For those who haven’t kept track:

• Best Buy took my hard drive out of my laptop, without permission, and wouldn’t give it back.  They claimed it failed a stress test.
• I took Best Buy to court, the judge made them return my hard drive.

Now, the update:  the hard drive they claimed did not work, works fine.  However, my touchpad no longer works.  It seems that when they put in a new motherboard, they forgot to hook the touchpad up again. I could take it back, but letting the Geek Squad touch my computer again seems like a bad idea.

Turns out Best Buy can’t just steal your hard drive.  It took a judge to explain that to them, but he did and they gave it back to me.  The whole thing is still pretty stunning.  Basically:

• Best Buy pulled a perfectly functional hard drive out of my laptop, without ever mentioning it to me.
• They returned my laptop, without bothering to put an operating system on the new drive.  Or mentioning that they had taken the old one out.
• Inexplicably, they then refused to return my old hard drive, with all my stuff.  The store manager was unable to see the difference between a full hard drive and a car battery.  I don’t think he knows much about computers.
• The judge in small claims court managed to clarify the concept of property law to the clueless Best Buy people.

Last night I went to the DC small claims court.  It turns out they have evening hours on Wednesday.  It also turns out that there’s one woman working behind the counter, struggling with technology that intermittently fails her.  A few other people waited in the room with me.  Two guys, probably contractors, playing some game where they identify drawings back and forth, and one professional guy who sat quietly.  A woman ahead of us stood at the counter and chatted about rent.

I had most of my paperwork done, and the woman was very helpful, and now I have a court date.  My major goal is that, somehow, Best Buy will learn something.  Like, my hard drive is important to me.  It’s my property.  You can’t just take it.  My fear is that, even if they lose, they won’t learn.

Though I was told again today (by the Geek Squad) that somehow my hard-drive became their property, and that their policy is to never return it, in fact they have a written policy that says quite the opposite:

We also work hard to immediately fix problems that put our
customers at risk. For example, in calendar 2006, we learned
that the hard drives of several customers’ computers were not
destroyed, as promised, but instead resold. These hard drives
contained sensitive information belonging to their original owners.
We jeopardized the trust of those customers – something we
regret. However, the incidents led to a comprehensive audit of
how we handle customer computers and hard drives. Today,
whenever possible, we return upgraded or replaced storage
devices – like computers and hard drives – directly to our
customers, giving them the maximum amount of control over
their personal data.

This is from the Best Buy Co., Inc. – 2007 Corporate Social Responsibility Report 

So Best Buy/Geek Squad has refused to do even the most basic things that could make the laptop situation better.  They will not put the old hard drive back in the computer.  They will not do a free data transfer, and they refuse to send me my hard drive.  So I will now go the small claims route.  I will create a page on this site, for the complaint itself.  Friends can comment, if they like.

I’m kind of looking forward to it.  Not in a “gotcha” kind of way, but in the way I looked forward to Grand Jury duty.  I’ll get to see one more part of the American landscape.  Not a pleasant, pretty part of the picture, but something that is there, that is part of how we live, and something that I feel I should know more about.

Today I dropped by Best Buy in Pentagon City to see if they could at least tell me what’s going on. But the Geek Squad is using the “layered incompetence” defense. The laptop is locked in a cage, along with descriptive paperwork. They cannot find the keys. Seriously. This is really happening!

Add another $54 to money I spent somewhere other than Best Buy because of this: A copy of Unreal Tournament III, and a WoW playing guide.

I would also list people who I’ve discouraged from using Best Buy with my story, except that everyone I talk to says they have already learned not to trust the Geek Squad.

Best Buy, in Pentagon City, Virginia, suddenly thinks my laptop is fixed.  So I get a call from the Geek Squad number, which invites me to call back.  I do so, but the “dispatcher” says I have to talk to the store.

“I can give you their number,” she says.  I wait.  Then she asks which store.  I tell her: Pentagon City.  “Is that spelled Penti?”  No, I spell it out.  She can’t find it.  I go online, look up the store locator, find the store, and give her the zip so she can find it herself.  She thanks me for the info and hangs up.  Anything I can do help the Geek Squad educate employees.

I call the store.  “Sure, it’s ready.”

I ask what’s been done to it.  They have to call me back.

A few minutes later, I get a call.  Turns out nothing has been done.  Well, they tried to find an operating system, but failed.  So they hoped I would just come pick it up and be happy?

I would be updating this more often, with especially insightful entries on the classic “The Island of Dr. Moreau” and the new Starship Troopers III, except that I stupidly took my laptop to The Geek Squad for repair.  It was working pretty well when I took it in, except for the wireless card.  They handed back to me broken.  And didn’t even say “oh, by the way, this doesn’t work anymore.”  I had to take it home to find that out.  Now, I’m stuck between the manager of the Pentagon City Best Buy’s Geek Squad, and a service center in Knoxville Tennessee, and am unable to even find someone who will take responsibility enough to talk to me about.  Like kids in a schoolyard, everyone is pointing the finger at someone else.  More to follow.