A Laptop Repair From Best Buy’s Geek Squad

My daughter’s computer. It was a gift from my brother as her graduation present. It’s what he’s planned on giving all of my children. I’ve been trying to figure out how I can graduate from something so that maybe he’ll give me a laptop.

Her computer, it’s been behaving badly for over a year. Last spring, she called me several times telling me that it was making some really strange noises. Finally she gave it to me, I can’t remember why, but she ended up getting a used Mac from someone.

My boys were using it, but it finally got to the place where it had to be plugged in all of the time. The battery was clearly dead. Ugh, batteries in laptops die after 3 yrs apparently.

The battery was dead, but other than that, we never really experienced any issues or heard strange noises, until one time in the middle of the night. Thank goodness I’m a night owl or that laptop would’ve had me seriously freaked out. I was sitting at my desk top tapping away when I heard weird beeps and other sounds coming from her computer. It sounded like there were gremlins inside of it messing around.

That was the only time I ever heard the noise, and it did it for about 20 minutes if not longer. I haven’t been able to recreate it either.

Now that I have Geek Squad Coverage, I was able to take it in and have them take a gander at it. Of course as I tried explaining the noise to the guy, he looked at me like I was crazy and he just nodded nicely as if he thought to do otherwise might make me go all batty on him. I was just explaining what I heard, come on man!

We talked a little bit about the issues and while he was booting it up, I mentioned having issues with the battery. Having never owned a laptop before, I had no clue that you shorten the life of said battery by leaving it in while having it plugged in! (shoot, I’m doing that right now). Hang on…

And it’s out! Ok, back to the Geek Squad…

We talked about all the possible issues and he wrote up a slip for me, took all of my information, etc. He told me it might be three days, but they were getting them done a lot sooner.

When I got home, there was an email for me saying that my laptop had been checked in for repair! I almost felt like a mama watching her baby going into surgery. Waiting for those updates, is my daughter’s laptop going to make it? Two days later, an new email…they were ready to reunite me with the laptop. Visiting hours were open!

I went in to get it and I tell you, they were extremely thorough! I was told they removed 129 infections, deleted all temp files, installed all windows updates, disabled extra startup items, and their basic end of task actions. Of course, they weren’t able to duplicate the sounds coming out of the computer, which doesn’t surprise me. If it happens again, I’ll have to get a recording of it so they can hear it.

The service was fantastic to say the least. This was the first time having used the Geek Squad in-store and they were extremely personable and helpful! And I got a final email saying that my repair had been closed and that my laptop had been “restore your device to ‘awesomely functional’ status.”

The only bad news I got was that to replace the battery I’ll have to go through Dell to buy it and that will run me about $60-90! Dang! Obviously replacing the battery is totally worth it! It’ll be nice for my daughter to have a back-up computer as well for school!

After having the Geek Squad find so many infections, I think I might make it a regular stop for me with my laptop and my desktop. Oh man, that desktop is about 7yrs old. I can only imagine what they’d find on that thing!

My only question at this point is, “why haven’t I been using them until now?”

*The reviewer has been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received the product/service at a reduced price or for free.