Yeah, or other accessories external maybe, like how elgato and Logitech have stream lights and such. But still, if they'd been applying human logic to it they could have asked in 30 seconds on the phone
@@KevinCrouch0 They "could" have, but they probably see it as a software that the customer uses for keyboard and mouse. But I feel though that if Geek Squad were to tell the customer that, "Hey, Corsair ICUE makes your PC start slower and can use your pc performance in the background." Then that deters the customer from wanting to use/buy Corsair products which Best Buy carries a good amount of. Although I can't say much. When I worked as a sales advisor at Best Buy, I definitely had my fair share of swaying customers from one brand to another, although I generally did that for recommending a better product that I know works better, or to keep a customer away from a terrible laptop, like the $194 Asus Windows 11S laptops.
@@properpatty I think you might be confused about the context here. The only software the geek squad installed was Turbo Tax, which was requested by the client. The client installed icue themselves, and the debate here is whether or not geek squad should have told the client that icue slows the system down.
@@properpatty lol paying them good? 60$ for 1hr of work is good? It’s peanuts darling. Do you expect them to wash your car too? Cmon, when you take into account the true cost of even in the US where minimum wage is much lower than Canada, BestBuy probably breaks even on this service or makes single digits profit. So you are paying them 5$ + the employees minimum wage..Get over yourself.
As a PSA: Geek Squads are extremely different, depending on where you go. I worked for one while obtaining computer sci degree and my boss was a tenured employee who had multiple network security certifications. We, naturally, were excited to see "weird" cases and dug into them. Some malware, we even (yes, illegally), took home and reverse-engineered. He got me into security, where I am today. We did everything we would do for our own computers, to the clients, and they loved us. We took more time with people than we were "supposed to" because we genuinely loved explaining computer stuff to laymens. Fast forward a bit, my wife wanted to go from being a teacher to web development. I told her to build a base in computer support and she started in Geek Squad. That place was absolutely moronic. Their GSM was fired and a new one hired, twice. They had someone that they couldn't fire for "legal reasons" and he did nothing. I spoke with the agents, while dropping her off, and found that none of them knew anything about computers. It was a complete 180 from where I started. So, yeah, Geek Squad is great... If you get the right one. Sometimes you can have far over-qualified agents like I had on my team; sometimes you can have random kids on the street that don't want to be there and do a very sub-par job.
It also goes down to employee training and management. If you have a control freak manager with poorly trained employees then any business would perform poorly. Even in fast food it matters, but modern corporate culture treats everyone as expendable and inherently replaceable.
@@UCp6Q6LE7IYCO It's kind of hard without knowing the backgrounds of his wife, but I would say that it's more of an attempt on familiarizing herself around computers first before doing any sort of software development. Sure you might not need it, but it _can_ help in understanding why things are the way they are.
Would the "right" one in your story be the one illegally taking my PC home and illegally breaking countless privacy data laws for pleasure? I want to be sure I followed this train of thought correctly.
As someone who knows about computers a decent amount without any formal training, I actually wouldn't mind working in a Geek Squad setting. As a person who hates humanity, I could never actually work for Geek Squad without a boss that knew at least as much about computers as I did, because holy hell it would grate on my soul to "follow a script" when I already knew the exact thing to do. I followed scripts selling computers at Dell and I couldn't do it for long.
In regards to the Corsair software not being removed, I think that's actually a good call. Sure, the case might not have rgb. But what about peripherals?
This was my thought too. Usually that program is only going to be installed if something using the software is used (peripherals, hardware, etc.) If someone is using Geek Squad, I wouldn't expect that telling them about it would be useful
was gonna to post this, it's extraordinarily bloated, 1,1GB installer, i think 1.4GB install for me to bind keys/buttons on my K95 Platinum and Scimitar Pro
@@mozzjones6943 Nothing wrong in what you said, though it seems to a bit tangential to points being made regarding iCue, which does see some silly spikes in resource uses across it's many related processes and services. Atlas might be a topic on other things, but I've been making custom iso's since XP and winPE, and don't need someone to help with debloating w11, but Atlas is fairly decent if know exactly what was removed.
as someone who does not live in the States, i just spent a whole video realizing for the first time that The Nerd Herd and the store "Buy More" from the show Chuck was based on the geek squad from Best Buy Stores.. and even realized the whole premise of the show "Chuck" being about him being a secret agent was inspired by the fact that Geek Squad employees are called agents.
I'm a former GeekSquad ARA (Advanced Repair Agent). and honestly, many of the guys who work there know a LOT. To the same tune, some GeekSquad employees are clueless, and merely click the start button on their automated cleanup utilities and call it a day.
This..... There is a wide range of experience among Geek Squad employees. Also, customer computers are usually in far worse shape than the system Linus had them work on. Customers download and install everything and click OK on everything. So there is almost always malware and lots of stuff that doesn't need to be there.
Agreed - I do miss those days sometimes. I worked in a very busy store in middle of San Diego and we have 40-50 PCs in and I loved the challenge that some of the machines I get would bring. I wish they paid more because I would go back for that itch - my job now is so routine and just boring sys admin stuff that is basically same shit everyday maybe once in awhile we get an approval to upgrade a system but with so many cooks in the kitchen it takes 100's of peoples approvals and so most days are just watching UA-cam doing the same boring things :P
Having worked at one as a front-end agent about a decade ago, my main issue is not with the back-end staff, but the front-end. This was echoed by my friends who variously worked in Geek Squad over the past 20 years. At least during my time, top management was pushing service subscriptions and most of the front staff was replaced with the best Sales people from other departments. Problem was, they didn't actually know what was wrong, and just tried to sell subscription, which didn't cover issues like hardware failure. Meanwhile, I was so quick and accurate on fixing people's issues, that I had to be pulled aside to be told to stop it, since I wasn't selling enough subscription.
I'm a current employee of geeksquad working as an in home pc agent, i appreciate this video, most of us agree with everything stated in this video, corporate stops us from doing most things that dont follow SOP, but we always try to make the client our highest priority and do everything we can to ensure the service is done to their standards.
I was layed off from my tech job, thanks to the economy, need the money, applied to Geek Squad, worked 3hrs, saw all this crap they do and use, the restrictions and pressure to up-sell and only metrics count, what a joke...walked out, never returned.
@@TechHorse888 Luckily, being an in-home agent metrics aren't pushed as much, in store metrics are still very much pushed. Most agents do what they can to meet metrics but always put it on the back burner to client satisfaction. It's different in every store tho, you can go to one store and have precinct agents that are more knowledgeable than another store. i don't agree with the fact that there's no hiring limitations to GeekSquad agents because it means the work done agent to agent won't be consistent.
@@RSMrPony I'm a HT agent and its interesting seeing someone else's experience. For us, we are being pushed really hard to make sells above all else. It's the prime focus.
I used to work for Best Buy in 2001-2006 when Geek Squad was acquired. My Cosplay number was "2667" and I had the titles of CIA, Double Agent, Special Agent (both with Badges), and then finished my time there as a DFM "Deputy Field Marshall". It's a bit sad they haven't updated many of these tools and they are still doing registry cleanings. However, I'd mention they were sued by Winternals (Systernals of today) in 2006 and lost millions. Once upon a time, the Geek Squad had independent stores that had wonderful training and service. Robert Stevens had a huge hand in this and I was flown to Minnesota several times to get training during the transition period. They even paid for the first 3 professional certifications I received in my career, with one being a MacOS certification at the BBY corporate campus when they partnered with Apple. Now adays, it is definitely luck of the draw with little to no training being done, but it wasn't always like that. As a special agent, I was able to get tons of experience with server 2000, 2003 and see tons of business from SMBs to medium sized businesses. Glad to see they didn't completely drop the ball on this one. I did enjoy my time working for them at the start of my career.
@@TechGuyWiz Na, I didn't say anything about Linus in the Atlas video. I just expanded what it is and didn't agree with his recommendation. I'm sure if he researched it a bit more he'd agree with me or soften his stand on everyone using it.
@@ChrisTitusTech You and I and a lot of others know that and i 100% agree with you, its just welll you know how linus gets lol Keep up the great work tho man i always love your videos and have you on notification!
I'm semi-retired now, but not too long ago I ran a corporate IT Help Desk and fixed PCs as a side gig. While watching the video, two things stood out (Actually I'd call them glaring omissions) from this Best Buy "tune up" report: First, I'm surprised neither BB nor Linus mentioned the low amount of free space available on the PC main drive: 60GB out of 953GB (Just over 6%)! That should have been one of the first things addressed, or at the very least mentioned to the user (If the PC wasn't exhibiting signs of low disk space now, it most certainly would be in the near future)! Diagnosis: General rule of thumb - Don't let your HD fill up to 90% capacity. Weird behavior will ensue. Offload programs and data now! Oh, you don't have an external drive? Let me show you what we have in stock. There are a few models I can recommend (See how this thorough attitude benefits Best Buy?)... Secondly, there's no mention of a physical inspection of the PC's interior. Even a "basic" tune-up would include this. I can't recall how many times I've opened a PC case to find it suffocating from dust bunnies! Diagnosis: Clogged vents = overheating. Weird behavior will ensue. Blow it out with canned air. (And while you're there, inspect components and cable connections). So yeah, these are just two (major issues) that stood out!
I take my PCs outside and use a compressor to blow out the dust from the CPU, video card, power supply and also, the case has dust all over the place. Also, try to not let the fans spin since they will generate some voltage. For the HDD being 90% full, I don't think that is a problem. It is unlikely that a modern Windows system will need more swap space. It's just that it has reached a point where you can't install another game on it.
Percentage of used capacity doesn't really matters, the absolute amount of free space does. And 60GB is well enouth for an average home PC. But mentioning it and stuffing user with external drive proposals is a good point and it's very strange that those corporate capitalitsts didn't come to it. Dusting PC is a good habit also, but at least in my region assembled PC usually comes with a piece of paper band across a case screw saying "warranty void if removed", so third-party tech just couldn't open your PC without ruining your warranty. Is this the case in North America? And anyway, not mentioning it does not means not doing it. Maybe next time LTT team should dump a wastebasket into the case to check this kind of service.
@@angrydragonslayer One of my friends had a PC like that before. Like it was bad enough that I was genuinely astonished the PC actually ran and didn't just spontaneously combust. That said, modern PC cases (decent ones at least) thankfully have much more thought put into keeping dust out, so the various screens and filters really do help. But even then it's important to keep an eye on that stuff. Dust creates many problems but definitely increases heat, and heat is the enemy of all PC components.
As an ex Best Buy employee, I can say that Geek Squad does have passionate computer nerds, and they were the ones who always delivered the best experiences to customers. There were also the fair share of "normies" who didn't know anything about technology at all who were hired on as well, and although you go through multiple online trainings (that a lot of people just skipped through and texted on their phone for most of it) doesn't really teach them anything or give them the motivation/passion/knowledge to do a good job. Again, this was just at the store I worked at, and all the comments saying "It really depends on the store" is super true. I will also say, at my store there wasn't really much of "following the script" outside of trying to sell Total Techs, protection plans, etc. I mostly had free reign on what I was allowed to say, recommend, etc. Also, the ICUE thing Linus mentioned is kinda unfair. If they were to delete it or disable it on startup, and the customer has a Corsair keyboard/mouse/headset/etc, then their settings are messed up and their hardware will be wacky. But also informing the customer that, "Hey, Corsair products use ICUE and ICUE slows down your PC." is a quick way to make a customer not want to buy Corsair products anymore which is not a great thing to do at a Tech store. Which is kind of unfair to Corsair since ICUE doesn't have a noticable impact unless you're on a lower end device. The best thing to do, would be to ask if they have any Corsair peripherals and then if they don't tell them that, "I'd recommend deleting the ICUE software as it's unnecessary if you don't have any Corsair products." Still something a little over the top to test Geek Squad for when there are so many factors and complexities, especially if it is a mother or grandmother bringing in a PC for their kids who don't really know much about their kid's setups.
The Best Buy I worked at was pretty big on "consultations" prior to a computer being worked on. They'd sit with the customer and hook the PC up to a workbench of sorts (in an area the customer could also be present), provided the computer would boot, and just generally go over things they saw. If the agent saw software that was known to slow the system down, it would be talked about. Granted, this assumed the agent was knowledgeable in this sort of thing. It would certainly help a ton though in making the service even better for the customer if things were found that might not have been resolved during a normal "scripted" cleanup. (eg.: Like with the temp files mention, booting up a PC and seeing Adobe products would inform the tech that there are likely loads of temp folders created by Adobe projects).
Almost completely agree. It's also about what the customer is expecting. 26 to 20 second startup time sounds like a huge improvement, but doesn't feel like one. Managing customer expectations is one of the most important things imo. ICUE really is bloated garbage though even on high end machines, the daemon it runs on the background takes way too many resources. I usually setup my keymapping/scripts and then move them to onboard memory and disable iCUE again.
@GTXMedia Yeah that's understandable. My Best Buy had consultations if the customer wanted them. Sadly, most of the time, at my store, it seemed like most customers just wanted to drop it off immediately and be back later. There were a couple of really cool guys back there. Almost always got good rep from customers.
@@burrfoottopknot It's also about comfort,trust and responsibilities. Yeah most kids could probably do some of this, but what if they brick your windows install? Or even worse delete personal data.
@@burrfoottopknot I'm former Geek Squad, and most of our clientele is either iPhone/Apple repairs and older folks who have no one they can ask for tech support. The older generation also prefer something in person, with a brand with a good reputation.
This made me happy to see a video about my previous experiences. I was a Advanced Repair Agent for 3 years and everything you said hit close to home. One thing about each location is I would say the quality of work you get is how knowledgable the invididual is. I worked at various locations and in most cases your GSM (Geek Squad Manager) is not very hands on and just really care about metrics rather than quality unfortunately. If your NPS is low than they start nit-picking your work. I am sorry that your Agent didn't perform the service correctly, I wish it could have been me working on your PC!! Most of the clientele at Geek Squad is older folks so there knowledge for computers is pretty non-existant which makes them a perfect client for Geek Squad.
This is so true, as a Sleeper Agent from back in the day where Geek Squad was still its own entity within a BBY, I can say the quality in Agents has gone down and management doesn’t care about anything, but numbers naturally. I had a DCI who was also a bonified Agent who would proudly wear his black and whites and be hands on with Suspects in the Precinct without asking, he thoroughly enjoyed his job and the culture was vastly different. Later in my career due to the full assimilation by the Smurfs, he was made a GSM and eventually left GS for Apple because of how horrible the culture change was. I left not long after that. Now when I go into a BBY and see Agents in jeans and hoodies with little to no actual knowledge of their craft, I die a little inside because like mentioned in the vid, there’s really nowhere else to go for PC needs anymore unless you are lucky and have a Microcenter
I worked for GeekSquad for almost 10 years as an on-site business tech (Special Agent) and as one of the most experienced in store techs (Advanced Repair Agent). While I agree that most "registry cleanups" are just plain silly, there are actually some serious performance issues that can happen as a result of bad registry entries. There are corrupt/missing shell extensions that can make your right click context menu take AGES to open. There are invalid driver entries that can slow down the system while booting. There are often references to missing MSI files that can cause software updates to fail. While it may be a minority of cases, I would have at least one machine a month come across my bench that legitimately benefited from having some of these registry issues cleaned up.
I'm no IT technician, but I have had these issues on my computer in the past. I think its mostly when your computer starts aging, as the software technology and driver technologies change. The registries have to reflect that, and they do become an issue over time.
I've also seen other tasks cause weird issues that registry repair fixes. things like removing passwords (local or MS) or more aggressive malware being removed can cause certain tasks to hang for a time from Windows looking for things that simply don't exist anymore.
a short video even explaining what the registry is would be cool. ill search the channels and see if they have one. it could get conflicted when software updates/changes location/ uninstalls. having an AMD apu with nvidia gpu has given me lots of head aches with driver registry, , amd and nvidia drivers updating etc etc . some things do not go into the registry to remove the changes . it seems many programs do actually erase their entries.
active ARA here and i second this. there are definitely at least 1 or two a month that have 150+ dead end registry entries that cause significant slowdowns especially on boot. i'v also seen scammers who hijack a pc and after they wreak havoc the system has suspicious registry entries that may have been tied to remote access or malicious software, or from teh scammer wanting to be vindictive and screw up their registry. its easy enough to not delete any linked registries in MRI. you CTRL + f then "file not found" and boom, all the dead registries.
I worked as a GS consultation agent for 5 years and can completely confirm this is all true. I was lucky enough to have a progressive manager and our “precinct” was mostly talented people who were passionate about tech. GS agents who are really knowledgable do exist and I would honestly say are the norm.
I'm currently a repair agent at Geek Squad, and as you said in the video it's a coinflip based on the actual agents working there. Some stores are bogged down by the sheer volume of PCs and other things such as iPhone repairs(Which basically rips us away from PC/Mac repairs because they HAVE to be done IMMEDIATELY if they come in before a cutoff time near closing time), or management/corporate forcing a bunch of excess paperwork that literally means nothing or is repeats of things we already put in detail in the closing notes. We usually use plenty of software that isn't actually "approved" because MRI is a fossil at this point and is only useful for a two or three applications in it that are still updated on it. We generally try our best to get what the client wants done with their PC but there's often a lot of red tape from management/corporate, or miscommunication(sometimes, NO communication) from the client or the agent who checked in the device being untrained(99/100 times, the guys and girls at the counter know barely ANYTHING about PC repair and they are ONLY supposed to get info from the client for checking in. They are not supposed to troubleshoot on the counter) or unwilling to do their job correctly because they're paid the same as a blueshirt cashier but given much much more responsibility/pressure. Some of us just want to fix people's computers man, BestBuy just doesn't let us.
when I worked geek squad, we definitely took some liberties when it came to fixing computers aka, we didn't always stick to the "approved" list of programs. The tech lead would often turn a blind eye cause he knew we knew what we were doing and would often have it back to the customer working much better than what they walked in with. It's all about who you get as a tech cause it's a mixed bag.
I work at an independent shop. I often get customers that come in that the Geek Squad referred to us because they couldn't handle it. I also get a lot of customers coming in unhappy with the service from the Geek Squad. They also apparently send off a lot of stuff because I get customers in because their computer was going to be shipped out by Geek Squad to be repaired. We do all our repairs in the shop. We may have to order parts, but the computer stays with us.
My favorite is when i get one in that tells me Geek Squad told them "I Dunno". How in the world can you tell your customer who paid for your services "I dunno" and still keep their money?
They simply don't allow us to do some of the more advanced stuff in the store as you would in a shop like yours, mainly accountability and the service center has a method of the parts being shipped to one store then them figuring it out how to spread that out among a 1000+ stores. Not only that I'm glad that we don't do all of it just for the seer amount of repairs that we get in a week, we just wouldn't have the time to do everything that gets sent out. Also because of it being a corporation setting, we are bound to the contracts of the devices we sell. With the one with apple we are not allowed to open Mac computers or you could be fired for breaking the agreement. We only do apple phones and nothing else. A lot of the stuff our hands are just tied by decisions of people that know nothing about computer repairs.
As another worker at an independent shop, I can vouch for this. Geek Squad basically refuses to do anything with machines that are older than a few years.
as someone else said they do not allow us to work on some stuff mostly hardware on custom built PCs - we can not install things like a CPU or motherboard etc because customers would just come back and blame Geek Squad when we all know a lot of things new in a PC can be easily broken and RMA. Also yes contracts with some suppliers ie iBuyPower / Apple/ CyperPower all these companies do not allow any hardware work done - software is fine via geek squad most of time they just are replaced as a whole unit to the customer and we send the bad one to said company to handle.
As someone who's worked in the IT industry a fair bit of years. I can definitely say cleaning up a registry has its place in software repair. Also, on a system that has been running for many years, with many applications uninstalled, reinstalled, uninstalled, repeatedily over and over. There are often many bad or broken registry keys that can cause issue. Cleaning a registry does have it's place. But generally, the best way to do a registry clean is to do a manual cleanup for particular keys I know are causing problems. Sometimes, that's not an option because you don't know what particular software is at fault, that's where the registry cleaning tools have their place.
I've done a few manual fixes for specific problems as well. The one I remember was a keyboard not working, it turns out it was an overlay driver from an antivirus program.
Yep. One of the most common reasons to repair the registry is when you have uninstalled a program, but it still shows in Control Panel, or you had to manually remove the program by deleting all files and registry keys related to it because it won't uninstall any other way.
Registery is something that can be altered to fix issues. Running a random tool to automate cleaning of invalid keys on the other hand, is more risky than usefull.
Same experience here. Its not a magic wand but registry cleanup does have its place. I have fixed many bugs with a manual / software cleanup. Even with software though I review its findings before hitting ok. We have several bits of software at work that are custom or very old so I am often delving into the registry to fix problems.
I used to use that as a way to actually help my customers without my manager giving me a hissy fit. you could even manually remove registry entries manually in the 160 diag and repair option it was cool on our end.
i work for that exact best buy location in the video. the team is very knowledgeable, our seniors have been 10+ in IT professionally. migrating data is easy and we do it on a daily basis.
@@de_stroyed They didn't mean to see if cloning a drive is faster via an LTT employee doing it, but what they meant is cloning the drive as it was originally before the tune-up, and then going through with what we see in the video, then having an LTT employee take the cloned drive that would be then put in the PC, and go through the same tune-up concept as they wanted from Best-Buy, then seeing if an LTT employee made a better tune-up than Best Buy. This would see if doing it yourself now is actually still better than going to Best Buy, especially when you do not know anything yourself, and it would see what specifically that Best Buy could change, add, or remove to make their process any more efficient and better, both for the workers ( In both actual processes and in metrics ) and for the customer. For reference, I have done computer repair for a year in a job, and then general electronics repair for now 3 years, computers of all kinds included in that.
When I worked there years ago, it would have been a dream come true to meet a fellow geek like Linus, and shoot the shit about computers. My Best Buy 10 years ago had one of the chill Geek Squad's that had Comptia certified techs doing the work, and they would get dirty to truly fix computers, not just run the scripted software off of a CD or flash drive.
I worked for Geek Squad from 2005 to 2012, starting out in the store and then moving on to in-home work. I left for a lot of reasons, but suffice to say, Geek Squad became a mere shadow of its former self.
It's really sad. The culture has almost died entirely. Although the mobo of shame and the badge ceremony are really the only highlights in recent years. Often, people won't do push-ups for "losing" their badge and no more space badges, sadly.
@@greysom88 We always badge checked in my precinct, and we definitely had great badge ceremonies. I remember one agent's badge being wrapped in a ton of boxes and came in with our Apple consignment boxes lol
I’m a tech at a Ubreakifix (franchise) and were given pretty much free reign when it comes to software for pc related repairs and honestly I couldn’t imagine operating any other way, half of my job feels like trying to fix peoples misconceptions about technology nowadays because of places like geek squad that frequently try and scare people, its sad seeing how it affects alot of people out there.
During my tour of duty working at Best Buy they would send new Geek Squad employees to me for training for my deep knowlege and experience - but would never allow me to transfer into that department because the manager in my own department actually believed he owned me, like a serf. Best Buy management structure can best be described as 22 year old ladder climbing 'managers' following the binder procedures (SOP) to the letter. If there was a fire nobody would be allowed to grab the extinguisher if they werent authorized or listed in the binder. Their goal was to be promoted for obediance to the SOP before that fire spread to their department. So anyone with problem solving skills, ideas, experience and insight was a threat to teh SOP - and had their hours cut. This is why you get inconsistent GEEK SQUAD service - Technicians having to fight someone from Corporate or management with a 3 ring binder of procedures that dont woek.
Having worked with incompetent morons, I absolutely understand why SOPs exist... With that being said, everyone falls victim to the dreaded executive/corporate checklist at some point. The higher ups don't have context to interpret data properly and make informed decisions... So they go ahead and make uninformed ones
So true. I had a very similar situation. I even had to help the GS manager with a few issues he couldn’t figure out once and then got reprimanded from our store GM for being behind the curtain since other computers potentially had sensitive data displayed. Then had the GS manager recant ever needing my help.
Oh don't worry, as a current worker of Best Buy the management is getting redone, and worse! Less managers per store, they are downing it to one manager and then "key holders" or "verified closers/openers" if you will.
I use to work at Geek Squad and I have a degree in IT. Sometimes, they do actually have skilled techs. I still have my MRI disc from 12 years ago lol 😆 😂
loved finding those old old mri discs stashed around the precinct i worked in for a few years. still have a few of the branded mri usb 2.0 flash drives myself.
Man, I wish they would do something like this for T-Mobile tech support. I worked for them for years and I swear some of the resolutions that were given were criminal. The lack of education in all departments was outstanding.
I worked in my local Geek Squad from 2008-2013 and we originally had really good technicians, bu this time period saw a pretty bad decline in Geek Squad department functionality and quality hires and eventually the changes pulled me off of actual repairs and turned me into a glorified customer service agent that didn't touch the computers after they were initially checked in. The management style change during this time is what eventually caused me to leave as things got way more pushy in terms of offering services or products, making me more of a sales rep than a tech. This pushed me away but at least opened the door for me to get into my current IT career (and UA-cam tech channel efforts). Geek Squad CAN definitely be decent, but really depends on the quality of the techs that any store in any area hires. Just like the quality of service can vary from location to location in any other business. It's just unfortunate now that the way they want agents to push stuff makes it rather off-putting. I'm not sure they still offer ADRs (Advanced Diagnostic and Repair) but the 1 year ADR for $200 that would let a user bring in up to 3 different devices for unlimited repairs during that 1 year timeframe...that wasn't a bad deal at all if you think about it.
Yeah the push for everyone to be a salesperson is a big put-off for Best Buy and other stores, at least for me. I constantly would have people go "oh well you're a tech person so you should work at Best Buy" but it seems like so often the incentive is not really to help the customer, but to sell product above all else. Wish it was easier to figure out how a particular store is run.
It is basically the same thing, $200 lets you bring in as many PC's as you own, or anyone in your household owns for "data transfers, tune up, clean up, running diagnostics, software install, upgrades"
You much i have not worked at a good store...b/c you said ADR and not ADR+P and you are not pushing that P you are doing it wrong........and then when you are really trying to get all the money you would push that ADR+DP for that real deep feeling( +DP Data backup and Protection)....LOL
@@squinty36isdabomb Totaltech includes all of that, plus any and all protection programs that Best Buy offers, including AppleCare, on every device you buy from BBY. They'll also move data over from an old machine to a new one and set up anything you want them to.
Having worked as a consultant for Geek Squad for two years I can speak to a lot of what you are guessing and agree. Mri is basically just a plug and press play program that does 99% of the techs job for them. Our ARAs sat back and watched anime most of the day while having upwards of 10 computers running MRI at a time. They would preform basic updates outside of MRI but that was about it. Our store was one of the more lax locations when it came to following SOP but we had to basically hide our flash drive book that had non SOP programs. The main issue Geek Squad faces now are best buy managers butting their heads into Geek Squad and trying to correct these SOP issues despite not working in that department. This lead to the constant butting of heads between our GSM and store assistant manager and ultimately lead to our store losing our GSM because he couldn't run the department how it needed to be ran. I can answer any questions anyone may have on the Geek Squad processes and what happens behind the curtains if anyone is interested.
My favorite shit job was overnight security at a major corp's HQ. Half the time I got an education which I still use to this day. The other half, I slept. Win win.
You hit the nail on the head, Geek Squad quality is unfortunately such a store-by-store basis that I would never consider bringing anything to them. I worked in Best Buy customer service for 3 years and we shared the same space as GS. We had one agent that I absolutely loved who always looked out for the customer and truly did his best to solve everyone's problems, super knowledgeable. Then there's agents that don't care at all and just go by the script. So it's even a day-by-day tossup depending on who's working that day!
while Icue isn't of any use for RGB on the fans and case, the client may have a corsair peripheral like a headphone and or mouse and keyboard that could be synced up together or use for battery warnings for wireless devices. I too would not have removed it.
Current Geek Squad employee here. Some of the things in this video were very... Strange to me... For example, the approved tool list is updated fairly regularly, for example, Ubuntu was pulled from the approved list relatively recently. One thing I will absolutely agree with is that the quality of your interaction will depend heavily on the specific agent you interact with. A tiny precinct like mine (only 6-8 agents on payroll at any given time) has the consultation agents trying to legitimately understand the issue and asking other agents for advice and opinions, but you have to deal with making appointments in order to be seen between a handful of phishing victims, inexperienced gamers, and iPhone repairs (assuming the location is authorized), because there are only 2-3 agents available, 5-8 appointments over the next hour, a growing pile of returns that need to be checked if they can go back on the floor, and 20 minutes allotted to per appointment to evaluate the issue to provide proper context to the single (or two if you're there on a busy afternoon) repair agent in the back working on 5-25 computers at once while keeping track of each client's unique situation. The one you went to looks like it was one of the big ones where there are too many agents for them to know every other agents' name and jobs are performed with robotic efficiency. They probably have an entire team dedicated exclusively to checking the functionality of returns for potential open-box resale. The best service would probably come from a precinct of about 10-14 agents total, where they all know and work with eachother daily, but there are enough hands and unique perspectives to go around. Too many agents and you no longer have a tight knit team. Too few and you no longer have experiencial diversity. Field agents, the ones that go to your home, are going to have to have much more experience to be able to handle doing all they do either alone or in pairs. Geek Squad has to balance a fine line between organized chaos and impersonal efficiency. You get the same thing with any service job though. Car shops, medical clinics, even schools. You gotta find your Goldilocks zone.
As a former BBY employee I 100% vouch for service quality varying on a store-by-store basis. I (apparently) worked at one of the good ones. My co-workers were great people, and even the part time teens that clearly weren't planning on working there long term were friendly and helpful to customers. While I didn't love our manager, I think he did an amazing job hiring genuinely good people, especially when it came to supervisors. Throughout my training and the time I worked there it was clear everyone's #1 job was to engage and help customers. Yes, selling Geek Squad Protection and the BBY credit card was encouraged and celebrated, but it was clear to me that as long as I talked with every customer, answered questions, and help them find the best product for them, then I would still be a valuable employee. Thanks to the internet I would later find out how bad other BBY stores could be, but I absolutely vouch for my local one and genuinely recommend them to my friends.
I had the opposite experience at my store. Im not sure if this is how other locations did it but I was in HomeTheater and we had a whole feedback system that I excelled in. Tons of great customer feedback and had people that would come back just to work with me. Not bragging just setting the stage for me ultimately quitting after being told quite aggressively and suddenly that if I didn’t hit my “black tie protection” metrics by next paycheck it would be my last. I gave them my two weeks instead.
Many years ago, I worked as a computer repair person at a recycling center. The computers we fixed were sent to schools and low-income people. We were down the street from Best Buy and always got people asking for a second opinion. Once, we got a machine that had the Best Buy repair disk that was still in the machine. (they were burning CD's with common apps found on FileHippo). We used almost the same software being a volunteer organization and charged about $30.
Its extremely hit or miss depending on if they have anyone competent working there. Some are extremely knowledgeable, others are completely clueless and just follow a script
As a former geek squad employee, our primary customer base isnt people who know about computers, its the elderly and people who may not have technology as integrated into their daily lives. Being from Iowa, we have lots of farmers and small business owners using software that is super out of date, and when their stuff fails and they buy new theyre lost. Every thing changed so much in 10 years that unless youve been keeping up on it the whole time, its really hard to just jump into something so foreign. Insert Geek Squad.
Which would be cool, but really just felt like taking advantage most of the time. We were often not given time to educate people. Top management just wanted to sell subscriptions that were a good value proposition to maybe 5% of our customers. The people in front were almost all Sales people with Google-fu if you were lucky, not tech or customer service people. The people in the back were very savvy but mostly underutilized, running scripts.
@@akamesamaour manager usually stays out of our way and lets us do our own thing, we are able to sell more subscriptions as we are able to spend more time fixing the problem with the customer there or educating them
I worked Geek Squad for two years from on the front counter to being a repair agent. The person on the front counter more often than not is just going to give you the script cause, as you said, they don't require any certification or previous knowledge. When I joined as a consultation agent, I had no tech experience and really didn't know anything outside of being a user (I didn't keep my own computer up to date or cleaned). So working on the front counter I would go with the script and what I learned on the job. Became a repair agent without any certification either. Just from on the job training (the guys that trained me both had related associates degrees though). Got my A+ several months into being an ARA then 6 months later was out. Geek Squad pay isn't competitive enough with actual IT to maintain trained/certified employees. I was getting $20/hr but that was because my manager had just lost his two actually trained repair agents and I was his longest running agent overall at the time and was looking for jobs. So he fought for me to get decent money to stay. But the overall paycap for ARA is around $21.27/hr I believe. So more often than not you're only going to have people with basic IT knowledge at Geek Squad. Anyone that knows more will get a better paying job.
I just got hired. I was trying to get experience in IT and applied. I will be a hybrid where I do in home and PC repair in store or something. I am studying for my A+ also.
@@txnhb Congrats! I hope you enjoy it! Its a great place to get some entry level experience! Soak up all the knowledge you can. Use the Geek Squad subreddit from time to time for things you and your precinct dont know. Get that A+ and get a couple years of solid IT experience. Best of luck!
I mean to be honest I wish i can I see him when I am working. The only person that has came to geeksquad thag is famous is the self protector fake police officer forgot his name
Former Geek Squad Agent here (13 years)- I was hired as part of the national rollout in the early 2000's. This was spot-on, in terms of MRI approved tools, and hiring practices, per SOP. As an in-store supervisor (AKA, "DCI") and a field service tech (AKA, "Double Agent"), I was progressive myself and encouraged my fellow Agents to use tools (that I reviewed for safety, quality, lack of adware/malware, etc.) and methods that weren't necessarily "by the book". Most of the MRI team moved on from corporate to MalwareBytes around 2014-2018, ironically- could explain the lack of engagement there. As for hiring - I personally made sure to vet the candidates, and would create my own interview process, including sabotaging a PC; I'd tell them there were 3 hardware problems with the computer (one desktop, one laptop) but I'd also include a 4th one as a "bonus" to see if they'd catch it. Ranging from loose CMOS battery, to a bad/dead PSU that would fail upon being tested, to improperly seated RAM; or on a laptop, the wifi switch being turned off, physically broken charging jack (or I'd just desolder it to simulate breakage), etc. I've hired people that had certs up the wazoo and were completely clueless, sadly, thus my own spin on interviews. It's kinda sad to see how things have declined since I left, but I still bring my old GS spirit and OG GS training to every job I've had since. I still have my badges on my desk, too. Remember where I came from.
Currently working at geek squad. Would have loved to have you as my leader to bring these challenges to my team. Unfortunately in store agents now only focus on utilizing MRI and when things hit the fan, doing a OS reset. Anything not software related is shipped out to our repair centre under a warranty or as a paid service. Shipping out units has honestly been helpful though as bestbuy wants in store agents now to be able to sell and provide support on the sales floor.
I worked for Geek Squad as a Desk Support Agent. All Geek Squad agents that work on your computer CANNOT access your private data or make copies of it. If they do, they lose their job.
Considering I backup my files and reinstall everything from scratch every 6 months, I am the geek squad for my family. Thankfully, my service includes documenting everything I do and emailing it to said family member, along with links to videos and software, so if I'm ever unavailable or they just decide to do it for themselves, they have all the tools. Maybe I should do it as a side hustle, would be pretty fun anyway.
I hate being the family geek squid. I keep a clone around just so I don't have to bother. Re-download all the malware you want. I'll see you in six months anyway bitching about something I couldn't have possibly done.
I remember back in high school I had a friend that joined Geek Squad. He barely knew anything about computers yet dropped out of school because he was making $2k/week doing Geek Squad house calls almost non-stop. He said they just put in a CD, let it automatically run & it fixes a lot of things. If the CD doesn't fix the problem then they just wipe the machine & reload the data if they can (which apparently they usually don't bother anyway.) Also, if you use your own car instead of the Geek Squad car you kept a lot of money (Geek Squads cut would be only 20% instead of like 60%.) The man started racking up parking tickets because this was around the time Chicago first started installing speed cameras & he'd be doing 60+mph on the way to his calls, but he didn't care because he was making so much money.
Like many of you, I provide tech support for my immediate family. I often think of how lost people must be if they don't have somebody to help them with their technical problems. Issues I can fix in seconds could cost people days of lost productivity, and frustration. I'm not sure what the answer to this problem is, either.
In the end the only real answer is education and documentation. I can't say how many times I Googled an error and found a forum post that eventually produced a solution. That is why one should never just say "I fixed it." at the end of a forum thread. Lay out what you did for the sake of others.
Don't create such complicated systems without carefully accessing all the complex use cases? It's the exact same problem as computer security. In any other field excellent design is really about stupid proofing everything. A button that works is not a good design. A button that's waterproof, can get smashed thousands of times, handle transient currents and be easily replaced if broken is. None of this is applied to software.
people need to educate themselves on technology, computers are becoming more ingrained in society and every day it becomes a bigger disadvantage not knowing how to use them. computers and tech aren't going away anytime soon
registry "cleaning" in this case just removed unused or errored registry entrys, but it is important to note that some software use registry entrys to set trial modes for software, so cleaning the registry properly can be useful if you need to use a trial of a software again.
The only way to do that SAFELY is manually using Regedit in a very measured and precise way. Automated scanners and 1 click fixes are invariably risky and often cause issues which won't be noticed until later when an install process or application relies on certain default keys or settings and finds they aren't there. Only bad "technicians" use these apps.
@@TheAddanz I've personally never seen a software that doesn't just add the default keys apon install but I suppose it's possible. Personally I use regedit, but I don't think it's good advice for inexperienced users to use regedit. Honestly if you need to use those one click "fixes" for your registry. You probably shouldn't be messing with your registry 😂 I agree 💯
@@lord_cheesus The problem comes when you have broken a plug in or dependency which an installer needs and don't realize it. I've also seen these sorts of apps do really stupid things like removing "corporate" features , basically deleting all networking and workstation and server processes and completely hosing a server or workstations ability to connect to other machines(the coworker who ran that didn't notice the update which added these features and was dumb enough to run it on a file server :( ) Ultimately a roll back from off-site backups undid the damage.. but yeah lol. Absolute nightmare, but thats the problem with 1 click fixes, unless they are home brewed you never know when the author is going to make changes , then again ive seen anti-virus try and delete system files and such too though thats a lot less common and not for a good amount of time since the last timei saw that (brand new anti-virus company that is still around but their product is actually decent now)
@@flameshana9 yeah it's a trick I learned a fair few years back in college refurbishing and flipping laptops to make ends meet. This was before G2A had super cheap windows keys and a retail copy to do a fresh install with a new licence would set you back more then you could get from the laptop. So cleaning out trial entries was important for that "new install feel" that you get with a new laptop. Also came in really helpful when I was building my first hackintosh as I didn't have a Mac machine to access EFI without the notepad > save - exploit, which isn't perticularly usefull for actually bypassing windows locked permissions and writing unmountable hidden partitions. There's a software that I needed to install the bootloader and I don't remember why but I was like I'm only going to use this once and the trail copy was time limited or something so I just deleted the registry key it used to start the timer.
Await The Signal! I was an agent in the UK for 2 years, you only get 4 days training and the rest you learn as you go, amazing community of people. Linus is right on this one the software on MRI was mostly out of date but still did the job and (we could only used approved software from GS) Windows tools are pretty good for basic clean ups without taking it to GS or local PC Nerd/Geek. I found educating "Clients" was always the best way and if they wanted regular visits then a subscription would be the best option financially etc...
I switched from WinDirStat to WizTree. It shows results basically instantly, because it uses the FAT (or whatever it's called nowadays) instead of slowly scanning the whole disk. Also: is there an open source batch script of sorts that does all the menial standard tasks like cleaning out temp files, insalling all updates, cleaning the windows update cache and so on? An updated video on general troubleshooting would be great, especially focused on "this computer has become very slow, even though everything seem fine!".
We have a local computer repair store near me and they have ALWAYS delivered quality business at affordable rates. I now have a gaming pc, and anytime i need to upgrade or do something with it i dont know how to, i take it to them, as long as you buy the part yourself its usually pretty cheap to get done.
It would have been interesting to see what would've happened if there were two identically "slow" systems - one was brought in to Best Buy and one was brought in to a nearby Microcenter, to see how those two would perform, relative to each other.
With the amount of custom stuff I have set in the registry over the years I would be terrified that any reg cleaner might set something back to a default and end up breaking something that took me hours to fix in the first place
"reg cleaners" were really helpful to me purely for making sense of configuration that windows doesn't expose at all like the myriad of ways a process can start on startup or the hilariously overly complex system used to generate and update context menus. It's true in a sense we don't need registry cleaners but that's only because Microsoft put a stop to context menu spam and gave users a way to toggle startup items. Which of course now Microsoft abuses. "Share with Skype" anyone? Bing Search popping up without asking you. Teams getting installed automatically.
This shouldn't be too much of a fear as long as you back up the registry. The only thing you have to worry about then is doing anything that make it where the computer won't boot. And, even then, there are ways to repair your registry with the repair disc.
@@ZipplyZane Backing up the registry is a) not a default feature and b) users aren't going to know this was the cause. c) won't work with total backups where restoring an older version would break more things. In reality the best thing always to do is just keep all the data you want to keep seperate from the file system the os is on. Be prepared to reinstall all applications which is usually pretty easy with things like steam but can be a nightmare with adobe or microsoft office.
I have heard so many Geek Squad horror stories, including one where the Manager of that Best Buy store's laptop vanished after it was put in for repair.
I use to work for Geek Squad. It use to be special to be a Geek Squad Agent. But then the Original Owner lost control and store started taking control over and they will literally let pretty much anyone do things including people good at sales. So some stores will only care about number vs people that have experience
In regards to Temp files - Windows has a habit of releasing update files based on time passed. It’s entirely possible GeekSquad overlooked Windows Cleanup and the system files, but it also might be on MS.
It's because we are trying to do repairs on 20 computers and the temp cleaner gets run with the diagnostic software, we are trying to get them done as fast as possible and something like rerunning temp cleaner after updating is completely a waste of time. The space taken up by the updates is not affecting the computer in any way, unless it's like on a computer that has very limited space.
I was an Advanced Repair Agent for some time, and can attest to the many other peoples' experience that it is totally case by case. My Precinct was small, we had like 6 CAs and I was one of 2.5 ARAs, but our manager prided himself on our customer service so we were able to do everything necessary to send them home happy. Many times I would go out front and do small tune-ups with the customer because sometimes they enjoyed being involved. Minor repairs, part swaps, messed up settings, many times I would send them home without charging them just to build that relationship and it did work out well for us.
I agree that they should've mentioned iCue since it is a heavy process on Startup, but there may have also been an assumption that the customer has accessories that may use iCue, such as keyboard, mouse, etc. Definitely should've asked if they noticed it.
ICUE does not bother me on the rare startups that I do. Do people really shut down their computer? Mine stays running all the time and sleeps when I do not need it. Plus it only runs 30 to 40 watts when in use. My overall savings of this new computer will pay for it and all the upgrades and sceens I got in less than 3 years from all of the saved electric I will save.
This is an interesting video. I would love to see a second video where you create the issue (a messed up registry, a piece of malware, hardware issue, etc.) and see if they actually fix it. Like when you review the buying and customer service of prebuilt PCs.
Geek Squad was my first tech job that I had. I worked there two years while in college. I learned a lot there, including a lot of things NOT to do. It has been 10 years now, but back then, it was very disconnected about what standards to uphold. A lot of things were up to our discretion. I met a lot of people there, and 10 years later, I ended up hiring or working with many of them in enterprise positions.
At least it looks like they can handle basic software maintenance 101 that most people that are the tiniest bit tech savvy could do themselves. Now I'm curious to see a follow up video where they're tested on handling a real problem like a hardware failure, borked OS, etc. That'll be a true test of their capabilities.
@UnjustifiedRecs If you work a job where you interact with the public daily, you start to wonder how some people are able to tie their shoes on their own, let alone expect that they know how to use basic computer functions
There are a couple of scenarios where it is useful to clean-up the registry, like when you uninstalled a specific endpoint management software that left some registry keys behind which cause any endpoint or anti-virus software from different vendors to fail installing, because "there is already an anti-virus software installed".
I was told once by someone that going into the registry without knowing what you were doing was like riding a pogo stick through a minefield blindfolded!
10 years ago, I considered myself one of the best Geek Squad counter reps ever. I upsold more than nearly everyone in the company and yet always ensured customers were actually getting their bang for buck. Oftentimes, I used my own tools like a PSU tester and even personally power cleaned ($30) nearly every other computer using the real air compressor in the auto shop, not just a 3 second burst of a compressed air can like all the other agents. I usually would make personal recommendations during assessment like disabling certain startup items but keep in mind that disabling something in startup could increase the chances of a full on redo if something particular DID turn out to be important which is why most techs stay away from that idea - saving your 1 extra second might land the whole computer back for 48 more hours...is it really worth the risk for either side of the desk? Although my main focus was repair check-ins, I also drove PC Setups which I took a LOT of pride in. Every recovery disc was clearly labeled, anti-virus was installed and optimized, I'd even setup Office Starter edition with handy shortcuts on the desktop, I'd personally disable a lot of unnecessary startup items, and ultimately open Internet Explorer (RIP) and WMP just to make sure the customer wouldn't get any kind of setup prompt after paying for us to do a setup. I wanted everything to just. work. Unfortunately, almost nobody else took this thorough approach because it was above and beyond the minimum call of duty, let alone taught. Same goes for the PC repairs which I did do occasionally if we were short staffed. The 2 biggest problems were that most techs relied too heavily on the MRI automation and didn't have time to do all the TLC tweaks that are on the quality check sheet. I will say that we usually skipped registry repairs unless there were noticeable problems (if it ain't broke don't fix it) and fortunately it wasn't deep level like some programs I've seen which definitely do more harm than good. The MRI was very light on registry "optimization" in a good way. Ultimately, MRI was - and probably still is - an incredible tool, seriously. We could transfer info to an external drive while simultaneously filtering out viruses, run powerful hardware diagnostics, remove malware automatically, remove ransomware manually, reset login passwords, fix corrupt Windows update boot loops, and do some good ol' command line shenanigans. Idk how it is today but after several evolutions, MRI became the real deal. Eventually, everything was designed to where anybody could check a broken computer in by typing whatever the customer said was wrong, 1 available full time staff member was old school and actually good at everything, and the rest just had to run MRI scans in 3 clicks then establish a remote connection to "Agent Johnnie Utah" who ran Windows updates remotely. Geek Squad is probably still reliable but definitely pay for the data backups because from what I've heard they only have time (let alone expertise) to simply factory restore your computer to fix things these days lol
I work at a store that offers computer repair and there is so many times we see computers with the geek squad sticker come in because they didnt fix it
Drives me crazy, $20 to install turbo tax. I installed an Office competitor and did updates on a gentleman's laptop the other day and told him not to worry about it. He'll come in when he needs actual repairs and likely tell his friends. I get to feel good that we made his day and have secured future business. Oh geeksquad....
@@patricbakies1518 I do computer repair as a side hustle in my small town, and when it's something super simple like installing a basic Linux distro like Mint, Solus, Manjaro Budgie/GNOME, or something like Chrome OS Flex(a lot of my customers have older gear that won't run Win 10, or 11 very well, and offer that as an option vs. a new computer), or setting up an office suite such as LibreOffice that takes me little I time I rarely charge the customer, unless they insist on paying me something, as good word of mouth has brought me business over the years, and more happy customers in the long run.
In my country repair shops are everywhere. You cant guarantee how good they are but you can bind them legally to compensate for anything they break at least. The other repair shops are from parts vendors where your normal warranty is good for like 2 years and you can get extended but if it runs out you can pay for a fix.
Registry tweaking and cleaning used to be a useful thing. 20 years ago. One example was at that time a lot of the network settings were optimized for dial up connections and things could be improved by one or two registry tweaks.
@@jabezhane For the vast majority of people the settings now will still be good for many years unless there is a change to the ethernet standard. Most people in most countries can't even get a connection even approaching a gigabit let alone faster and if they do have it available in their areas many don't have a connection that fast because of the cost. Also, lets say you have a super fast machine and a 10 gigabit NIC and connection. If the path between you and the server involves one ATM switch no matter how big of packets you were sending before they are still getting chopped into 53 byte chunks by that thing. In other words, for most users with most OSes there are no changes they can make at the OS level to improve the speed of the connection at this point. I'm sure that will change eventually but who knows when?
@@jabezhane You can try adjusting your MTU size if you want but the default has been 1500 for ethernet devices for decades now. You could theoretical speed things up if every device on your network was set higher but you have to have a router that actually lets you adjust (As a rule consumer grade ones don't) that and good luck finding set top boxes, game systems, phones, tablets, etc that let you at all without hacking them. And like I said before, for internet connections you have no control how all the routers on the way and the servers you connect to are configured. So enjoy you extra packet fragmentation and the extra latency it introduces along with random packet loss.
I worked at Geeksquad mission control(call center IT) I'm honestly surprised at how accurate LLT's analysis of what gs does. Most of the time gs just uses MRI and nothing else. Of course there are the few that stray from that path but its rare. It's completely automated and requires hardly any user intervention.
Hey Linus, super cool that you covered Geek Squad. I work there! Having watched… I have a bit to posit. You see, I work at Geek Squad in FLORIDA. The land of retirees. These are people who are on their “happy trails” and find tech (in any capacity) to be confusing and frustrating. They are more than willing to shell out Hamiltons and Benjamins to make these utterly confounding things go away. To them, it is more than worth it. Another thing is that our tuneup is not our main attraction, at least there I’m at. THAT goes to the data transfer service. People are horrified of messing up and losing their data forever, so they send it to me to do instead. Sometimes it’s more complicated than wanting data from an old laptop to be on a new one. Sometimes I have to remove the drive and use a SATA to USB adapter because the screen is unresponsive. I’m the proud holder of a CompTIA ITF+, A+, and Net+ But this is the best work in my retiree town. I love it all the same though! It’s very relaxing.
Good video. Would love if you guys did more of these. Possibly even visit multiple BB locations so you get a data set of more than just one data point.
Thank you inside source for telling about the spectrum of Geek Squad Precincts out there. I worked in both styles and would do the absolute best I could for any PC i touched but so much of it comes down to management priorities and per-existing Geek Squad culture. -Sleep Status Agent 46646
Hey, Montanan here thanking you for using Billings for the alliteration :P But seriously, like most mostly rural areas, the closest Microcenter is either down in Colorado or off East in Minneapolis/St. Paul. So for someone like me, most of my business when it comes to PC tinkering is online watching other Techtubers like GamersNexus and DawidDoesTechTips and salvaging parts for a prebuilt, proprietary computer unit. It's rough, and we will typically drive a part until it's actually incapable of running anymore, but that's just how it works out here.
Removing icue could have been a bad idea. What if the customer had a corsair kb / mouse that wasn't brought along. Then RBG/macros wouldn't have functioned when they got it back
Your PC was probably in pretty decent shape before you took it in to Geek Squad. There wasn't all that much they could really do. I want to see how they do with something like my grandma's PC. Every time I looked at it, she had an antivirus that she hadn't updated in more than a year, a browser so full of toolbars you could barely see anything else, a homepage set to whatever the last program she installed suggested, and dozens of other junk programs. Also for some reason running a defragmenter every day (this was in the hard drive era), the critically outdated antivirus, malwarebytes (again not updated in a year), and one of those unwanted program finders (not that she ever did anything with the results). People like her are one of the reasons I think retailers stick way too much RAM in their prebuilts. She thinks she needs lots of memory to store all her pictures.
A big part of this confusion comes right from manufacturers who still use the wrong terminology when they pitch the features or benefits of their computers to the public. There's little wonder why anyone who isn't into this stuff gets confused so easily. When I was a salesman at Best Buy they didn't have easy comparison charts or signs that customers could use to make an informed decision about their tech. So I made hand-outs to give to my customers who needed them. Didn't cost me much. It had the acronyms and their meaning. The common specs to look for when buying software, the specs for common electronics, ditto for games for gaming consoles, music, videos, etc. It also helped by showing I wasn't some money vampire trying to suck their wallets dry. I was their pal trying to help them even at my own expense. It paid off too. I had lots of people specifically coming into the store asking for me by name so that I could help them get the best solution for their needs or wants in every department except appliances. Because I have little interest in fridges, ranges, microwaves. Boring.
I took my pc to GeekSquad to fix my pc, got it back 3 days later and the GPU wasn’t screwed in to the backplate, I drove home with it loose, unknowingly.
Former geek squad agent from years ago, it used to be the one you're talking to is unlikely to have done more than set up a scan, the actual work was done by someone who at least had some experience in PC repair (even if that experience was setting up scans before being promoted), and we were restricted to pretty basic "high efficiency" methods where if an issue looked like it was gonna take more than a day, it was suggested to do a reinstall
Geek squad is entry level helpdesk, and they probably are performance reviewed on how many service tickets they complete. Although the price is kinda of baffling for the minimal amount of work they do, but they are probably just making money off older people. Plus they don't wanna get too ambitious because if they fuck something up it will be a customer service nightmare for them.
When I worked there, one of my coworkers called us something very accurate - the McDonalds of computer repair. It was all about getting everything in and out as fast as possible. I happened to be apart of a very good team. For us it was about accuracy, swiftness, but also making our clients happy. We treated our clients like neighbors, and we bent over backwards for many of them. They in turn gave us great reviews and repeat business. Not everyone had a grandson or niece to help them out. We tried to fill that role, albeit for a price. And thankfully we were one of the shops that used whatever tools we wanted. When corporate came we would hide all of our flash drives with the tools we really used on them. :)
In the grand scheme of things, these prices are cheap to non-techies. If they have a computer with issues or don't know whats wrong they may lose several hours or days trying to solve it, plus headaches and stress. Or they may buy an expensive new machine when their old one just needed tuning up. This work here is pretty basic. But if you're intimidated or don't have computer confidence, 80 bucks is cheap relief to give that problem to someone else. Equally putting in or upselling a new SSD, to replace the HDD, can bring their computer back from the dead and they'd never have thought of it. Think of how much people spend on car mechanics. It's the same principle. "I don't know what I'm doing and I don't want to fudge it up." You'd probably get better service and diagnostics at an independent repair shop or agent who isn't restricted by the protocols, and who's better paid to best solve your problems rather than follow the corporate script. But this serves a need in the market and there'll always be people who aren't computer savvy and don't know what they're buying and need help with the basics.
Nah, like someone else said it depends on the location. I used to work there a decade ago and we would do replace cracked laptop LCD's and keyboards for example. Many of them required full disassembly to access the bezel and ribbon cables. Other GS locations would just run MRI scans and send in damaged computers in to a repair center.
I don't comment often but I have to say. It's amazing how much you let your team put the effort in the artistic direction of your videos. The color grading is getting, the music is much more subtle and the shot composition is better than ever. Honestly it's inspiring to see you push the envelope. All the money you spent in high quality lighting and camera show.
How to tune-up without going to Best Buy: 1) Backup your files to the cloud or an external storage device prior to maintenance 2) Have a thumb drive with a Windows Installation iso 3) Reformat your storage devices where the OS is going to be installed on 4) Install that brand new new storage device with a clean slate of Windows free of viruses and other junks 5) Problem solved
Faithfully served in my precinct for a couple years and went sleeper for a "real" IT job. As a repair tech, I definitely did my best to help people and correctly solve issues, but the old software and the awful leadership structure suffocates any real talent. I wish it was different. The culture has a lot of charm to it, but Best Buy corporate just sees GS as a way to sell the membership unfortunately. Your experience with Geek Squad will always be hit or miss. I had many clients tell me they might not come back once I told them I was moving on. It can really come down the individual agent that happens to close your ticket.
I used to work for Geek Squad - You're 100% right about it being determined by the supervisor. I got lucky enough to have an excellent one, but given that they're shackled with how much they can pay talent, almost all of them will struggle to retain talent longer than it takes an employee to get certified and picked up by the Genius Bar.
I’m surprise that the PC repair business has narrowed down to was basically a monopoly at this point. You’d think that with the rise of PC gaming that there would be more business on that front.
I think the kind of person who would have the knowledge and confidence to go outside of the big franchises to search for smaller local services is probably the kind of person who has less need for PC repair services in the first place. It's definitely a market that heavily punishes having anything less than the highest brand recognition.
Not particularly, there's more people who know what they are doing with computers, and gaming has kindof spurred that on, it's more surprising that best buy is still running this kindof thing. I'm a solo PC repair guy, and most of my income comes from building PCs rather than repairing them because people actually know what they're doing now.
Actually....the opposite makes sense. Because with the mix of computers being 1-easier to understand, and 2-significantly more assistance being available online, and 3-people on the opposite end of that spectrum don't want to bother with learning how their electronics work and instead of repairing potential problems and instead just deal with problematic device or replace the whole thing. As a repair business. you need to have people proactive enough to want to fix and repair their devices....but not proactive enough to just do it themselves.
Seeing how awesome Microcenter has been in most other regards, I'd imagine their repair service would be pretty great. Though there is only so much you can do when it isn't your machine and you can't ask them about things constantly.
Sounds about right from my experience as an ARA, definitely going to get a huge variation from location to location and even shift to shift. There's a lot of malice ascribed to GS where it really is just general incompetence - whether from poor management (often coming from a sales focus instead of a service one) or the quality of employees you're generally going to get for retail positions.
I think your comment about malice applies to a lot of things. For instance if you look at what government and Congress do a lot of the stuff they do that seems malicious or even evil is actually due to ignorance and incompetence. You don't have to be smart or knowledgable to get elected to Congress, you just have to fool enough of the people enough of the time.
Is the color grading in this video on purpose?
I think it is and I ❤ it
The grading is intentional, you're right!
@@LinusTechTips but for what purpose?
@@LinusTechTips I do not like change.
Too much contrast.
I think the whole community would appreciate a “system clean up” tutorial from LTT
I wonder if it would be: "Check the Task Manager for your startup programs, then run the Windows cleanup utility." And maybe an antivirus scan.
amen
... the correct way is to backup anything important, and reinstall the OS
I wouldn’t take much advice from this channel, it’ll be pretty vague and only temporarily useful.
@@TorqueKMA used to have to do that like once a year with XP. Now with 10 I've never had to do that.
As a former Geek Squad employee, it just like any chain.... The results you get are dependent on the quality of employees at that store.
also prior Geek can confirm
Like the Silicon you get. 🤣
Same, also I would always recommend a local shop first before helping out the client 😅
Always Coca-Cola! 😂😂😂
And of course with the shit pay the good ones eventually leave so it's only downhill from here.
iCue also works for Corsair's peripherals (headsets, etc). I wouldn't have removed it either just in case the customer had one of those.
ICUE could have been for a keyboard or mouse that was perhaps not plugged it. I think its fair they didn't mention it.
Yeah, or other accessories external maybe, like how elgato and Logitech have stream lights and such.
But still, if they'd been applying human logic to it they could have asked in 30 seconds on the phone
exactly
@@KevinCrouch0 They "could" have, but they probably see it as a software that the customer uses for keyboard and mouse.
But I feel though that if Geek Squad were to tell the customer that, "Hey, Corsair ICUE makes your PC start slower and can use your pc performance in the background." Then that deters the customer from wanting to use/buy Corsair products which Best Buy carries a good amount of. Although I can't say much. When I worked as a sales advisor at Best Buy, I definitely had my fair share of swaying customers from one brand to another, although I generally did that for recommending a better product that I know works better, or to keep a customer away from a terrible laptop, like the $194 Asus Windows 11S laptops.
@@properpatty I think you might be confused about the context here. The only software the geek squad installed was Turbo Tax, which was requested by the client. The client installed icue themselves, and the debate here is whether or not geek squad should have told the client that icue slows the system down.
@@properpatty lol paying them good? 60$ for 1hr of work is good? It’s peanuts darling. Do you expect them to wash your car too? Cmon, when you take into account the true cost of even in the US where minimum wage is much lower than Canada, BestBuy probably breaks even on this service or makes single digits profit. So you are paying them 5$ + the employees minimum wage..Get over yourself.
As a PSA: Geek Squads are extremely different, depending on where you go. I worked for one while obtaining computer sci degree and my boss was a tenured employee who had multiple network security certifications. We, naturally, were excited to see "weird" cases and dug into them. Some malware, we even (yes, illegally), took home and reverse-engineered. He got me into security, where I am today. We did everything we would do for our own computers, to the clients, and they loved us. We took more time with people than we were "supposed to" because we genuinely loved explaining computer stuff to laymens.
Fast forward a bit, my wife wanted to go from being a teacher to web development. I told her to build a base in computer support and she started in Geek Squad. That place was absolutely moronic. Their GSM was fired and a new one hired, twice. They had someone that they couldn't fire for "legal reasons" and he did nothing. I spoke with the agents, while dropping her off, and found that none of them knew anything about computers. It was a complete 180 from where I started.
So, yeah, Geek Squad is great... If you get the right one. Sometimes you can have far over-qualified agents like I had on my team; sometimes you can have random kids on the street that don't want to be there and do a very sub-par job.
Oh, if only everyone could be overqualified.
It also goes down to employee training and management. If you have a control freak manager with poorly trained employees then any business would perform poorly. Even in fast food it matters, but modern corporate culture treats everyone as expendable and inherently replaceable.
@@UCp6Q6LE7IYCO It's kind of hard without knowing the backgrounds of his wife, but I would say that it's more of an attempt on familiarizing herself around computers first before doing any sort of software development.
Sure you might not need it, but it _can_ help in understanding why things are the way they are.
Would the "right" one in your story be the one illegally taking my PC home and illegally breaking countless privacy data laws for pleasure? I want to be sure I followed this train of thought correctly.
As someone who knows about computers a decent amount without any formal training, I actually wouldn't mind working in a Geek Squad setting. As a person who hates humanity, I could never actually work for Geek Squad without a boss that knew at least as much about computers as I did, because holy hell it would grate on my soul to "follow a script" when I already knew the exact thing to do. I followed scripts selling computers at Dell and I couldn't do it for long.
In regards to the Corsair software not being removed, I think that's actually a good call. Sure, the case might not have rgb. But what about peripherals?
Exactly that was my thought as well. I have no RGB in my case but I have icue installed because I have a K95 Platinum Keyboard
But as Linus said they could've at least mentioned about it. But simply deleting it without asking is a huge no-no.
This was my thought too. Usually that program is only going to be installed if something using the software is used (peripherals, hardware, etc.) If someone is using Geek Squad, I wouldn't expect that telling them about it would be useful
Same thing with "unneeded software". How does geek squad know its unneeded?
Exactly. The iCue software also handles fan curves as well as you can see the temps inside your computer.
4:10 lets not forget that the customer can have a keyboard/mouse/headset from Corsair at home that needs/benefits from Icue.
this yeah
My cooler uses icue with a custom fan curve
was gonna to post this, it's extraordinarily bloated, 1,1GB installer, i think 1.4GB install for me to bind keys/buttons on my K95 Platinum and Scimitar Pro
@@mozzjones6943 Nothing wrong in what you said, though it seems to a bit tangential to points being made regarding iCue, which does see some silly spikes in resource uses across it's many related processes and services.
Atlas might be a topic on other things, but I've been making custom iso's since XP and winPE, and don't need someone to help with debloating w11, but Atlas is fairly decent if know exactly what was removed.
I just set up my kb save the profile then uninstall that junk software.
as someone who does not live in the States, i just spent a whole video realizing for the first time that The Nerd Herd and the store "Buy More" from the show Chuck was based on the geek squad from Best Buy Stores.. and even realized the whole premise of the show "Chuck" being about him being a secret agent was inspired by the fact that Geek Squad employees are called agents.
Love Chuck haha. Glad you have more context, now! Lol
@Ken Shaw geek squad still does house calls, but it's mostly wall mounted TV installs, sound systems, and wifi issues.
My favorite Show!!!!!
My favorite part in that show is when one of the characters puts on a mascot suit, Buy More abrieveating to the big BM 🤣
It’s great isn’t it. Still one of my favorite shows and then became a geek squad agent.
I'm a former GeekSquad ARA (Advanced Repair Agent). and honestly, many of the guys who work there know a LOT. To the same tune, some GeekSquad employees are clueless, and merely click the start button on their automated cleanup utilities and call it a day.
This..... There is a wide range of experience among Geek Squad employees. Also, customer computers are usually in far worse shape than the system Linus had them work on. Customers download and install everything and click OK on everything. So there is almost always malware and lots of stuff that doesn't need to be there.
Agreed - I do miss those days sometimes. I worked in a very busy store in middle of San Diego and we have 40-50 PCs in and I loved the challenge that some of the machines I get would bring. I wish they paid more because I would go back for that itch - my job now is so routine and just boring sys admin stuff that is basically same shit everyday maybe once in awhile we get an approval to upgrade a system but with so many cooks in the kitchen it takes 100's of peoples approvals and so most days are just watching UA-cam doing the same boring things :P
True. Current CA. The good locations actually fix. Number be damned.
Having worked at one as a front-end agent about a decade ago, my main issue is not with the back-end staff, but the front-end. This was echoed by my friends who variously worked in Geek Squad over the past 20 years. At least during my time, top management was pushing service subscriptions and most of the front staff was replaced with the best Sales people from other departments. Problem was, they didn't actually know what was wrong, and just tried to sell subscription, which didn't cover issues like hardware failure. Meanwhile, I was so quick and accurate on fixing people's issues, that I had to be pulled aside to be told to stop it, since I wasn't selling enough subscription.
@@whoareyou60 I'm also a sys admin currently, and I'd absolutely go back if it paid better just for the experience. I do miss it sometimes.
I'm a current employee of geeksquad working as an in home pc agent, i appreciate this video, most of us agree with everything stated in this video, corporate stops us from doing most things that dont follow SOP, but we always try to make the client our highest priority and do everything we can to ensure the service is done to their standards.
I was layed off from my tech job, thanks to the economy, need the money, applied to Geek Squad, worked 3hrs, saw all this crap they do and use, the restrictions and pressure to up-sell and only metrics count, what a joke...walked out, never returned.
@@TechHorse888 Luckily, being an in-home agent metrics aren't pushed as much, in store metrics are still very much pushed. Most agents do what they can to meet metrics but always put it on the back burner to client satisfaction. It's different in every store tho, you can go to one store and have precinct agents that are more knowledgeable than another store. i don't agree with the fact that there's no hiring limitations to GeekSquad agents because it means the work done agent to agent won't be consistent.
@@RSMrPony I'm a HT agent and its interesting seeing someone else's experience. For us, we are being pushed really hard to make sells above all else. It's the prime focus.
As a former PC DA myself, can concur! Keep up the good work. Cura et celeritas!
I used to work for Best Buy in 2001-2006 when Geek Squad was acquired. My Cosplay number was "2667" and I had the titles of CIA, Double Agent, Special Agent (both with Badges), and then finished my time there as a DFM "Deputy Field Marshall". It's a bit sad they haven't updated many of these tools and they are still doing registry cleanings. However, I'd mention they were sued by Winternals (Systernals of today) in 2006 and lost millions.
Once upon a time, the Geek Squad had independent stores that had wonderful training and service. Robert Stevens had a huge hand in this and I was flown to Minnesota several times to get training during the transition period. They even paid for the first 3 professional certifications I received in my career, with one being a MacOS certification at the BBY corporate campus when they partnered with Apple. Now adays, it is definitely luck of the draw with little to no training being done, but it wasn't always like that. As a special agent, I was able to get tons of experience with server 2000, 2003 and see tons of business from SMBs to medium sized businesses.
Glad to see they didn't completely drop the ball on this one. I did enjoy my time working for them at the start of my career.
The man, the myth, the legend. Hey Chris, what do you think about Guardio?
Hey Chris this message may get deleted after you bashed Linus over AtlasOS, you know how immature he gets about being worng
@@darkphase7799 Like the idea of Guardio, but I never sign up for anything that requires a monthly fee just out of principle.
@@TechGuyWiz Na, I didn't say anything about Linus in the Atlas video. I just expanded what it is and didn't agree with his recommendation. I'm sure if he researched it a bit more he'd agree with me or soften his stand on everyone using it.
@@ChrisTitusTech You and I and a lot of others know that and i 100% agree with you, its just welll you know how linus gets lol Keep up the great work tho man i always love your videos and have you on notification!
I'm semi-retired now, but not too long ago I ran a corporate IT Help Desk and fixed PCs as a side gig. While watching the video, two things stood out (Actually I'd call them glaring omissions) from this Best Buy "tune up" report: First, I'm surprised neither BB nor Linus mentioned the low amount of free space available on the PC main drive: 60GB out of 953GB (Just over 6%)! That should have been one of the first things addressed, or at the very least mentioned to the user (If the PC wasn't exhibiting signs of low disk space now, it most certainly would be in the near future)! Diagnosis: General rule of thumb - Don't let your HD fill up to 90% capacity. Weird behavior will ensue. Offload programs and data now! Oh, you don't have an external drive? Let me show you what we have in stock. There are a few models I can recommend (See how this thorough attitude benefits Best Buy?)...
Secondly, there's no mention of a physical inspection of the PC's interior. Even a "basic" tune-up would include this. I can't recall how many times I've opened a PC case to find it suffocating from dust bunnies! Diagnosis: Clogged vents = overheating. Weird behavior will ensue. Blow it out with canned air. (And while you're there, inspect components and cable connections).
So yeah, these are just two (major issues) that stood out!
I've seen one where i'd call it a dust bear
No more place for dust in the case (or air)
I take my PCs outside and use a compressor to blow out the dust from the CPU, video card, power supply and also, the case has dust all over the place.
Also, try to not let the fans spin since they will generate some voltage.
For the HDD being 90% full, I don't think that is a problem. It is unlikely that a modern Windows system will need more swap space.
It's just that it has reached a point where you can't install another game on it.
I agree on the second point and was surprised Linus didn't mention it as well
Percentage of used capacity doesn't really matters, the absolute amount of free space does. And 60GB is well enouth for an average home PC. But mentioning it and stuffing user with external drive proposals is a good point and it's very strange that those corporate capitalitsts didn't come to it.
Dusting PC is a good habit also, but at least in my region assembled PC usually comes with a piece of paper band across a case screw saying "warranty void if removed", so third-party tech just couldn't open your PC without ruining your warranty. Is this the case in North America? And anyway, not mentioning it does not means not doing it. Maybe next time LTT team should dump a wastebasket into the case to check this kind of service.
@@angrydragonslayer One of my friends had a PC like that before. Like it was bad enough that I was genuinely astonished the PC actually ran and didn't just spontaneously combust.
That said, modern PC cases (decent ones at least) thankfully have much more thought put into keeping dust out, so the various screens and filters really do help. But even then it's important to keep an eye on that stuff. Dust creates many problems but definitely increases heat, and heat is the enemy of all PC components.
As an ex Best Buy employee, I can say that Geek Squad does have passionate computer nerds, and they were the ones who always delivered the best experiences to customers. There were also the fair share of "normies" who didn't know anything about technology at all who were hired on as well, and although you go through multiple online trainings (that a lot of people just skipped through and texted on their phone for most of it) doesn't really teach them anything or give them the motivation/passion/knowledge to do a good job. Again, this was just at the store I worked at, and all the comments saying "It really depends on the store" is super true. I will also say, at my store there wasn't really much of "following the script" outside of trying to sell Total Techs, protection plans, etc. I mostly had free reign on what I was allowed to say, recommend, etc.
Also, the ICUE thing Linus mentioned is kinda unfair. If they were to delete it or disable it on startup, and the customer has a Corsair keyboard/mouse/headset/etc, then their settings are messed up and their hardware will be wacky. But also informing the customer that, "Hey, Corsair products use ICUE and ICUE slows down your PC." is a quick way to make a customer not want to buy Corsair products anymore which is not a great thing to do at a Tech store. Which is kind of unfair to Corsair since ICUE doesn't have a noticable impact unless you're on a lower end device.
The best thing to do, would be to ask if they have any Corsair peripherals and then if they don't tell them that, "I'd recommend deleting the ICUE software as it's unnecessary if you don't have any Corsair products."
Still something a little over the top to test Geek Squad for when there are so many factors and complexities, especially if it is a mother or grandmother bringing in a PC for their kids who don't really know much about their kid's setups.
The Best Buy I worked at was pretty big on "consultations" prior to a computer being worked on. They'd sit with the customer and hook the PC up to a workbench of sorts (in an area the customer could also be present), provided the computer would boot, and just generally go over things they saw. If the agent saw software that was known to slow the system down, it would be talked about. Granted, this assumed the agent was knowledgeable in this sort of thing. It would certainly help a ton though in making the service even better for the customer if things were found that might not have been resolved during a normal "scripted" cleanup. (eg.: Like with the temp files mention, booting up a PC and seeing Adobe products would inform the tech that there are likely loads of temp folders created by Adobe projects).
Almost completely agree. It's also about what the customer is expecting. 26 to 20 second startup time sounds like a huge improvement, but doesn't feel like one. Managing customer expectations is one of the most important things imo. ICUE really is bloated garbage though even on high end machines, the daemon it runs on the background takes way too many resources. I usually setup my keymapping/scripts and then move them to onboard memory and disable iCUE again.
@GTXMedia Yeah that's understandable. My Best Buy had consultations if the customer wanted them. Sadly, most of the time, at my store, it seemed like most customers just wanted to drop it off immediately and be back later. There were a couple of really cool guys back there. Almost always got good rep from customers.
@@burrfoottopknot It's also about comfort,trust and responsibilities. Yeah most kids could probably do some of this, but what if they brick your windows install? Or even worse delete personal data.
@@burrfoottopknot I'm former Geek Squad, and most of our clientele is either iPhone/Apple repairs and older folks who have no one they can ask for tech support. The older generation also prefer something in person, with a brand with a good reputation.
This made me happy to see a video about my previous experiences. I was a Advanced Repair Agent for 3 years and everything you said hit close to home. One thing about each location is I would say the quality of work you get is how knowledgable the invididual is. I worked at various locations and in most cases your GSM (Geek Squad Manager) is not very hands on and just really care about metrics rather than quality unfortunately. If your NPS is low than they start nit-picking your work. I am sorry that your Agent didn't perform the service correctly, I wish it could have been me working on your PC!! Most of the clientele at Geek Squad is older folks so there knowledge for computers is pretty non-existant which makes them a perfect client for Geek Squad.
This is so true, as a Sleeper Agent from back in the day where Geek Squad was still its own entity within a BBY, I can say the quality in Agents has gone down and management doesn’t care about anything, but numbers naturally.
I had a DCI who was also a bonified Agent who would proudly wear his black and whites and be hands on with Suspects in the Precinct without asking, he thoroughly enjoyed his job and the culture was vastly different. Later in my career due to the full assimilation by the Smurfs, he was made a GSM and eventually left GS for Apple because of how horrible the culture change was. I left not long after that.
Now when I go into a BBY and see Agents in jeans and hoodies with little to no actual knowledge of their craft, I die a little inside because like mentioned in the vid, there’s really nowhere else to go for PC needs anymore unless you are lucky and have a Microcenter
And they're now going to a new tactic where the stores in a district share the GSM
I worked for GeekSquad for almost 10 years as an on-site business tech (Special Agent) and as one of the most experienced in store techs (Advanced Repair Agent). While I agree that most "registry cleanups" are just plain silly, there are actually some serious performance issues that can happen as a result of bad registry entries. There are corrupt/missing shell extensions that can make your right click context menu take AGES to open. There are invalid driver entries that can slow down the system while booting. There are often references to missing MSI files that can cause software updates to fail. While it may be a minority of cases, I would have at least one machine a month come across my bench that legitimately benefited from having some of these registry issues cleaned up.
I'm no IT technician, but I have had these issues on my computer in the past. I think its mostly when your computer starts aging, as the software technology and driver technologies change. The registries have to reflect that, and they do become an issue over time.
I've also seen other tasks cause weird issues that registry repair fixes. things like removing passwords (local or MS) or more aggressive malware being removed can cause certain tasks to hang for a time from Windows looking for things that simply don't exist anymore.
a short video even explaining what the registry is would be cool. ill search the channels and see if they have one. it could get conflicted when software updates/changes location/ uninstalls. having an AMD apu with nvidia gpu has given me lots of head aches with driver registry, , amd and nvidia drivers updating etc etc . some things do not go into the registry to remove the changes . it seems many programs do actually erase their entries.
What do you recommend to fix those? Shellex, Autoruns?
active ARA here and i second this. there are definitely at least 1 or two a month that have 150+ dead end registry entries that cause significant slowdowns especially on boot. i'v also seen scammers who hijack a pc and after they wreak havoc the system has suspicious registry entries that may have been tied to remote access or malicious software, or from teh scammer wanting to be vindictive and screw up their registry. its easy enough to not delete any linked registries in MRI. you CTRL + f then "file not found" and boom, all the dead registries.
I worked as a GS consultation agent for 5 years and can completely confirm this is all true. I was lucky enough to have a progressive manager and our “precinct” was mostly talented people who were passionate about tech. GS agents who are really knowledgable do exist and I would honestly say are the norm.
I'm currently a repair agent at Geek Squad, and as you said in the video it's a coinflip based on the actual agents working there. Some stores are bogged down by the sheer volume of PCs and other things such as iPhone repairs(Which basically rips us away from PC/Mac repairs because they HAVE to be done IMMEDIATELY if they come in before a cutoff time near closing time), or management/corporate forcing a bunch of excess paperwork that literally means nothing or is repeats of things we already put in detail in the closing notes.
We usually use plenty of software that isn't actually "approved" because MRI is a fossil at this point and is only useful for a two or three applications in it that are still updated on it. We generally try our best to get what the client wants done with their PC but there's often a lot of red tape from management/corporate, or miscommunication(sometimes, NO communication) from the client or the agent who checked in the device being untrained(99/100 times, the guys and girls at the counter know barely ANYTHING about PC repair and they are ONLY supposed to get info from the client for checking in. They are not supposed to troubleshoot on the counter) or unwilling to do their job correctly because they're paid the same as a blueshirt cashier but given much much more responsibility/pressure.
Some of us just want to fix people's computers man, BestBuy just doesn't let us.
when I worked geek squad, we definitely took some liberties when it came to fixing computers aka, we didn't always stick to the "approved" list of programs. The tech lead would often turn a blind eye cause he knew we knew what we were doing and would often have it back to the customer working much better than what they walked in with. It's all about who you get as a tech cause it's a mixed bag.
@@abar0610 I mean they weren't on any kind of "unapproved" list >.>
I work at an independent shop. I often get customers that come in that the Geek Squad referred to us because they couldn't handle it. I also get a lot of customers coming in unhappy with the service from the Geek Squad. They also apparently send off a lot of stuff because I get customers in because their computer was going to be shipped out by Geek Squad to be repaired. We do all our repairs in the shop. We may have to order parts, but the computer stays with us.
My favorite is when i get one in that tells me Geek Squad told them "I Dunno". How in the world can you tell your customer who paid for your services "I dunno" and still keep their money?
They simply don't allow us to do some of the more advanced stuff in the store as you would in a shop like yours, mainly accountability and the service center has a method of the parts being shipped to one store then them figuring it out how to spread that out among a 1000+ stores. Not only that I'm glad that we don't do all of it just for the seer amount of repairs that we get in a week, we just wouldn't have the time to do everything that gets sent out. Also because of it being a corporation setting, we are bound to the contracts of the devices we sell. With the one with apple we are not allowed to open Mac computers or you could be fired for breaking the agreement. We only do apple phones and nothing else. A lot of the stuff our hands are just tied by decisions of people that know nothing about computer repairs.
As another worker at an independent shop, I can vouch for this. Geek Squad basically refuses to do anything with machines that are older than a few years.
I have a local repair shop that's always done great work for myself and my family. Keep up the good work!
as someone else said they do not allow us to work on some stuff mostly hardware on custom built PCs - we can not install things like a CPU or motherboard etc because customers would just come back and blame Geek Squad when we all know a lot of things new in a PC can be easily broken and RMA. Also yes contracts with some suppliers ie iBuyPower / Apple/ CyperPower all these companies do not allow any hardware work done - software is fine via geek squad most of time they just are replaced as a whole unit to the customer and we send the bad one to said company to handle.
As someone who's worked in the IT industry a fair bit of years. I can definitely say cleaning up a registry has its place in software repair. Also, on a system that has been running for many years, with many applications uninstalled, reinstalled, uninstalled, repeatedily over and over. There are often many bad or broken registry keys that can cause issue. Cleaning a registry does have it's place. But generally, the best way to do a registry clean is to do a manual cleanup for particular keys I know are causing problems. Sometimes, that's not an option because you don't know what particular software is at fault, that's where the registry cleaning tools have their place.
I've done a few manual fixes for specific problems as well. The one I remember was a keyboard not working, it turns out it was an overlay driver from an antivirus program.
You can just reinstall the windows. It is the best way to fix everything.
Yep. One of the most common reasons to repair the registry is when you have uninstalled a program, but it still shows in Control Panel, or you had to manually remove the program by deleting all files and registry keys related to it because it won't uninstall any other way.
Registery is something that can be altered to fix issues. Running a random tool to automate cleaning of invalid keys on the other hand, is more risky than usefull.
Same experience here. Its not a magic wand but registry cleanup does have its place. I have fixed many bugs with a manual / software cleanup. Even with software though I review its findings before hitting ok. We have several bits of software at work that are custom or very old so I am often delving into the registry to fix problems.
Staples also offers PC tune ups, which are often free. I'd be curious to see a video on them so we can have a comparison between the two companies.
I used to use that as a way to actually help my customers without my manager giving me a hissy fit. you could even manually remove registry entries manually in the 160 diag and repair option it was cool on our end.
They usally would offer it at least 1 or tiwce a year
Would have been interesting to clone the drive and see if you can get someone at LTT to do an equivalent or better job.
Would be sad if you couldn't finde someone at LTT who could do an equivalent or better job.
Sends Yvonne to clean the PC.
i work for that exact best buy location in the video. the team is very knowledgeable, our seniors have been 10+ in IT professionally.
migrating data is easy and we do it on a daily basis.
@@de_stroyed They didn't mean to see if cloning a drive is faster via an LTT employee doing it, but what they meant is cloning the drive as it was originally before the tune-up, and then going through with what we see in the video, then having an LTT employee take the cloned drive that would be then put in the PC, and go through the same tune-up concept as they wanted from Best-Buy, then seeing if an LTT employee made a better tune-up than Best Buy.
This would see if doing it yourself now is actually still better than going to Best Buy, especially when you do not know anything yourself, and it would see what specifically that Best Buy could change, add, or remove to make their process any more efficient and better, both for the workers ( In both actual processes and in metrics ) and for the customer.
For reference, I have done computer repair for a year in a job, and then general electronics repair for now 3 years, computers of all kinds included in that.
@@MyRegardsToTheDodo or maybe it's just that many, like Dennis and Sarah?
I want Linus to go into a Best buy and seek help from the geek squad and I want to see their reactions
"Sorry Linus, my supervisor won't permit us to allow you to expose Best Buy to lawsuits."
"I know more than you"
@@AlasdairGR You will never master my level of stupidity...but don't blame yourself: I haven't been practicing very long.
When I worked there years ago, it would have been a dream come true to meet a fellow geek like Linus, and shoot the shit about computers. My Best Buy 10 years ago had one of the chill Geek Squad's that had Comptia certified techs doing the work, and they would get dirty to truly fix computers, not just run the scripted software off of a CD or flash drive.
I worked for Geek Squad from 2005 to 2012, starting out in the store and then moving on to in-home work. I left for a lot of reasons, but suffice to say, Geek Squad became a mere shadow of its former self.
It's really sad. The culture has almost died entirely. Although the mobo of shame and the badge ceremony are really the only highlights in recent years. Often, people won't do push-ups for "losing" their badge and no more space badges, sadly.
@@greysom88 We always badge checked in my precinct, and we definitely had great badge ceremonies. I remember one agent's badge being wrapped in a ton of boxes and came in with our Apple consignment boxes lol
I’m a tech at a Ubreakifix (franchise) and were given pretty much free reign when it comes to software for pc related repairs and honestly I couldn’t imagine operating any other way, half of my job feels like trying to fix peoples misconceptions about technology nowadays because of places like geek squad that frequently try and scare people, its sad seeing how it affects alot of people out there.
During my tour of duty working at Best Buy they would send new Geek Squad employees to me for training for my deep knowlege and experience - but would never allow me to transfer into that department because the manager in my own department actually believed he owned me, like a serf. Best Buy management structure can best be described as 22 year old ladder climbing 'managers' following the binder procedures (SOP) to the letter. If there was a fire nobody would be allowed to grab the extinguisher if they werent authorized or listed in the binder. Their goal was to be promoted for obediance to the SOP before that fire spread to their department. So anyone with problem solving skills, ideas, experience and insight was a threat to teh SOP - and had their hours cut. This is why you get inconsistent GEEK SQUAD service - Technicians having to fight someone from Corporate or management with a 3 ring binder of procedures that dont woek.
Having worked with incompetent morons, I absolutely understand why SOPs exist...
With that being said, everyone falls victim to the dreaded executive/corporate checklist at some point.
The higher ups don't have context to interpret data properly and make informed decisions... So they go ahead and make uninformed ones
#FACTS
now that sounds like someone who has too much FRREEEEEDOOOOMMM!!!
So true. I had a very similar situation. I even had to help the GS manager with a few issues he couldn’t figure out once and then got reprimanded from our store GM for being behind the curtain since other computers potentially had sensitive data displayed. Then had the GS manager recant ever needing my help.
Oh don't worry, as a current worker of Best Buy the management is getting redone, and worse! Less managers per store, they are downing it to one manager and then "key holders" or "verified closers/openers" if you will.
I use to work at Geek Squad and I have a degree in IT. Sometimes, they do actually have skilled techs. I still have my MRI disc from 12 years ago lol 😆 😂
Just turn back your clock a few years and they still work great lol. mostly as a time capsule
I remember one of them helped me fix my old steering wheel controller.
loved finding those old old mri discs stashed around the precinct i worked in for a few years. still have a few of the branded mri usb 2.0 flash drives myself.
i remember the geek squad tech tools disk being leaked to the torrent sites, i shook my head when i saw some of the tools you guys were stuck with
@@daggers101 I have a bachelor's in information technology
Man, I wish they would do something like this for T-Mobile tech support. I worked for them for years and I swear some of the resolutions that were given were criminal. The lack of education in all departments was outstanding.
I worked in my local Geek Squad from 2008-2013 and we originally had really good technicians, bu this time period saw a pretty bad decline in Geek Squad department functionality and quality hires and eventually the changes pulled me off of actual repairs and turned me into a glorified customer service agent that didn't touch the computers after they were initially checked in. The management style change during this time is what eventually caused me to leave as things got way more pushy in terms of offering services or products, making me more of a sales rep than a tech. This pushed me away but at least opened the door for me to get into my current IT career (and UA-cam tech channel efforts). Geek Squad CAN definitely be decent, but really depends on the quality of the techs that any store in any area hires. Just like the quality of service can vary from location to location in any other business. It's just unfortunate now that the way they want agents to push stuff makes it rather off-putting. I'm not sure they still offer ADRs (Advanced Diagnostic and Repair) but the 1 year ADR for $200 that would let a user bring in up to 3 different devices for unlimited repairs during that 1 year timeframe...that wasn't a bad deal at all if you think about it.
Yeah the push for everyone to be a salesperson is a big put-off for Best Buy and other stores, at least for me. I constantly would have people go "oh well you're a tech person so you should work at Best Buy" but it seems like so often the incentive is not really to help the customer, but to sell product above all else. Wish it was easier to figure out how a particular store is run.
It is basically the same thing, $200 lets you bring in as many PC's as you own, or anyone in your household owns for "data transfers, tune up, clean up, running diagnostics, software install, upgrades"
You much i have not worked at a good store...b/c you said ADR and not ADR+P and you are not pushing that P you are doing it wrong........and then when you are really trying to get all the money you would push that ADR+DP for that real deep feeling( +DP Data backup and Protection)....LOL
@@squinty36isdabomb Totaltech includes all of that, plus any and all protection programs that Best Buy offers, including AppleCare, on every device you buy from BBY. They'll also move data over from an old machine to a new one and set up anything you want them to.
Having worked as a consultant for Geek Squad for two years I can speak to a lot of what you are guessing and agree. Mri is basically just a plug and press play program that does 99% of the techs job for them. Our ARAs sat back and watched anime most of the day while having upwards of 10 computers running MRI at a time. They would preform basic updates outside of MRI but that was about it. Our store was one of the more lax locations when it came to following SOP but we had to basically hide our flash drive book that had non SOP programs. The main issue Geek Squad faces now are best buy managers butting their heads into Geek Squad and trying to correct these SOP issues despite not working in that department. This lead to the constant butting of heads between our GSM and store assistant manager and ultimately lead to our store losing our GSM because he couldn't run the department how it needed to be ran. I can answer any questions anyone may have on the Geek Squad processes and what happens behind the curtains if anyone is interested.
My favorite shit job was overnight security at a major corp's HQ. Half the time I got an education which I still use to this day. The other half, I slept. Win win.
You hit the nail on the head, Geek Squad quality is unfortunately such a store-by-store basis that I would never consider bringing anything to them. I worked in Best Buy customer service for 3 years and we shared the same space as GS. We had one agent that I absolutely loved who always looked out for the customer and truly did his best to solve everyone's problems, super knowledgeable. Then there's agents that don't care at all and just go by the script. So it's even a day-by-day tossup depending on who's working that day!
Imagine you're a geek squad employee and you see Linus walk in asking for an upgrade on his PC.
He'd NEVER, go himself. Ever.
If he did come in to get his computer fixed, it would be because the dropped it!
Imagine if it was ANDY that walked in.
@@Honeneko. ye, that's why you should imagine it
The bad ones wouldn't recognise him.
while Icue isn't of any use for RGB on the fans and case, the client may have a corsair peripheral like a headphone and or mouse and keyboard that could be synced up together or use for battery warnings for wireless devices.
I too would not have removed it.
Current Geek Squad employee here. Some of the things in this video were very... Strange to me... For example, the approved tool list is updated fairly regularly, for example, Ubuntu was pulled from the approved list relatively recently. One thing I will absolutely agree with is that the quality of your interaction will depend heavily on the specific agent you interact with. A tiny precinct like mine (only 6-8 agents on payroll at any given time) has the consultation agents trying to legitimately understand the issue and asking other agents for advice and opinions, but you have to deal with making appointments in order to be seen between a handful of phishing victims, inexperienced gamers, and iPhone repairs (assuming the location is authorized), because there are only 2-3 agents available, 5-8 appointments over the next hour, a growing pile of returns that need to be checked if they can go back on the floor, and 20 minutes allotted to per appointment to evaluate the issue to provide proper context to the single (or two if you're there on a busy afternoon) repair agent in the back working on 5-25 computers at once while keeping track of each client's unique situation. The one you went to looks like it was one of the big ones where there are too many agents for them to know every other agents' name and jobs are performed with robotic efficiency. They probably have an entire team dedicated exclusively to checking the functionality of returns for potential open-box resale. The best service would probably come from a precinct of about 10-14 agents total, where they all know and work with eachother daily, but there are enough hands and unique perspectives to go around. Too many agents and you no longer have a tight knit team. Too few and you no longer have experiencial diversity. Field agents, the ones that go to your home, are going to have to have much more experience to be able to handle doing all they do either alone or in pairs. Geek Squad has to balance a fine line between organized chaos and impersonal efficiency. You get the same thing with any service job though. Car shops, medical clinics, even schools. You gotta find your Goldilocks zone.
Wdym they pulled ubuntu from the list, like removed it or you found it on the list?
Is it just me or does the coloring feel off?
Not just you.
Yes, it’s way off
I've noticed it was just the intro.
Me too
Contrast seems to be very high for some reason?
As a former BBY employee I 100% vouch for service quality varying on a store-by-store basis. I (apparently) worked at one of the good ones. My co-workers were great people, and even the part time teens that clearly weren't planning on working there long term were friendly and helpful to customers. While I didn't love our manager, I think he did an amazing job hiring genuinely good people, especially when it came to supervisors. Throughout my training and the time I worked there it was clear everyone's #1 job was to engage and help customers. Yes, selling Geek Squad Protection and the BBY credit card was encouraged and celebrated, but it was clear to me that as long as I talked with every customer, answered questions, and help them find the best product for them, then I would still be a valuable employee. Thanks to the internet I would later find out how bad other BBY stores could be, but I absolutely vouch for my local one and genuinely recommend them to my friends.
I had the opposite experience at my store. Im not sure if this is how other locations did it but I was in HomeTheater and we had a whole feedback system that I excelled in. Tons of great customer feedback and had people that would come back just to work with me. Not bragging just setting the stage for me ultimately quitting after being told quite aggressively and suddenly that if I didn’t hit my “black tie protection” metrics by next paycheck it would be my last. I gave them my two weeks instead.
Many years ago, I worked as a computer repair person at a recycling center. The computers we fixed were sent to schools and low-income people. We were down the street from Best Buy and always got people asking for a second opinion.
Once, we got a machine that had the Best Buy repair disk that was still in the machine. (they were burning CD's with common apps found on FileHippo). We used almost the same software being a volunteer organization and charged about $30.
As a current "Sleeper Agent" of GeekSquad. I'm excited to watch this video.
Each store is vastly different in service.
Yeah.. some are pretty understaffed too
Same. Videos like this make me wish I'd stayed, just to be able to work on this one.
Also a former agent, I'd say even the service between ARAs could be pretty different...
@@RevWolf1776 lucky for me my store’s ARAs are pretty consistently good at their jobs.
Its extremely hit or miss depending on if they have anyone competent working there. Some are extremely knowledgeable, others are completely clueless and just follow a script
As a former geek squad employee, our primary customer base isnt people who know about computers, its the elderly and people who may not have technology as integrated into their daily lives. Being from Iowa, we have lots of farmers and small business owners using software that is super out of date, and when their stuff fails and they buy new theyre lost. Every thing changed so much in 10 years that unless youve been keeping up on it the whole time, its really hard to just jump into something so foreign. Insert Geek Squad.
Which would be cool, but really just felt like taking advantage most of the time. We were often not given time to educate people. Top management just wanted to sell subscriptions that were a good value proposition to maybe 5% of our customers. The people in front were almost all Sales people with Google-fu if you were lucky, not tech or customer service people. The people in the back were very savvy but mostly underutilized, running scripts.
@@akamesamaour manager usually stays out of our way and lets us do our own thing, we are able to sell more subscriptions as we are able to spend more time fixing the problem with the customer there or educating them
I worked Geek Squad for two years from on the front counter to being a repair agent. The person on the front counter more often than not is just going to give you the script cause, as you said, they don't require any certification or previous knowledge. When I joined as a consultation agent, I had no tech experience and really didn't know anything outside of being a user (I didn't keep my own computer up to date or cleaned). So working on the front counter I would go with the script and what I learned on the job. Became a repair agent without any certification either. Just from on the job training (the guys that trained me both had related associates degrees though).
Got my A+ several months into being an ARA then 6 months later was out. Geek Squad pay isn't competitive enough with actual IT to maintain trained/certified employees. I was getting $20/hr but that was because my manager had just lost his two actually trained repair agents and I was his longest running agent overall at the time and was looking for jobs. So he fought for me to get decent money to stay. But the overall paycap for ARA is around $21.27/hr I believe. So more often than not you're only going to have people with basic IT knowledge at Geek Squad. Anyone that knows more will get a better paying job.
I just got hired. I was trying to get experience in IT and applied. I will be a hybrid where I do in home and PC repair in store or something. I am studying for my A+ also.
@@txnhb Congrats! I hope you enjoy it! Its a great place to get some entry level experience! Soak up all the knowledge you can. Use the Geek Squad subreddit from time to time for things you and your precinct dont know. Get that A+ and get a couple years of solid IT experience. Best of luck!
I just imagine Linus walking into a Geek Squad and the employers be like: "wtf are YOU doing here?"
@@seanpeever where's the sauce
I would have honestly said get the fuck out. You're just trying to troll.
I mean to be honest I wish i can I see him when I am working. The only person that has came to geeksquad thag is famous is the self protector fake police officer forgot his name
@@petory6952 "the self protector fake police officer" WHAT LOL???? Please tell me theres a story here because it sounds wild XD
Gordon Ramsey of computers
Former Geek Squad Agent here (13 years)- I was hired as part of the national rollout in the early 2000's. This was spot-on, in terms of MRI approved tools, and hiring practices, per SOP. As an in-store supervisor (AKA, "DCI") and a field service tech (AKA, "Double Agent"), I was progressive myself and encouraged my fellow Agents to use tools (that I reviewed for safety, quality, lack of adware/malware, etc.) and methods that weren't necessarily "by the book". Most of the MRI team moved on from corporate to MalwareBytes around 2014-2018, ironically- could explain the lack of engagement there. As for hiring - I personally made sure to vet the candidates, and would create my own interview process, including sabotaging a PC; I'd tell them there were 3 hardware problems with the computer (one desktop, one laptop) but I'd also include a 4th one as a "bonus" to see if they'd catch it. Ranging from loose CMOS battery, to a bad/dead PSU that would fail upon being tested, to improperly seated RAM; or on a laptop, the wifi switch being turned off, physically broken charging jack (or I'd just desolder it to simulate breakage), etc. I've hired people that had certs up the wazoo and were completely clueless, sadly, thus my own spin on interviews. It's kinda sad to see how things have declined since I left, but I still bring my old GS spirit and OG GS training to every job I've had since. I still have my badges on my desk, too. Remember where I came from.
Currently working at geek squad. Would have loved to have you as my leader to bring these challenges to my team. Unfortunately in store agents now only focus on utilizing MRI and when things hit the fan, doing a OS reset. Anything not software related is shipped out to our repair centre under a warranty or as a paid service. Shipping out units has honestly been helpful though as bestbuy wants in store agents now to be able to sell and provide support on the sales floor.
I would like a test where you put "private files" on machines and test whether service workers at stores like Best Buy secretly make copies of them.
You can even set it up to check if the files were accessed
Can't make copies, but do call authorities if something illegal is found
I worked for Geek Squad as a Desk Support Agent. All Geek Squad agents that work on your computer CANNOT access your private data or make copies of it. If they do, they lose their job.
I would love that video, btw your comment was stolen by two people, congrats lol
I would HIGHLY doubt that.
Considering I backup my files and reinstall everything from scratch every 6 months, I am the geek squad for my family. Thankfully, my service includes documenting everything I do and emailing it to said family member, along with links to videos and software, so if I'm ever unavailable or they just decide to do it for themselves, they have all the tools. Maybe I should do it as a side hustle, would be pretty fun anyway.
I hate being the family geek squid. I keep a clone around just so I don't have to bother. Re-download all the malware you want. I'll see you in six months anyway bitching about something I couldn't have possibly done.
I remember back in high school I had a friend that joined Geek Squad. He barely knew anything about computers yet dropped out of school because he was making $2k/week doing Geek Squad house calls almost non-stop. He said they just put in a CD, let it automatically run & it fixes a lot of things. If the CD doesn't fix the problem then they just wipe the machine & reload the data if they can (which apparently they usually don't bother anyway.) Also, if you use your own car instead of the Geek Squad car you kept a lot of money (Geek Squads cut would be only 20% instead of like 60%.) The man started racking up parking tickets because this was around the time Chicago first started installing speed cameras & he'd be doing 60+mph on the way to his calls, but he didn't care because he was making so much money.
how’s he doing now
Like many of you, I provide tech support for my immediate family. I often think of how lost people must be if they don't have somebody to help them with their technical problems. Issues I can fix in seconds could cost people days of lost productivity, and frustration. I'm not sure what the answer to this problem is, either.
In the end the only real answer is education and documentation. I can't say how many times I Googled an error and found a forum post that eventually produced a solution. That is why one should never just say "I fixed it." at the end of a forum thread. Lay out what you did for the sake of others.
The answer is: AI!
@@TechHorse888 This is true. ChatGPT can do decent troubleshooting now.
Don't create such complicated systems without carefully accessing all the complex use cases? It's the exact same problem as computer security. In any other field excellent design is really about stupid proofing everything. A button that works is not a good design. A button that's waterproof, can get smashed thousands of times, handle transient currents and be easily replaced if broken is. None of this is applied to software.
people need to educate themselves on technology, computers are becoming more ingrained in society and every day it becomes a bigger disadvantage not knowing how to use them. computers and tech aren't going away anytime soon
registry "cleaning" in this case just removed unused or errored registry entrys, but it is important to note that some software use registry entrys to set trial modes for software, so cleaning the registry properly can be useful if you need to use a trial of a software again.
The only way to do that SAFELY is manually using Regedit in a very measured and precise way. Automated scanners and 1 click fixes are invariably risky and often cause issues which won't be noticed until later when an install process or application relies on certain default keys or settings and finds they aren't there. Only bad "technicians" use these apps.
@@TheAddanz I've personally never seen a software that doesn't just add the default keys apon install but I suppose it's possible. Personally I use regedit, but I don't think it's good advice for inexperienced users to use regedit. Honestly if you need to use those one click "fixes" for your registry. You probably shouldn't be messing with your registry 😂 I agree 💯
@@lord_cheesus The problem comes when you have broken a plug in or dependency which an installer needs and don't realize it. I've also seen these sorts of apps do really stupid things like removing "corporate" features , basically deleting all networking and workstation and server processes and completely hosing a server or workstations ability to connect to other machines(the coworker who ran that didn't notice the update which added these features and was dumb enough to run it on a file server :( )
Ultimately a roll back from off-site backups undid the damage.. but yeah lol.
Absolute nightmare, but thats the problem with 1 click fixes, unless they are home brewed you never know when the author is going to make changes , then again ive seen anti-virus try and delete system files and such too though thats a lot less common and not for a good amount of time since the last timei saw that (brand new anti-virus company that is still around but their product is actually decent now)
I shall have to google how to clean out trial entries. That could come in handy if I can figure it out.
@@flameshana9 yeah it's a trick I learned a fair few years back in college refurbishing and flipping laptops to make ends meet. This was before G2A had super cheap windows keys and a retail copy to do a fresh install with a new licence would set you back more then you could get from the laptop. So cleaning out trial entries was important for that "new install feel" that you get with a new laptop.
Also came in really helpful when I was building my first hackintosh as I didn't have a Mac machine to access EFI without the notepad > save - exploit, which isn't perticularly usefull for actually bypassing windows locked permissions and writing unmountable hidden partitions.
There's a software that I needed to install the bootloader and I don't remember why but I was like I'm only going to use this once and the trail copy was time limited or something so I just deleted the registry key it used to start the timer.
Await The Signal! I was an agent in the UK for 2 years, you only get 4 days training and the rest you learn as you go, amazing community of people. Linus is right on this one the software on MRI was mostly out of date but still did the job and (we could only used approved software from GS) Windows tools are pretty good for basic clean ups without taking it to GS or local PC Nerd/Geek. I found educating "Clients" was always the best way and if they wanted regular visits then a subscription would be the best option financially etc...
I love that you now just upload whenever the video is ready. Makes it more fun when you can gamble each time if you get to watch it at 7pm or 2am
It was ready earlier, they uploaded to Floatplane before the WAN show, so about 19 hours ago.
I switched from WinDirStat to WizTree. It shows results basically instantly, because it uses the FAT (or whatever it's called nowadays) instead of slowly scanning the whole disk.
Also: is there an open source batch script of sorts that does all the menial standard tasks like cleaning out temp files, insalling all updates, cleaning the windows update cache and so on?
An updated video on general troubleshooting would be great, especially focused on "this computer has become very slow, even though everything seem fine!".
They use WizTree internally, it was mentioned on last night's WAN Show.
@@Dan-Simms it's just that they recommend windirstat in the video description
I used to use WinDirStat, but then switched to Disk Space Analyzer that is part of Glary Utilities. It is wayyyy faster.
We have a local computer repair store near me and they have ALWAYS delivered quality business at affordable rates. I now have a gaming pc, and anytime i need to upgrade or do something with it i dont know how to, i take it to them, as long as you buy the part yourself its usually pretty cheap to get done.
It would have been interesting to see what would've happened if there were two identically "slow" systems - one was brought in to Best Buy and one was brought in to a nearby Microcenter, to see how those two would perform, relative to each other.
Agreed. The ratings on Microcenter's similar service aren't great either.
With the amount of custom stuff I have set in the registry over the years I would be terrified that any reg cleaner might set something back to a default and end up breaking something that took me hours to fix in the first place
custom stuff like?
So, why dont you just save a copy of your registry ? Lol
in fact most reg editors prompt to save current registry jjst in case
"reg cleaners" were really helpful to me purely for making sense of configuration that windows doesn't expose at all like the myriad of ways a process can start on startup or the hilariously overly complex system used to generate and update context menus. It's true in a sense we don't need registry cleaners but that's only because Microsoft put a stop to context menu spam and gave users a way to toggle startup items. Which of course now Microsoft abuses. "Share with Skype" anyone? Bing Search popping up without asking you. Teams getting installed automatically.
This shouldn't be too much of a fear as long as you back up the registry.
The only thing you have to worry about then is doing anything that make it where the computer won't boot. And, even then, there are ways to repair your registry with the repair disc.
@@ZipplyZane Backing up the registry is a) not a default feature and b) users aren't going to know this was the cause. c) won't work with total backups where restoring an older version would break more things.
In reality the best thing always to do is just keep all the data you want to keep seperate from the file system the os is on. Be prepared to reinstall all applications which is usually pretty easy with things like steam but can be a nightmare with adobe or microsoft office.
I have heard so many Geek Squad horror stories, including one where the Manager of that Best Buy store's laptop vanished after it was put in for repair.
I use to work for Geek Squad. It use to be special to be a Geek Squad Agent. But then the Original Owner lost control and store started taking control over and they will literally let pretty much anyone do things including people good at sales. So some stores will only care about number vs people that have experience
In regards to Temp files - Windows has a habit of releasing update files based on time passed. It’s entirely possible GeekSquad overlooked Windows Cleanup and the system files, but it also might be on MS.
I worked with three other ARAs and watched AJU do temp cleanup before updates. It’s not on MS. It’s a systemic issue.
It's because we are trying to do repairs on 20 computers and the temp cleaner gets run with the diagnostic software, we are trying to get them done as fast as possible and something like rerunning temp cleaner after updating is completely a waste of time. The space taken up by the updates is not affecting the computer in any way, unless it's like on a computer that has very limited space.
I like how you can see his eyes reading the sponsor segue while trying to hold in the pain
I was an Advanced Repair Agent for some time, and can attest to the many other peoples' experience that it is totally case by case. My Precinct was small, we had like 6 CAs and I was one of 2.5 ARAs, but our manager prided himself on our customer service so we were able to do everything necessary to send them home happy. Many times I would go out front and do small tune-ups with the customer because sometimes they enjoyed being involved. Minor repairs, part swaps, messed up settings, many times I would send them home without charging them just to build that relationship and it did work out well for us.
I agree that they should've mentioned iCue since it is a heavy process on Startup, but there may have also been an assumption that the customer has accessories that may use iCue, such as keyboard, mouse, etc. Definitely should've asked if they noticed it.
ICUE does not bother me on the rare startups that I do. Do people really shut down their computer? Mine stays running all the time and sleeps when I do not need it. Plus it only runs 30 to 40 watts when in use. My overall savings of this new computer will pay for it and all the upgrades and sceens I got in less than 3 years from all of the saved electric I will save.
why would they ask? the PC is already Corsair... they have like 5 other PCs to attend to
This is an interesting video. I would love to see a second video where you create the issue (a messed up registry, a piece of malware, hardware issue, etc.) and see if they actually fix it. Like when you review the buying and customer service of prebuilt PCs.
Geek Squad was my first tech job that I had. I worked there two years while in college. I learned a lot there, including a lot of things NOT to do. It has been 10 years now, but back then, it was very disconnected about what standards to uphold. A lot of things were up to our discretion. I met a lot of people there, and 10 years later, I ended up hiring or working with many of them in enterprise positions.
Geek squad definitely setup the color settings for this upload
At least it looks like they can handle basic software maintenance 101 that most people that are the tiniest bit tech savvy could do themselves. Now I'm curious to see a follow up video where they're tested on handling a real problem like a hardware failure, borked OS, etc. That'll be a true test of their capabilities.
@UnjustifiedRecs If you work a job where you interact with the public daily, you start to wonder how some people are able to tie their shoes on their own, let alone expect that they know how to use basic computer functions
There are a couple of scenarios where it is useful to clean-up the registry, like when you uninstalled a specific endpoint management software that left some registry keys behind which cause any endpoint or anti-virus software from different vendors to fail installing, because "there is already an anti-virus software installed".
I was told once by someone that going into the registry without knowing what you were doing was like riding a pogo stick through a minefield blindfolded!
There are settings in there, that will definitely mess your system up. A lot of them. Like an insane amount.
well now we need a guide on how to properly clean up your pc
10 years ago, I considered myself one of the best Geek Squad counter reps ever. I upsold more than nearly everyone in the company and yet always ensured customers were actually getting their bang for buck. Oftentimes, I used my own tools like a PSU tester and even personally power cleaned ($30) nearly every other computer using the real air compressor in the auto shop, not just a 3 second burst of a compressed air can like all the other agents. I usually would make personal recommendations during assessment like disabling certain startup items but keep in mind that disabling something in startup could increase the chances of a full on redo if something particular DID turn out to be important which is why most techs stay away from that idea - saving your 1 extra second might land the whole computer back for 48 more hours...is it really worth the risk for either side of the desk? Although my main focus was repair check-ins, I also drove PC Setups which I took a LOT of pride in. Every recovery disc was clearly labeled, anti-virus was installed and optimized, I'd even setup Office Starter edition with handy shortcuts on the desktop, I'd personally disable a lot of unnecessary startup items, and ultimately open Internet Explorer (RIP) and WMP just to make sure the customer wouldn't get any kind of setup prompt after paying for us to do a setup. I wanted everything to just. work. Unfortunately, almost nobody else took this thorough approach because it was above and beyond the minimum call of duty, let alone taught. Same goes for the PC repairs which I did do occasionally if we were short staffed. The 2 biggest problems were that most techs relied too heavily on the MRI automation and didn't have time to do all the TLC tweaks that are on the quality check sheet. I will say that we usually skipped registry repairs unless there were noticeable problems (if it ain't broke don't fix it) and fortunately it wasn't deep level like some programs I've seen which definitely do more harm than good. The MRI was very light on registry "optimization" in a good way. Ultimately, MRI was - and probably still is - an incredible tool, seriously. We could transfer info to an external drive while simultaneously filtering out viruses, run powerful hardware diagnostics, remove malware automatically, remove ransomware manually, reset login passwords, fix corrupt Windows update boot loops, and do some good ol' command line shenanigans. Idk how it is today but after several evolutions, MRI became the real deal. Eventually, everything was designed to where anybody could check a broken computer in by typing whatever the customer said was wrong, 1 available full time staff member was old school and actually good at everything, and the rest just had to run MRI scans in 3 clicks then establish a remote connection to "Agent Johnnie Utah" who ran Windows updates remotely. Geek Squad is probably still reliable but definitely pay for the data backups because from what I've heard they only have time (let alone expertise) to simply factory restore your computer to fix things these days lol
I work at a store that offers computer repair and there is so many times we see computers with the geek squad sticker come in because they didnt fix it
Drives me crazy, $20 to install turbo tax. I installed an Office competitor and did updates on a gentleman's laptop the other day and told him not to worry about it. He'll come in when he needs actual repairs and likely tell his friends. I get to feel good that we made his day and have secured future business. Oh geeksquad....
@@patricbakies1518 yeah i agree its so ridiculous i try and tell my customers that they can just do it themselves to save some dosh 😂
@@patricbakies1518 I do computer repair as a side hustle in my small town, and when it's something super simple like installing a basic Linux distro like Mint, Solus, Manjaro Budgie/GNOME, or something like Chrome OS Flex(a lot of my customers have older gear that won't run Win 10, or 11 very well, and offer that as an option vs. a new computer), or setting up an office suite such as LibreOffice that takes me little I time I rarely charge the customer, unless they insist on paying me something, as good word of mouth has brought me business over the years, and more happy customers in the long run.
Time for the Linus one hour tuneup video! Or do you have one already?
What software, what options are safe and sensible.
Using your Phishing incident as a example of use cases and the importance of your sponsor is great. Nice video Linus!
I worked as a repair agent without a 'by the book' supervisor. It was a blast and we got to legitimately help people with tons of weird issues.
In my country repair shops are everywhere. You cant guarantee how good they are but you can bind them legally to compensate for anything they break at least. The other repair shops are from parts vendors where your normal warranty is good for like 2 years and you can get extended but if it runs out you can pay for a fix.
Registry tweaking and cleaning used to be a useful thing. 20 years ago. One example was at that time a lot of the network settings were optimized for dial up connections and things could be improved by one or two registry tweaks.
I think a lot of them now are optimised for ADSL/cable connections...for turn of the century speeds. So you might still want to look into that.
I did it for clients around 2013-2016 when I was doing computer repair. It helped a lot on computers that came in with extreme amounts of malware.
@@jabezhane For the vast majority of people the settings now will still be good for many years unless there is a change to the ethernet standard. Most people in most countries can't even get a connection even approaching a gigabit let alone faster and if they do have it available in their areas many don't have a connection that fast because of the cost. Also, lets say you have a super fast machine and a 10 gigabit NIC and connection. If the path between you and the server involves one ATM switch no matter how big of packets you were sending before they are still getting chopped into 53 byte chunks by that thing.
In other words, for most users with most OSes there are no changes they can make at the OS level to improve the speed of the connection at this point. I'm sure that will change eventually but who knows when?
@@hackerx7329 Just pointing out that for those of us in the modern world might want to look into adjusting to get your moneys worth.
@@jabezhane You can try adjusting your MTU size if you want but the default has been 1500 for ethernet devices for decades now. You could theoretical speed things up if every device on your network was set higher but you have to have a router that actually lets you adjust (As a rule consumer grade ones don't) that and good luck finding set top boxes, game systems, phones, tablets, etc that let you at all without hacking them. And like I said before, for internet connections you have no control how all the routers on the way and the servers you connect to are configured. So enjoy you extra packet fragmentation and the extra latency it introduces along with random packet loss.
I worked at Geeksquad mission control(call center IT) I'm honestly surprised at how accurate LLT's analysis of what gs does. Most of the time gs just uses MRI and nothing else. Of course there are the few that stray from that path but its rare. It's completely automated and requires hardly any user intervention.
Hey Linus, super cool that you covered Geek Squad. I work there! Having watched… I have a bit to posit.
You see, I work at Geek Squad in FLORIDA. The land of retirees. These are people who are on their “happy trails” and find tech (in any capacity) to be confusing and frustrating. They are more than willing to shell out Hamiltons and Benjamins to make these utterly confounding things go away. To them, it is more than worth it.
Another thing is that our tuneup is not our main attraction, at least there I’m at. THAT goes to the data transfer service. People are horrified of messing up and losing their data forever, so they send it to me to do instead. Sometimes it’s more complicated than wanting data from an old laptop to be on a new one. Sometimes I have to remove the drive and use a SATA to USB adapter because the screen is unresponsive.
I’m the proud holder of a CompTIA ITF+, A+, and Net+
But this is the best work in my retiree town. I love it all the same though! It’s very relaxing.
Good video. Would love if you guys did more of these. Possibly even visit multiple BB locations so you get a data set of more than just one data point.
As someone who was a Geek Squad Agent 15 years ago, I'm not entirely sure whether it's comforting or disconcerning how familiar all this sounds. Ha!
Thank you inside source for telling about the spectrum of Geek Squad Precincts out there. I worked in both styles and would do the absolute best I could for any PC i touched but so much of it comes down to management priorities and per-existing Geek Squad culture.
-Sleep Status Agent 46646
Hey, Montanan here thanking you for using Billings for the alliteration :P
But seriously, like most mostly rural areas, the closest Microcenter is either down in Colorado or off East in Minneapolis/St. Paul. So for someone like me, most of my business when it comes to PC tinkering is online watching other Techtubers like GamersNexus and DawidDoesTechTips and salvaging parts for a prebuilt, proprietary computer unit. It's rough, and we will typically drive a part until it's actually incapable of running anymore, but that's just how it works out here.
Removing icue could have been a bad idea. What if the customer had a corsair kb / mouse that wasn't brought along. Then RBG/macros wouldn't have functioned when they got it back
Wouldn't icue still have shown the drivers for the devices even if the hardware itself wasn't present? Or am I mistaken in that
Your PC was probably in pretty decent shape before you took it in to Geek Squad. There wasn't all that much they could really do.
I want to see how they do with something like my grandma's PC. Every time I looked at it, she had an antivirus that she hadn't updated in more than a year, a browser so full of toolbars you could barely see anything else, a homepage set to whatever the last program she installed suggested, and dozens of other junk programs. Also for some reason running a defragmenter every day (this was in the hard drive era), the critically outdated antivirus, malwarebytes (again not updated in a year), and one of those unwanted program finders (not that she ever did anything with the results).
People like her are one of the reasons I think retailers stick way too much RAM in their prebuilts. She thinks she needs lots of memory to store all her pictures.
A big part of this confusion comes right from manufacturers who still use the wrong terminology when they pitch the features or benefits of their computers to the public. There's little wonder why anyone who isn't into this stuff gets confused so easily. When I was a salesman at Best Buy they didn't have easy comparison charts or signs that customers could use to make an informed decision about their tech. So I made hand-outs to give to my customers who needed them. Didn't cost me much. It had the acronyms and their meaning. The common specs to look for when buying software, the specs for common electronics, ditto for games for gaming consoles, music, videos, etc. It also helped by showing I wasn't some money vampire trying to suck their wallets dry. I was their pal trying to help them even at my own expense.
It paid off too. I had lots of people specifically coming into the store asking for me by name so that I could help them get the best solution for their needs or wants in every department except appliances. Because I have little interest in fridges, ranges, microwaves. Boring.
I love that it was able to be so simple but still give me goose bumps.
Would love to see you do this again in the future and install something to monitor if the BB staff went looking through personal folders
I took my pc to GeekSquad to fix my pc, got it back 3 days later and the GPU wasn’t screwed in to the backplate, I drove home with it loose, unknowingly.
Former geek squad agent from years ago, it used to be the one you're talking to is unlikely to have done more than set up a scan, the actual work was done by someone who at least had some experience in PC repair (even if that experience was setting up scans before being promoted), and we were restricted to pretty basic "high efficiency" methods where if an issue looked like it was gonna take more than a day, it was suggested to do a reinstall
Geek squad is entry level helpdesk, and they probably are performance reviewed on how many service tickets they complete. Although the price is kinda of baffling for the minimal amount of work they do, but they are probably just making money off older people. Plus they don't wanna get too ambitious because if they fuck something up it will be a customer service nightmare for them.
When I worked there, one of my coworkers called us something very accurate - the McDonalds of computer repair. It was all about getting everything in and out as fast as possible.
I happened to be apart of a very good team. For us it was about accuracy, swiftness, but also making our clients happy.
We treated our clients like neighbors, and we bent over backwards for many of them. They in turn gave us great reviews and repeat business. Not everyone had a grandson or niece to help them out. We tried to fill that role, albeit for a price.
And thankfully we were one of the shops that used whatever tools we wanted. When corporate came we would hide all of our flash drives with the tools we really used on them. :)
In the grand scheme of things, these prices are cheap to non-techies. If they have a computer with issues or don't know whats wrong they may lose several hours or days trying to solve it, plus headaches and stress. Or they may buy an expensive new machine when their old one just needed tuning up.
This work here is pretty basic. But if you're intimidated or don't have computer confidence, 80 bucks is cheap relief to give that problem to someone else. Equally putting in or upselling a new SSD, to replace the HDD, can bring their computer back from the dead and they'd never have thought of it.
Think of how much people spend on car mechanics. It's the same principle. "I don't know what I'm doing and I don't want to fudge it up."
You'd probably get better service and diagnostics at an independent repair shop or agent who isn't restricted by the protocols, and who's better paid to best solve your problems rather than follow the corporate script. But this serves a need in the market and there'll always be people who aren't computer savvy and don't know what they're buying and need help with the basics.
Nah, like someone else said it depends on the location. I used to work there a decade ago and we would do replace cracked laptop LCD's and keyboards for example. Many of them required full disassembly to access the bezel and ribbon cables.
Other GS locations would just run MRI scans and send in damaged computers in to a repair center.
Thankfully, not entry-level for the "insider location" - that's corp HQ 100%
I don't comment often but I have to say. It's amazing how much you let your team put the effort in the artistic direction of your videos. The color grading is getting, the music is much more subtle and the shot composition is better than ever. Honestly it's inspiring to see you push the envelope. All the money you spent in high quality lighting and camera show.
They're a multi million dollar company with literally dozens of employees working on each video. Anything less would be embarrassing
@@10pmmemes88 I think it was sarcasm. This video they clearly dropped the ball if you check the first few minutes vs later.
Proud watcher from Edinboro, PA. A town outside of Millcreek, where that Best Buy in NW PA is.
How to tune-up without going to Best Buy:
1) Backup your files to the cloud or an external storage device prior to maintenance
2) Have a thumb drive with a Windows Installation iso
3) Reformat your storage devices where the OS is going to be installed on
4) Install that brand new new storage device with a clean slate of Windows free of viruses and other junks
5) Problem solved
no, not really, that's actually a bad thing to do for a computer that only needs a tune-up or a general clean-up, for most ppl.
@@supercoolmunkee Which is still not something you want to do, especially with software, old and new.
Faithfully served in my precinct for a couple years and went sleeper for a "real" IT job. As a repair tech, I definitely did my best to help people and correctly solve issues, but the old software and the awful leadership structure suffocates any real talent. I wish it was different. The culture has a lot of charm to it, but Best Buy corporate just sees GS as a way to sell the membership unfortunately. Your experience with Geek Squad will always be hit or miss. I had many clients tell me they might not come back once I told them I was moving on. It can really come down the individual agent that happens to close your ticket.
I used to work for Geek Squad - You're 100% right about it being determined by the supervisor. I got lucky enough to have an excellent one, but given that they're shackled with how much they can pay talent, almost all of them will struggle to retain talent longer than it takes an employee to get certified and picked up by the Genius Bar.
0:08 Do not ever do this again, I will sue. My poor heart.
I’m surprise that the PC repair business has narrowed down to was basically a monopoly at this point. You’d think that with the rise of PC gaming that there would be more business on that front.
I think alot of companies either just buy new computers, or get their IT people to handle it.
I think the kind of person who would have the knowledge and confidence to go outside of the big franchises to search for smaller local services is probably the kind of person who has less need for PC repair services in the first place. It's definitely a market that heavily punishes having anything less than the highest brand recognition.
Not particularly, there's more people who know what they are doing with computers, and gaming has kindof spurred that on, it's more surprising that best buy is still running this kindof thing. I'm a solo PC repair guy, and most of my income comes from building PCs rather than repairing them because people actually know what they're doing now.
Actually....the opposite makes sense. Because with the mix of computers being 1-easier to understand, and 2-significantly more assistance being available online, and 3-people on the opposite end of that spectrum don't want to bother with learning how their electronics work and instead of repairing potential problems and instead just deal with problematic device or replace the whole thing.
As a repair business. you need to have people proactive enough to want to fix and repair their devices....but not proactive enough to just do it themselves.
don't forget local businesses too, and shop around if you need to! finding a place you can trust is really important
Would love a Microcenter version of this, Im aware they are not in Canada but im sure you guys for the sake of ad revune can figure something out
You should front run it I'd totally watch
Seeing how awesome Microcenter has been in most other regards, I'd imagine their repair service would be pretty great. Though there is only so much you can do when it isn't your machine and you can't ask them about things constantly.
As a geek squad agent, this was hilarious.
Thanks, Linus.
Agreed
As a former agent, it was very stupid.
I'm ngl, you're the only youtuber I watch where I don't skip your sponsor bit.
You can just reinstall the windows. It is the best way to fix everything.
Sounds about right from my experience as an ARA, definitely going to get a huge variation from location to location and even shift to shift. There's a lot of malice ascribed to GS where it really is just general incompetence - whether from poor management (often coming from a sales focus instead of a service one) or the quality of employees you're generally going to get for retail positions.
I think your comment about malice applies to a lot of things. For instance if you look at what government and Congress do a lot of the stuff they do that seems malicious or even evil is actually due to ignorance and incompetence. You don't have to be smart or knowledgable to get elected to Congress, you just have to fool enough of the people enough of the time.