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 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.
For some reason when I click that picture, it opens a browser tab of the image’s website. I can’t just preview it in my client. And the image site loads so slowly.
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.
Some of the Ace’s that I go to have a popcorn machine that you can just grab free popcorn out of, so you’re not far off with the third space thing. Every time I’m in there I learn something new from one of the 70-year-old retirees that only have a job there to get out of the house, and desperately want to share their DIY home improvement knowledge. Last time I went an employee ended up pulling out his phone and showing me progress pics of his bathroom renno lol
I’m so happy my grandparents bought their laptops from the local computer store.
They’re marking everything up, pretty wildly, but damn do they offer support.
And they also pushed FOSS on them, through libre office rather than the insane Microsoft office subscriptions the big chains try to push on their customers
Plus the ace cashier will be a friendly face when you’re back in the store for the 4th time that day, after being sure you bought all needed components of your project during your first trip
Stop following me around.
Man am I glad to hear that. I just got a weed trimmer there and wasn’t sure I made the right choice.
I’ve always had that same experience with Ace in my area. The people there actually know their departments and can help with relevant questions. I try to go there whenever possible over Home Depot or Lowe’s because of it.
My local ace is friendly. They have a store dog, too. It’s great.
I just wish they had better prices. I go there for weird hardware usually or if I actually need help but otherwise the prices are pretty atrocious so it’s hard. I have always loved those stores though once I was old enough to appreciate them lol.
I bet if you find a local hardware store they’ll be a lot more knowledgeable and 100% stays local.
Almost all of Ace’s locations are independently owned. If there were an unaffiliated store anywhere in my vicinity, I’d certainly go there, but this neighborhood business literally two blocks from my home is hard to beat.
They’re franchises. The lion’s share of income goes to the HQ, like any franchise.
No ongoing franchise fees.
https://www.myace.com/open-an-ace/
There are fees for using other Ace franchise services, but that’s far from the “lions share.”
I literally don’t believe it. No corporation just doesn’t take all the money they possibly can out of the kindness of their hearts.
Or when Hank Hill has to go to Mega-Lo-Mart for propane
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.
Yep. Worked there around the same time as you. I was on the appliance and TV repair side and was part of the massive layoffs. I left and focused more on my engineering career. But I saw the same thing you did. I started in '06 and left around '16. Saw the wheel spin a couple of times. My dad went there recently to buy something simple, asked for help, was told someone would be right over, and after half an hour he left and just picked it up from Walmart. They got rid of the checkout at our local store and now customer service rings people out, but when no one is around to do that… People just leave.
It’s sad to see, I don’t want less competition out there for electronics retail.
Very validating to hear others who saw the same. So frustrating that when I was there I really did pride myself on my work and making people’s lives easier. (I always am annoyed at people who are like “har har geek squad dumb” when they really don’t know what we do, doing the simplest tasks for people who are too afraid to do it themselves). Sadly, it appears that all of that has just gone down the drain as the search for more profit has eaten up all of that goodwill.
I also completely agree, with Fry’s closing and microcenter only in a few places, and then radio shack long dead consumer electronics is very sparse. Like them or not we need best buy as an electronics retailer elsewise most of the country is empty.
deleted by creator
Wait, Hubert Joly is gone‽
Fuck.
I remember the Brad Anderson days.
The board didn’t oust Joly 6 years ago. He chose to retire. Corie Barry was not a good CEO as his replacement.
It’s possible they actually did want to retire, but if that’s the case they almost always pick a successor that will continue along the same path.
Most of the time you see a CEO “retire”, they’re being forced out by the board and paid off with a golden parachute to not make waves on the way out. And the next CEO is installed to make whatever changes the board wants implemented that the previous CEO refused to do.
The generality may be true, but there was no indication in this case that there was anything other than him, wanting to get out before the chaos of Covid became an increasing burden
Yeah… people need to understand this as a basic way corpos and corps work.
Almost nobody ever willingly retires. Almost always, they’re forced out, and theres a PR campaign run internally and externally to make it look like they’re voluntarily retiring.