Best Buy has not exactly been on a streak of late. It recently fired a whole bunch of employees amid serious losses, the wandering tallywhacker of its former CEO Brian Dunn wound up bringing down the guy who founded the company, and it’s just generally been a bad day.
And now their utter ripoff of a computer repair service, Geek Squad, is in hot water.
We’ll let Ars Technica sum it up:
Emblazoned with the familiar Best Buy and Geek Squad logos, one side contained a “new computer setup” form, where you can select antivirus software, Geek Squad tech support, data transfer services, Microsoft Office, and so forth. The other side had more of the same—along with a request for my brother’s e-mail and password, right below the fields for name, address, and phone number. Anyone reading this form would interpret it as a request for your e-mail address and e-mail password. And less-sophisticated users will fill it in, no questions asked.
It turns out the form is too vague: what they’re asking is just what password you want your computer to be set up with. Oh, wait: that’s not any better.
As tech writers have pointed out, the usual policy is to give users a temporary password and clear instructions on how to configure it. Obviously, Best Buy thinks it’s above such trifling concerns as “leaving its customers open to being robbed.”
Considering the long record of problems from Geek Squad employees, who tend to steal things from your computer and troll you on Facebook, maybe they should revise their policies slightly.
(Image courtesy Rob Boudon on Flickr)