Cleaning up the Geek Squad's mess

This story isn't about assuming that all Geek Squad employees are incompetent or blasting Best Buy as a company. It's simply a tale about what had to be done in order to get a client's very basic home theater setup working after Best Buy's Geek Squad configured it.

I went over to Jim's place to help him figure out how to record television shows on his new DVD/VHS recorder. He had the Geek Squad hook up his cable box from Time Warner and his DVD/VHS recorder to his new Samsung LCD television and could not for the life of him figure out how to record a program with his new setup.

I sat down and quickly skimmed the associated manuals and then looked at his cabling. The cabling of the system was completely incorrect. The Geek Squad had done exactly what the manual for the DVD/VHS outline in bold for them NOT to do. Yes, that's right, they set it up completely incorrect and left Jim $200 poorer and with a non functioning home theater setup. Jim said they told him that he needed "something" from the cable company to record cable TV programs. Really Geek Squad? All you needed to do was connect the DVD/VHS recorder to the cable box via A/V cables instead of RF cables as the manual clearly pointed out.

So what's this mean? Why bother sharing this story with you guys? Well it just means that you DON'T always get what you pay for. How could Best Buy charge so much for a service that left Jim with a DVD/VHS recorder that didn't even record? I'm not sure if he went back to get a refund for this botched service job or not, but buyer beware...you may want to reconsider who you invite over to setup your home theater.