevant to the conversation at hand? I’d rather not risk losing my job for having a little gripe about how much our training leaves to be desired at the moment when I wasn’t even the one who brought the employer’s name into it. I know the odds are against it, but I’m attempting to honor the company’s instruction that I not bring embarrassment to them while also having a quiet anonymous whinge about something that’s annoying me at the moment.
And honesty forces me to add that this is the only branch I’ve worked at, so it’s entirely possible that the deficient training is down to one branch/manager/region, not the company as a whole.
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so in general, you are willing to accept the opinion of a random stranger at a store because he or she wears a uniform, but not trust yourself to learn about the products you have specialized needs for.
Hmmm.
Olivesmarch, can I introduce you to Stanley Milgram?
What else would you let a total stranger tell you to do because you don’t trust yourself?
It must be nice to have the time and ability to become a reasonable class of expert in anything you even have a vague interest in purchasing, but the rest of us have things to get done in the real world and let’s face it, selling an adequate gaming PC shouldn’t take more than a Best Buy drone’s level of know-how.
Get the brakes on my car replaced, take a prescription antibiotic, fix the roof on my house… I could go on, but you get the drift.
Yeah, but she managed to fit a *Futurama *quote in the rant. That more than makes up for it.
AHunter3, I HATED that game, which I had on my Apple IIGS, because that damned Scarlett O’Hara skull lady would kill you every time and I couldn’t figure out how to avoid her.
The other end of this problem is the poor service-oriented small business owner. My boyfriend owns a camera shop that focuses on film cameras, darkroom stuff, etc. They’d like to also stock digital SLRs, but they can’t, because obviously Best Buy can sell them for a lot cheaper. That isn’t the real problem, though. They could do a really good job of selling digital SLRs… and then have the customers go down to Best Buy to buy them. If they didn’t have such a stock of vintage materials and stuff that’s a pain to get online, they’d have gone out of business months ago because of asshole consumers who are perfectly happy to use your experience, knowledge, and expertise, but take it right to the big box store. It’s disgusting.
I’m pretty self-sufficient overall, but I’ve found it really difficult to patronize myself. For that, and to amplify my shortcomings, I turn to the kindness of Internet strangers.
*pats *Vinyl Turnip ** on the head
Give me a break. Dell and Apple go to the trouble of designing their cases so it’s easy for complete dummies to be able to install PCI cards. This is normal end-user stuff. Besides, how are you to know I didn’t take it to an independent shop and have the card installed by a pro? Oh, they’re not “authorized.” If you go along with that screw-the-customer BS, then screw you too.
Ok, so if you have reason to believe someone has damaged their computer, use that evidence to void their warranty. Simply having a 3rd party video card that they didn’t pay you a ridiculous amount of money to install is not evidence of damage.
If your car dealer tried to tell you your warranty was void because you didn’t have proof that your oil was changed by an authorized mechanic, you’d tell them to stuff it.
I once had a Geek Squad employee tell me that they were not going to replace a bad motherboard for someone who had asked me to look at their computer. The motherboard in question had several bulged and leaking capacitors, and was clearly not repairable. The computer itself had been purchased at Best Buy two months prior.
In that time it had been returned to Best Buy three times for the Geek Squad to diagnose and repair, because it would not POST. Each time it cost the owner 35$ to be told ‘nothing is wrong’.
The owner brought it to me to look at. I confirmed that it would not post, verified the power supply was working, used my multimeter to check the PS voltages, and then took a look at the motherboard, where I saw at least six capacitors that were bulged and leaking.
The fourth trip to the Geek Squad, I went with the owner. I told them what I found, and what should be done by BB/GS to make it right. The kid behind the counter told me that the warranty was void because an ‘unqualified’ person had opened the case.
I asked for the manager, who told me the same thing. I spelled out the numerous ways in which I am qualified to diagnose a dead motherboard, and then had to ask what they thought the outcome would be if the computer owner filed a complaint with the state AG’s office.
She got her new motherboard. I installed it. Best Buy and the Geek Squad can suck mud.
I don’t get to make a call on what caused the damage, the manufacturer does. If you’ve fitted an accessory that wasn’t supplied, there’s a good chance they will blame that. Now here’s the fun bit: if they declare you’re responsible for the damage, they will send invoice us for the cost of repair. If you say “Screw you”, we (the store) get stuck with the bill and we have to pay it. So, if we see that you’ve opened the machine up and made modifications to it then we will tell you to take it up with the manufacturer because we have a good chance of being screwed over. We particularly see this with printers. Customer returns printer, we send it to the authorized repair agent (note: we do not have a repair department or technicians in our store), they open it up, see generic cartridges, declare the warranty void and therefore apply a service fee ($55) for their time, summon us to retrieve the machine, we notify the customer, they scream abuse at us, refuse to pay the $55 and tell us to stuff the printer where the sun doesn’t shine, we get stuck with a non-working printer, a $55 bill and the customer hates us and blames us for everything that went wrong. (As part of our process now, we make sure to tell people to swap out generic cartridges before we return their printer, which also results in abuse from those customers who don’t have an original cartridge to install and think we’re trying to force them to spend money on a non-working printer).
… and FWIW, I take my car to an authorized mechanic because I don’t want to risk voiding the warranty.
I just wanted to confirm the truth of this information and add that it’s standard across the industry here, unfortunately- along with the abuse from irate customers, FWIW. The store I used to work in perpetually had a stack of useless printers clogging up our storeroom for exactly the reasons Cazzle outlined above.
Neither the staff nor the management have the slightest bit of control over the situation. It’s just how it works here; warranty repairs have to go to an authorised repairer and if you’ve used non-authorised third party/aftermarket components, then you’re on your own if the manufacturer decides to be difficult (To be fair, it’s not always an issue- it depends on the fault).
Personally, I think that the warranty rules for printers are daft- at least where I worked we had a warranty agreement that most sub-$70 printers just got automatically replaced and the faulty one thrown out- but I understand where the manufacturers are coming from for computers warranties.
Here’s the thing: you, personally, might be the greatest Computer Scientist since Alan Turing. But if you were, you wouldn’t be shopping at a Big Electronics Retailer. You’d order the parts yourself off the internet, or go to a specialist wholesaler, and build the computer that way.
So, since you don’t know enough about computers to do that, then you probably don’t know enough about computers to install a Graphics Card without doing something daft like wearing woollen socks and walking across the carpet to open your computer up and sticking your hands in without earthing yourself on the case first, or putting RAM in backwards (and hammering it into place because “it doesn’t fit”), or what have you.
Even if you took your PC for an upgrade to a local repairer who did know what they were doing, there’s still no guarantee (as far as the manufacturer is concerned) you hadn’t been buggerising around with the computer before or after the qualified repairer looked at it.
In short, the computer companies assume the customer is a noob because if they’re buying their product from a brick-and-mortar retail store, then they probably are. (It is almost never cheaper to buy a prefab PC here, with the exception of Laptops, before anyone starts down that road. And the only user-serviceable parts in most laptops are the RAM sticks.)
FWIW, the “authorised” list of mechanics for cars is quite long here; there are several nationwide companies (including K-Mart Tyre & Auto) who can perform what is known as a “Logbook service”, which doesn’t void a new car’s warranty. The prices for this are very reasonable and pretty much the same wherever you go.
Look above. I cited the act that expressly allows it.
It’s the law of the land.
(edit: Provided you’re in the USA)
Last week, I had a Best Buy clerk ask me what “Crossfire” was, as I had mentioned it while browsing the video cards. I gave him the gist, pointed out the picture of two Crossfired cards on the box, and told him to check out tomshardware.com.
Let’s not be overly dramatic.
You are saying you expect a best Buy drone to know and understand all the latest complex and ever changing information on every PC product (or even just video cards in this case) and be able to distill it to a random customer’s satisfaction, all at rock-bottom prices?
It seems it already is such that even a drone can sell the products there, otherwise nothing would move through the stores.
But the OP’s story was equivalent to me going to a car dealer needing a vehicle that can carry some large object only I know the size of, and then being upset that it doesn’t fit in the vehicle that I bought on total impulse.
Myths.
I have been building machines since Intel 286 days and never once “grounded myself” or did anything like that. Nor did anything untorwards ever happen to any equipment.
By the time I finished working at an early dot-com server manufacturer as a software manager, I had learned from the hardware guys that cases were not really needed if you were going to be inside the machines all the time. My home network then lost its cases and was spread all over the place, dust and all, for the next 5 years or so. More then one of them actually required me to adjust jumpers to turn them on or off at that point. Never a blip.
Frankly, the replacement motherboard in most machines likely costs less then a decent case these days, so what is protecting what exactly?
Not really. With video cards, if you know the current generation number for Nvidia and ATI cards, you can have a loose grasp of what is good and what isn’t just from the number on the product. Given that my 6600 GeForce was near top of the line when I bought it three and a half years ago, it’s pretty easy to know that the 6100, which would have lower specs, would be ludicrously underpowered by today’s standards.
It would be more like you going to the car dealership looking for a sports car, and getting one that is nice in all respects except for having a V4 engine.
No, that’s a poor analogy. I not only gave him the size of the object I needed carried, I actually presented him with the exact object I needed carried. He held it in his hands and examined it, and upon examining it told me that it would fit.
I physically installed the graphics card today and it took me several hours to figure out what the hell I was doing, even with the awesome power of google at my fingertips. I went to 5 different stores looking for one of those 6-pin connectors (my card came with one split into two connectors, but the computer wouldn’t boot unless both slots were full.) I finally found one at a local shop. The guy had never even heard of a graphics card having two power ports before. He wasn’t very helpful at all even though I explained everything in painstaking detail. I gave him the model of my card and he said they carry nothing like it. Fortunately, I knew what I was looking for and it worked.
I am now installing the drivers. Is it supposed to take more than an hour? I didn’t expect installation to go this slowly.
TRIUMPH! (I downloaded the drivers from the website since the install disc didn’t work – took 5 minutes.)
It took me seven hours but I now have a fully functioning Oblivion on ULTRA HIGH graphic settings! That card is fucking huge. It barely fit inside my CPU… it has a freakin’ fan attached to it. It’s crazy, man.
sighs dreamily
Would that all Pit Threads come to such happy endings.
If you could excuse me, I’ll be off closing the portals to hell… in vivid detail.