Archive for the 'Best Buy Canada' Category

13Comments

Best Buy Customers, Your Personal Info Is At Risk

By Lil

I bought a computer at a Future Shop in the summer of 2010, but because we’ve always called the Geek Squad to help us with our computer problems, I figured we’d keep calling them if ever we needed them.

In January 2011, I started having some problems with my computer. It wouldn’t even turn on/off make any noise, nothing. Brought it to the trusty geeks at Best Buy, was charged almost 250$, but in the end got a brand new hard drive… or so I thought.

Fast forward 6 months later. It’s a warm June day and I’m finishing off some work for one of my summer classes and suddenly I get this message pop up on my screen that my computer’s memory is almost at full capacity and I won’t be able to save my file. Finding this incredibly weird (as I have maybe 100 songs, and about 25 word documents) I went to check the My Computer folder. The blue bar that normally shows you how much memory you have left is bright red and is about 1 mm away from the end of the bar. Thinking that this HAS TO be some sort of computer problem, I search around to see if maybe someone had downloaded a program onto my computer without my knowledge and that’s what was taking up all the memory space.

Holy shit was I far from that. Like Montreal to Sydney, Australia kind of far. In the “users” folders, I discovered a folder which had a weird name, a female human name, one which I had never heard before. I was scared it was some kind of porn folder my brother may have been working on, but it was worse. When I clicked on this icon, it was like I was on a completely different computer. A separate “Documents” folder, “Music” folder, and “Favorites” folder. When I clicked on some of the documents I found personal pictures and videos of a family that I had never met in my entire life. Some pictures from a beach somewhere, a chalet somewhere, and a wedding. There were even videos of this family’s young daughters singing and dancing on their webcam, which also let me get a good glimpse into their home and bedrooms. In one word document, one of the girls had described her family for some sort of school project and I saw everyone’s names and what the parents did to earn a living. I
can’t even describe to you how I felt. I showed this to my parents, my brother, and my brother in law who is a computer programmer. He didn’t even believe me when I told him this happened, but we both came to the same conclusion: Best Buy had charged me 250$+ for a used hard drive which wasn’t even wiped clean.

When I showed up to Best Buy to explain what the situation was, the Geek’s manager laughed and said “there’s nothing to worry about here. What happens is that when people come in to fix their computers, we upload all their files to our servers. Then, once the computer is fixed, we upload the files back onto it and voila, fixed computer. This is a simple mistake of mixing up 2 hard drives and uploading the wrong information.” When we told him we’d go see the family (whom we tracked down because of the business the man of the house had, info we found out thanks to the little girl’s school project) the manager said “Oh that won’t be necessary, we’ll call them ourselves.” Then he offered to do a quick diagnostic of the computer. No 250$ refund, no hard drive replacement. He then told us our Windows wasn’t doing too great and we’d have to pay 100$ to have it re-downloaded. Um, no thanks. I grabbed my tower and left.

I went to get a second opinion at a local computer repair store which brings back to life old towers so that the hardware may be more affordable for others. The repairman there opened up the tower and just looked at me. The hard drive that Best Buy installed was a 250-something type when it should’ve been a 500, and it was a hard drive from 2006, which is clearly printed on the hardware. So not only did I pay for an old piece of crap, but it was full of personal info from some family. Wonderful.

Moral of the story? Dear God, do not bring your computers to get fixed at Best Buy because you don’t know who will one day find your personal files on their computer. Best Buy customers beware!!!!

4Comments

Best Buy

By AM

http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/category/best-buy-mobile/20006.aspx?path=b364a01690d452db534a54a7b0c62a26en01

Hope the link works,

I went to purchase the LG Optimus One phone (KOODO) from the Best Buy website. It clearly says that if you purchase the phone on tab you get a $75 gift card. When I get to the store and I was checking out the associate said it was for new activations only. Well guess what If i am abuying a new phone than that should be considered newly activating that phone. He said because I already had an account with koodo that I will not recieve it. That’s not fair at all.

This is one of the main reasons why I went over to best buy to make the purchase in the first place. Talk about false advertising. The add does say that the phone has is not available to be shipped, but no where near that “Free $75 gift card” did it say conditions apply or anything like that


							
3Comments

Avoid Best Buy in Whitby

By ar

I bought a new clock radio with a built-in CD player. When I tried playing a CD the sound was very garbled, so I tried other Cd’s and the same thing happened. I returned it to the same store, but before i did I checked whether or not they had another of the same model. The shelf was empty, so I returned the clock saying that the sound was garbled. I recieved my money back. I stayed awhile to look at other items. I happened by the same clock radio display ten minutes later… THEY HAD RESTOCKED THE SHELF WITH THE SAME RETURNED CLOCK-RADIO !! (Buyer beware: Never buy a box that has been opened - it may be repackaged hardware, and could be broken - especially at that store !)