Pros and cons of giving tech service as a gift

Suzanne Choney • E-mail

Maybe you won’t be splurging on a new computer or TV this holiday season because of the economy, instead trying to keep your existing tech gear running as smoothly as possible. Buying tech service as a gift itself can be a good idea.

But there are caveats. Talk to friends, coworkers and your own network of “knowledgeables” about the services they’ve tried, and do your homework online as well.

A good place to start is with the Better Business Bureau, which keeps a registry of complaints that can tell you whether a company is a BBB member, how many complaints against it have been filed and if those complaints were resolved.

If you or someone who know is buying a new computer or TV, think twice about purchasing additional service before the warranty on the products expire.

“The main concern is that these services tend to be very overpriced and for most products probably are not necessary,” said Ken McEldowney, executive director of Consumer Action, a San Francisco-based consumer advocacy and education organization.

“Certainly, in terms of the repairs most, if not all, of what a person would need would be covered by the warranty or the extended coverage you might get from the credit card you used.”

If you want to augment such a present, McEldowney suggests giving them a gift card to the store where the equipment was purchased, rather than buying tech support.

That way the recipient could decide for herself or himself how they wanted to use the ‘free’ money,” he said. “If the person wanted help with setup, they could use it for that. If not, it could go to buy additional products that they wanted.”

Setup help is becoming more important, especially for high-definition TVs, with the sets seeming as complicated as computers.

Geek Squad universe
Best Buy’s Geek Squad is one of the best-known tech services and has more than 20,000 “geeks” around the country, said a company spokeswoman. The service, which initially focused on computer set-up and repairs, has expanded to include TVs, home appliances and even gaming systems.

There are one-time charges for services such as computer installation and set-up ($129.99), TV and video set-up ($99.99) and home theater installation, which ranges from $199.99 to $799.99.

Perhaps because it is so large, the Geek Squad has also been the subject of criticism by customers on Web sites, blogs and even on Twitter. Many of the complaints center on the amount of time it takes for a repair to be done, as well as frustration over not getting a call back.

One recent posting on Best Buy’s community forum was from a man who bought a 50-inch plasma TV in November along with a $350 Geek Squad service plan.

He wrote that when the TV “stopped working” Nov. 18, he called Geek Squad, and was told a representative could not come to his home until Nov. 22. Then, family problems prevented the assigned “geek” from showing up that day, and the customer was told he would get another call on Nov. 24. That did not happen.

“My TV has … not worked for 6 days, and I still don’t know when someone will be out to look at it, let alone fix it,” he wrote. In his last posting, dated Dec. 3, he said there was no resolution in sight.

But a Best Buy spokeswoman responded to his postings on the forum, apologized for the delay and said she was e-mailing him directly with additional information.

“We’re not perfect,” said Robert Stephens, who in 1994 founded Geek Squad, which later became a subsidiary of Best Buy. “But our rate of imperfection is actually lower than you’re going to get with a small- or medium-sized business. But you know, when Al’s Computer Repair makes a mistake, no one writes about it, and no one’s going to write about it.”

Customers, he said, “don’t expect you to be perfect. They expect you to try and they expect you to communicate. So our No. 1 focus right now is increasing communications. So, if we have your laptop and we have to ship it somewhere to get it repaired, we’re developing the systems to keep you up-to-date.”

Every laptop, even a new one, is “pretty much like an antique, in that the parts inside of it are not as standardized as desktop computers,” said Stephens.

“So, we might have your computer, which takes about three hours to fix, but it takes a day or two to ship it each way.” If fixing the computer involves replacing a part that has gone bad, “it might be a week or two before we can get that part in,” he said. “There’s nothing Best Buy is able to do about that. But we’re working on new ways of solving that.”

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