Best Buy Removed Half The RAM From A Gaming Laptop Because It Said The Laptop Only Supports 32GB
A customer sent a Lenovo Legion 5 in for warranty service with 64GB of RAM.
The Best Buy repair report confirmed the laptop had two 32GB RAM sticks, but the technician said the laptop “only accepts 32GB RAM maximum.”
The removed RAM was sent back to the customer with the laptop.
Original Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/1vpew29/best_buy_sold_me_a_64_gb_ram_laptop_and_it_worked/
_**Laptop specs(it supports 64 GB): https://psref.lenovo.com/product/legion_5_16irx9?tab=spec**_
I’ve attempted to shop at Best Buy over the past 30 years or so.
The problem is, no matter which era, none of the staff seemed to even understand my questions, let alone be able to answer them — this isn’t just electronics, but on ANYTHING in the store. “Does that washing machine have a direct drive or belt drive?” “What’s the theoretical maximum power of that amplifier?” “What are the manufacturing tolerances of that Monster cable you say is so much better than bulk electrical wire I can get at Lowe’s?”
I mean, even the Geek Squad guys just read the details off the packaging or off their reference document; no actual thought ever went into trying to help me solve an issue that would result in a purchase.
In the early 00s I made a fair bit of money as a side hustle fixing stuff that the Geek Squad had messed up.
I worked in GS for a couple years about 12 years ago. I worked with a couple really smart dudes, at least 5 of which have gone on to have successful profession IT careers. One of them is the smartest computer guy I’ve met and was a prodigy in his teens.
However, I also worked with some of the dumbest people I ever met. I had one coworker that was sending in a new laptop a customer brought back because the touch pad was bubbling up. As I was packing it up to ship and saw the paper work, I opened to look and it was the plastic sheet that wasn’t removed. That may have been the worst case, but there were plenty of other bad ones.
I do think the the OG version of GS before best buy acquired the was legit, but as businesses do, it enshitified, which when you’re paying youths less than $10/hr, you can expect shit service.
In my case, I didn’t suck and it was a good entry for me to really get to understand computers and I learned more about actually working on and fixing computer there than I ever did in college. I did put in the effort though where a lot of people are just passing through.
I miss Circuit City, a Circuit City Employee helped me turn a dvd player into a screen for my GameCube. 😔. My PalmOne Tungsten|C was from there. They used to fight for your warranty. I miss them so much.
Back in 2014 or so, I had an issue with my windows laptop, not quite sure what the issue was, but their solution was to replace the HDD with a lower RPM one with that stupid “energy saving mode” that would aggressively halt the drive occasionally. Pissed me off, my files took over 3x longer to open. Could never recommend the Geeksquad after that.
I worked at best buy geek squad for 5 years over a decade ago. I saw best buy turn their reputation around with a new CEO who focused on customer care, training employees so they knew what they were doing. I rose through the ranks to a full repair agent where I did repairs proudly.
About 6 years ago the board ousted the last CEO for not making enough profits. The new one essentially reversed everything overnight. Less training, lower wages, less employees. It shows every time I’m in a best buy and it kills me. We had something special then, but new CEO doesn’t care. Line must go up, and torpedoed all of that consumer trust. Now I don’t recommend anyone buy anything from best buy.
I had to buy a laptop 2 years ago and was eyeing a laptop, and a sales person attempted to help me. I tried to be nice, thanks but I got this, but obviously had a madatory spiel. Told them I was just going to install linux and they said “oh this won’t support that”. Okay sure, thanks for showing you don’t know anything, okay goodbye. I went from promoting geek squad warranties to now I wouldnt trust them at all.
Your story about buying a laptop reminds me of a scene from Parks and Rec when Ron Swanson’s picking up supplies for a project at a home improvement store.
It is, but more because they (employees as a whole) used to know, but now they just kind of “read the cards” that are in front of them. Not their fault, corporate killed all of the training
This why I shop at my local Ace Hardware. They actually know their shit there. It’s worth a little extra markup - plus, the money’s mostly staying in the neighborhood.
100% true. When I visit my parents, Home Depot is like the Best Buy of home stuff. No one knows shit, no one cares. Ace is where you go to have someone take a minute longer to give you real info. It’s like some secret third space where if they served coffee or beer, people would spend half their day there.
Man am I glad to hear that. I just got a weed trimmer there and wasn’t sure I made the right choice.
I was BestBuy services when they bought Geek Squad circa 2004. We went from “keep the customers happy by actually solving their problem so they come back and buy more” to “you’re all salespeople so charge every customer $60 just to set the computer down on the counter and push magazine subscriptions”
They must’ve gone back and forth a couple of times since then.
Yup, I started at the tail end of where you ended where they realized they done fucked up again, and then rinse and repeat. Good leaders learned it’s a long term gain, that services are there to support the sales. Then they get “line go up” short term morons who kill all of that good will for a good quarter, and the stock plummets. To me you can see it clearly in their stock price:
You can see your drop down, then they realized they fucked up, then my time was around 2011-2015, you can see the collapse and rebuild. Then wit does go up during the tenure of Jolie, until he was forced out. They enjoyed short term profits and got lucky through covid, and now they’re floundering because they don’t really know how to retain customers, so it’s wildly fluctuating.
The board didn’t oust Joly 6 years ago. He chose to retire. Corie Barry was not a good CEO as his replacement.
Wait, Hubert Joly is gone‽
Fuck.
I remember the Brad Anderson days.
If you ever need to find a side hustle, just fine 1 or 2 people who geek squad has fucked over and fix their shit properly. They WILL tell everyone they know and you’ll always have drinking money.
My 20s were funded almost entirely by Best Buy’s incompetence.
Best Buy broke the power button on my laptop when they replaced a faulty screen and then refused to fix it for free. It took so many phone calls and emails and in-person visits to get them to take care of that shit, it was like a part-time job. In the end they framed it as “this one time we’ll make an exception and do it gratis” as if they were doing me a huge favor by addressing their own fuck up.
At the time, they very carefully crafted a mirage hidden behind carefully worded messaging and the appearance of an in-house workshop for computer repairs, when in fact, the overwhelming majority of the time they were just sending the equipment out to a 3rd party repair warehouse (sometimes in another country) that clearly did not care about the quality of the work.
Sorta related but recently I had a DDR4 3600 16Gb stick die on me and G.Skill honored their lifetime warranty with a 2 week turnaround time which was awesome because I originally bought the kit for $60 and it was now $230.
Pretty much a customer for life now lol.
Best Buy is just 15 year olds that have zero experience. They are usually the least qualified pc repair shop in your area.
They once told me I could open and install windows and then return it if there was an issue. That was the head of their geek squad that told me this, the actual manager.
Yeah, you have to be bat shit crazy to trust Best Buy to fix anything
They disqualified me from Geek Squad because I knew how to use Linux (as well as Windows at the time but it’s been ages). They told me “we only sell Windows machines here” despite (as far as I know) they themselves using Linux to repair Windows computers.
MRI software is nothing more than a customized WinPE environment. It doesn’t suck surprisingly but nothing real special
I’m just glad I dodged that bullet. I had two friends on separate occasions say Best Buy was unable to fix their laptop and in both cases simply opening it and reseating the RAM was enough. I’m not sure what kind of morons they had working there.
I’m half surprised they didn’t just steal it
I knew a tech that did that years ago. he had to move two states away because people kept finding him and threatening to kick his ass.
this was 30 years ago.
last I heard he became a mechanic. probably doing the same shit tbh.
I knew a tech that did that years ago.
Good thieves are the ones you don’t know about
Did they turn around and sell it at 500% mark-up?
One stick of 32GB has been removed and sent back to client with unit.
No, the stick they removed was faulty. They sent it back to the customer instead of replacing it under the warranty.
“Replacing that stick of RAM will cost more than the entire original purchase price of the laptop, so just say it’s faulty and let them figure it out. Never mind the fact that we sold them a laptop with faulty RAM.”
Best buy only kinda sold them it. It was sold by a 3rd party through them.
Get outta here with your “reading the article” and “common sense”.
I mean, personally I say if you’re allowing people to sell under your name, you are ultimately responsible for what’s being sold and should take care of the customer, then go after the people who sold under your name.
So get out of here with your “defending large companies even a tiny bit”
I really doubt the tech who worked on it cared how much money the replacement cost. But who knows
It’s probably not the tech making the decision. It was probably the tech attempting to request one, (because they were out of/low on stock,) and being told by management to send it back as-is instead.
It’s probably changed somewhat, but it used to be that all major ram manufacturers included a lifetime warranty.
Even if they do, they will now claim they don’t have stock to replace and will refund you the original purchase price. Which is usually 25% of the current cost to replace it now.
Quite a few posts around online in recent months of this being the exact playbook they’re going by now.
Other folks have already corrected the record here, so I just wanted to say that if the RAM had been stolen and sold it would be a far higher profit margin. The employee would have probably taken at most 1 hour to realize the opportunity. The current maximum wage for an advanced tech (probably the role that did this “work”) is $21.90/hr so let’s say the labor cost of this heist is $20. Open box on eBay is $400 for a profit of 1900%
Just take a screwdriver to the Library. They always have electronic book search computers set up in dark corners these days.
It might not be sticks of 64GB DDR5, sure, but that doesn’t mean you can’t type those letters into your Ebay listing.
the sku and item description indicates a third-party sold the item via bestbuy’s web site. it was upgraded by that third party before final sale. the extra ram would be covered by that entity, not bestbuy.
but we do not know if bestbuy actually returned the modules that were originally in the laptop, nor do we know if it was the oem one or the added one that was ‘bad’. we also don’t know if the third-party seller simply added one so-dimm to the original configuration or pulled the original to install a matched pair instead.
if it was the oem one, it should have been covered by lenovo’s warranty, i.e. replaced by bestbuy as a warranty repair–the laptop having been upgraded is irrelevant to that remedy.
Best Buy.
The irony of that name is hilarious.
Hey hey, this wasn’t a buy it was a repair
Worst Lie
Lol
Definitely used an LLM for troubleshooting.
Oh the geeksquad is an ancient and troubled guild, known far and wide. They need not a mystical machine for which to practice their codified incompetence
I think they purposefully train their employees to be incompetent. Too competent? Off to the uneducation camp.
when I was in college I worked at a Best Buy. this was in the early 00s. when I worked there in the media department they had just transitioned the tech bench over to geek squad. Yeah none of those dudes were trained in any of it. Most were just guys they pulled from other departments who essentially knew how to turn on a PC and swap out ram. that’s it. There was all of ONE dude who actually knew what he was doing but the rest had no clue. I remember buying a graphics card from the PC dept cause I got a decent discount, they offered to install it for me. that was a hard pass.
Truly an incredible scam
10/10.
