Testimonial #103: Dick Squad

My husband and I are loyal Linux users, we currently run Ubuntu 8.10 on all of our computers, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is disenchanted with the Windoze bullcrap, as I am. Well, that all being said, I am a full-time student and, after some research, I decided to buy a new laptop. I knew that I didn't want Windows Vista, but unfortunatley it is ILLEGAL for computer stores to sell anything with XP on it, and with some of my school stuff, I pretty much needed a laptop with Windows. So, my husband and I did some research and decided to go ahead and get the Acer Extensa 4420 from Best Buy. We also purchased the 2 year "Black Tie" (YEAH RIGHT) service plan for 120.00. (Later on that month they were offering the same warranty for 40 bucks less... thanks a lot!) I puchased the computer on October 1st.

On October 20th, my audio stopped working correctly. My husband is very good with computers and could not, for the life of him, figure out the problem, so we took it in to the DICK SQUAD to have it repaired. The guy that helped us was a cocky, smarmy asshole who cared more about talking about my husband's tattoos than the problem I was having with my computer (who cares, I'm a woman, right?). After about 15 minutes of trying to show him and explain the problem I was having, he tells me it will be 3 weeks before I can get my BRAND NEW computer back. I was ALREADY pissed off because I couldn't return it any longer since it was 6 days after the wonderful "14 day" return policy, which sucks, too! We leave the computer, and decide to go look at another laptop that they sell, the Eeepc, which has linux on it already. Deciding that we would give the Acer as a christmas gift, we purchased two of the Eeepc's and two service plans. The salesman was, surprise, cocky and know-it-all to us, and we left the store thinking we had gotten the model with the webcam. After all, the picture on the box had a webcam on it, and the salesman never said anything about the fact that the model they carried was THE ONLY model of the Eeepc that DOES NOT have a webcam on it. My husband thought it was the model that did have it.

We get home, open them up, and low and behold, it has a big white plastic thing over where the webcam should be. Not to worry, we thought, we'll just take them back tomorrow. We did. That's when we found out about the lovely 15% re-stocking fee they charge to label the BRAND NEW, NOT USED merchandise as "previously opened". We paid them 100 bucks to return a product that was completely misrepresented to us!! Fuming, we tried to get our money back to no avail. At this point we had already decided to NEVER, EVER shop at Best Buy again.

Fast forward ahead to today. I pick up my computer, and see that they had replaced the sound card driver (remember this, a SOFTWARE issue), and we took it home, expecting the problem to be fixed. No such luck! The EXACT SAME PROBLEM was still happening, AND, after a driver check, we found out that 6 OUT OF 10 of my drivers were already out of date!!! Some jerk off had even signed off that everything was working properly. So, I call the Dick Squad back and tell them my problem, and that it seemed that no one had even checked the original problem out. He explained to me that it sounded like "a problem within the environment"(SHITTY VISTA) and that it was not covered under the service plan, only hardware. Drivers are software, dicks! So basically, I am out 600 dollars thanks to these jerk offs. It won't void the warranty putting Ubuntu on the computer, so I'm going to do it, and I'm never, ever going to buy from these scam wizards ever again.

Thank you for letting me rant.

Nicole (and Mike) P. Orlando Fl


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