Hey now, just because the plans are dubious doesn't mean Geek Squad Agents are goons. I strive daily to make that sometimes dubious service plan pay off. Hell, one of the only reasons I stick with the company is that I can go completely overboard and make anything they want us to pitch worth it to the consumer. Management be damned. There's a whole community of us who always do the RIGHT thing.

Then why is it still called "concrete". If we're changing that definition, I'm suddenly very off the hook as far as quoting turnarounds at work based around "concrete" numbers.

Geek Squad's reputation is already damaged by the horrible experiences. The problem with customer service companies is that only the BAD ever get posted or mentioned anywhere. It's the good and great that often go unnoticed because the customer's have no need to vent frustrations.

At least at my store, the technicians are capable. I've seen some other geek squad's do stupid, stupid things and thought to myself "So this is why we have such a bad name..." Then I realize that some things are unpreventable. Things DO happen, so I've worked with my fellow agents and strive personally to be better, and to increase the number of people who have a POSITIVE GS experience.

On our customer satisfaction surveys, I receive nearly constant 100% satisfaction ratings, or even if it's a 0% satisfaction in service because I wasn't able to solve the problem, I ALWAYS get good comments on my interaction and explanations. I won't stop working with a customer until I have done everything I can to SOLVE for the customer.

I'd just like to throw in my two cents as per the bestbuyscam blog linked in the previous post.

I work at the store mentioned in that post, and I'm appalled at what took place. Thankfully, since that incident, things have been done to rectify behavior like that.

I will admit that some things do happen, but I've also seen managers bend over backwards in a contortionist fashion, sometimes losing several thousand dollars worth of merchandise, just because a customer was respectful of the mistake. Attitude means everything, and with my store, we have PRIDE in that we SOLVE for the customer, regardless of the immediate hit. In our minds, the relationship is worth it. The associate's primary goal is to make money, yes, but the same can be said of any retail store. What's different about this store is that the management learns from the mistakes of customer loss and WILL strive to make it right.

I can attest that most of the time, and this is from my own personal experience, and how policy has been since I started there in October, that the ASSOCIATE can now solve for the customer, and the manager's only job is to ensure that the solution is right for both the customer AND the store.

I'm legally not permitted to speak for the company, since I am just an associate, so this isn't an official representation, this is just what I'm seeing, what I've experienced, and hopefully what I've influenced. I have pride in my store and the people I work with... most of them. There are a few people that are still so worried about the money that they won't solve for the customer every time, but that's why, as an associate, I contact the managers I know will do the RIGHT thing, not the PROFITABLE thing. I just want to throw it out there that the customer experience is almost entirely based upon how the customer reacts.

Instead of demanding to speak with another manager, ask if you can get a second opinion for your peace of mind. It works the other way, too, I know, which is why in many situations when dealing with a customer, I too try to be as courteous and polite as I can.

I hope my post can make an impact on the opinions of my store in particular.

I applaud your proper use of sentence structure and phrases outside the more common vernacular in constructing a sound and logical criticism of another's comment. It's very refreshing.

What did you say about loose bowels sonny? Yeah, they're a pain, I've had to have my diaper changed six times in the last hour. Oh, let me put my hearing aid in. VOWELS! Oh, gotcha now.

I'm going to also throw my lot towards eeebuntu. It runs great out of the box, netbook remix interface is fantastic, draws on the stock Ubuntu repos so you can use any software from Ubuntu. It's really the only distro for the eee that "Just Works"

Uhm... You've got red on you.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. The drive did spin up without reporting about fifteen times while I was troubleshooting (plugging it in to different spots, etc). After that point, the drive no longer spun up at all, and when powered the PCB gets extremely hot. With that information, do you think there's hope for the drive with a new PCB?

What I'd like to know is if there are instances of this in older drives, even as far back as the 7200.9's and if Seagate was possibly aware of a similar problem in the older drives. I've got a 7200.9 sitting here on my desk collecting dust that I was quite bothered with. It did, in fact, one day stop spinning up. Stopped reporting to the bios and all. Now, this happened to me after having already done an RMA on the first '.9'. This time the data WAS lost due to a problem as described (whereas the first seems to be unrelated). Instead of RMA-ing the second one, I've been hanging on to it with the hope someone will be able to help me. Unfortunately, in my drive to get the data off the disk, I purchased a Seagate drive that claimed to be a .9 in the ad, but showed up as a .10 instead, meaning no platter swapping for me (I didn't notice until AFTER I'd cracked the case on the .9) Any info you have would be a reassurance.

I would also like to point out that Konqueror was "replaced" by Dolphin, which in my opinion was a bad decision. I enjoyed all the things in Konqueror's filemanagement profile like tabbed browsing, and the ability to open Konsole pointed to the current location in an easily accessible logical place. The switch to Dolphin has utterly dumbfounded me. And it's likely I just have issues with it because I don't recognize it, as is expected with something new, but I still have yet to see the logic in the switch to Dolphin in it's current form. KDE 4.0 seems all pretty, little function. Though I gripe, I do admit it does look very nice, and it has potential for greatness.