Geek Squad technician arrested for invading customer's shower

Sure, it's easy (and sadistically enjoyable) to bust on Best Buy, especially when it considers frugal shoppers "devils" and shoos away loyal customers holding down the fort for a PS3, but the latest knock against the retailer will be even tougher to shake. While it's no surprise that BB cashiers aren't the easiest to deal with when bringing back demolished goods, a pair of sisters also realized major holes in the company's personality screening process over at Geek Squad. Reportedly, a hired technician actually set up a cameraphone to record one of the siblings whilst she was taking a shower, but obviously wasn't sly enough to hide the "blinking red record light" from view. Subsequently, the violated duo supposedly ganked the internal flash card, made haste for a Verizon store to confirm the contents, and of course, phoned up the boys in blue to come take care of business. Needless to say, the shady criminal is now facing "two counts of invasion of privacy and one count of child molestation," but apparently it's still not a crime to charge clueless customers outrageous rates to tackle the simplest of tasks. Sheesh, where's the justice?

[Via Digg]

[Brian @ Apr 14th 2007 11:25AM]

Are Best Buys twinned with BT in the UK ? "...outrageous rates to tackle the simplest of tasks..." sounds like BT's bread and butter.

[Richard Lai @ Apr 14th 2007 12:03PM]

Brian: Agree too, especially when the BT phone operators in India aren't very good at explaining things.

pauly: yes, I've seen that video too. Brilliant.

Back to the subject: the sisters are quite hot, but the technician has done bad. *tut tut tut*

[Alex Padilla @ Apr 14th 2007 12:02PM]

Wow, Best Buy's getting some GREAT publicity these days. Keep up the smashing job, guys, and business WILL boom!

[iamright @ Apr 14th 2007 12:05PM]

Best Buy is my 30 Day Free Trial store. Thats all they are really good for. Geek Squad is completely retarded at best. Anyone who would hire them in the first place deserves to have those geeks do what they do best.... be retarded!

[Mikey @ Apr 14th 2007 12:20PM]

By saying the "Geek Squad is completely retarded at best" is probably more insulting to the mentally handicap/"retarded" people than the Best Buy Employees. Who wants to be associated with Best Buy? :-P

[Chuckles McGee @ Apr 14th 2007 12:08PM]

"it's still not a crime to charge clueless customers outrageous rates to tackle the simplest of tasks. Sheesh, where's the justice?"

Amen to outrageous. $250 to install Vista. $230 to burn 9 GB to a DVD. $130 to install a single software title. It's a free market and people can charge whatever they want, but I still feel sorry for all the saps who shell out the benjamins for what can be done in a few mouse clicks.

Pricing: http://www.geeksquad.com/pricing/default.aspx#section3

[Maestro @ Apr 14th 2007 12:46PM]

No video with the story?

[Jonathon @ Apr 14th 2007 2:48PM]

"no video?"

http://consumerist.com/consumer/geek-squad/geek-squad-sued-for-videoing-customer-in-shower-251662.php

Ask and ye shall receive!



Looks highly questionable to me. I really want a look at the type of phone used, what sort of memory card... if it's even his memory card, etc.

The timeframe stuff doesn't make sense either.

I hope justice finds it's way in this case; because if the man is innocent, the panties need to be sued off these chicks.

[JJ @ Apr 14th 2007 12:50PM]

What's funny, that Best Buy is not far from where I live here in California, I'm about 30 minutes away.
It's why I tell so many of my customers that are in need of computer services: Never buy from retail like Best Buy.
On top of which, there are more incompetent and distrusting, and less than knowledgeable employees there, who are only for your wallet than anything else. I've stopped buying from Best Buy two years ago. They were never a good store to begin with, with many items overpriced.

[OMAC @ Apr 14th 2007 12:55PM]

How does child molestation figure into this? The sister that was recorded is 22 years old.

[Zadillo @ Apr 14th 2007 1:00PM]

How old was the little sister though? I don't see the ages mentioned in the article actually. I would guess that the child molestation charge might be there just because he was trying to record both of them, presumably; the fact that the younger sister didn't get recorded doesn't necessarily change the attempted crime that was committed.

[greg @ Apr 14th 2007 1:13PM]

This is what happens when a nerd has never had a girl friend and finally cracks.

[Padilla @ Apr 14th 2007 2:10PM]

@ greg

HAHA! Dude, that's the most truthful comment ever.

[Grant Goddard @ Apr 14th 2007 1:20PM]

im really glad that the word "ganked" was included in this article.

[Brian @ Apr 14th 2007 1:42PM]

Everyone here rips the crap out of Best Buy for their high prices, but has anyone ever took a look at their financials lately. They are doing very well on revenue, granted they are a huge store so they will bring in lots of money. However, their margin on items they sell is terrible. They reported a huge quarter, but because their margin is so low, their stock dropped as investors said they weren't making enough money. The employee issue is something different however, it's hard to attract quality employees, pay them, and stay under budget at any retail store. You have the good and the bad at any store, just have to find the more knowledgable ones there.

Weird to defend Best Buy, especially after an article like this, this guy should definitely spend some time behind bars to reevaluate a little bit, I mean what the heck was he thinking?

[Grant @ Apr 14th 2007 2:46PM]

"However, their margin on items they sell is terrible."

they make it up in volume of sales, thats typically how all the major electronics stores do it, in a sense they are the Walmart of electronics. BB mastered this by increasing the amount of stores and getting a sales volume to drop prices in this "walmart" esque fashion (even though they don't use the same effcient distribution web or price setting)

[AndrewNeo @ Apr 14th 2007 2:22PM]

What I'm most confused about is what good it is to use a Verizon phone for that.. don't most only record for 15 seconds?

[Gary @ Apr 14th 2007 2:37PM]

They can be hacked rather easily.

[Devin @ Apr 16th 2007 11:17AM]

My Verizon VX-8600 has an option in the Video under Time Limit for 15 seconds or Available Memory. I'm sure its not the only phone that lets you record more than 15 seconds either.

[Charlie @ Apr 14th 2007 2:55PM]

Can you set a cell phone to record later?...if not then he was there at the time-which means this person was taking a shower, with the door unlocked, with a complete stranger (with a job title that includes the word
"geek"!) in the house....not very smart for the person that got recorded, BUT the guy is a freak with impulse control issues and is busted as he should be.

[LC @ Apr 14th 2007 5:51PM]

"Can you set a cell phone to record later?...if not then he was there at the time-which means this person was taking a shower, with the door unlocked, with a complete stranger (with a job title that includes the word
"geek"!) in the house...."

It doesn't need to record later. He could have hit record and let it record to the memory card which depending on the size and vid quality can be quite some time.

The geek was there to repair the family computer. Probably called up by the mother. The daughter was getting ready to go out and jumped in the shower. The geek probably saw this and asked to use the bathroom before she got in and set his camera up.

It's not so unusual for someones kid to use a shower when a parent has a repairman at the house.

The bottom line is it was this guys phone recording her so even though he will have his day in court, it is going to be one uphill battle. I'm wondering what else they found on this phone besides the shower vid.

[Kevin @ Apr 14th 2007 3:14PM]

I am a Geek Squad employee in Texas, and though I agree with you that some of our services are expensive, they are worth it to people who need the service. Most of the more common services are quite reasonable for the work that is involved. The prices listed above are all in home services gauranteed same day. We mostly sell the precinct (in store) services, and they have a turnaround of about 2 days. They are over a hundred dollars less expensive. Our store has some of the most knowledgeable employees anywhere, and have a customer satisfaction index of 86 percent. We are always friendly and kind, and try to keep our customers happy.
As for the incident that happened in california, no business is immune to incidents like that, because most people are perfectly normal on a daily basis until one day they show their character flaws. I dont think it has any direct reflection on the quality of Best Buy, although it does apall me that someone would tarnish the Best Buy brand like that. He should definitly be prosecuted, but because there is no way to screen for that kind of thing, Best Buy cannot be at fault for his actions.

[Devil's Advocate @ Apr 14th 2007 3:35PM]

Wow, this site has finally found someone to be more biased against than Microsoft! Bravo.

"but apparently it's still not a crime to charge clueless customers outrageous rates to tackle the simplest of tasks"

How are the rates "outrageous" if people are willing to pay them? Why has a new company not come along and undercut Best Buy with the supposed huge profit margin in the "outrageou" prices? There's more to the cost of doing business besides paying some kid $9/hr. Apparently the simpleton who wrote this story needs to graduate from high school and take a class in economics.

Are the prices way more than most readers here would pay since they have the knowledge to perform the tasks themselves? Beyond a doubt. Would I ever pay Best Buy to do anything on my computer? Heck no, since I have the knowledge already. However, a lot of America doesn't and the price is a small one to pay to avoid the time and frustration it would cause them to do the work themselves.

Would it be worth $199 to a middle management baby boomer to clean all the malware his son put on the computer instead of taking a good part of his weekend to figure out what programs to download, how to run them, how to even get into Safe Mode, etc? Would it be worth $149 to someone who works from home yet doesn't know technology very well (so a lot of corporate America) for a geek to come out and set up and secure their wireless network, which the person could eventually figure out after 4-5 hours of trying to figure out what WEP/WPA is, why there isn't a software program that comes with the router to setup WEP/WPA yet he has a wierd looking string of numbers (192.168.0.1), etc?

A wise man once said, "Time is money, friend!"

[TheCash @ Apr 14th 2007 3:59PM]

"ganked?"

Uh, did you mean "yanked?"

This isn't freaking London mate, stop trying to pawn your crappy slang that you thing is oh-so-cool off on us, alright?

[Pablo @ Apr 14th 2007 5:14PM]

I can tell you a couple of things...

The phone used was a PPC 6700

Best Buy/Geek Squad found out about this via the news. They had no idea that this had happened until the press conference.

The phone does NOT have a blinking red light on the exterior of the phone but is displayed very small in the corner of the full LCD screen.

And while I am very biased against the employee that allegedly did this we still have to keep in mind that this is America and he is innocent until proven guilty.

[austin @ Apr 14th 2007 5:14PM]

Nobody noticed the name of the accused?

Hao Kuo Chi (say it aloud).

[John Doe @ Apr 14th 2007 6:11PM]

Why are you guys hacking on Best Buy for the acts of its employee? As if Best Buy's employee handbook recommends video taping your customers while in the shower. You can't hold Best Buy accountable for the actions of one of their employees. As long as they hold that employee accountable its all good.

[Scott @ Apr 14th 2007 7:12PM]

Child Molestation could maybe be from some other videos found on that flash card?

I don't think I really own anything from best buy at all.

[KC @ Apr 14th 2007 8:18PM]

I agree with the nay sayers, this sounds very fishy. Unless they - as they say they do in the press conference video - actually have video on that card of this guy setting up the phone in the bathroom, I am not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt to pronounce this guy guilty in a public forum.

There are allot of possibilities here and things don't smell right about the way those girls are recounting events in the video. Not to mention Gloria Allred, hiring her lowers the girls credibility in my book.

There is much more information needed to determine that this is anything more then a scam.

[LT @ Apr 14th 2007 8:54PM]

I do not work for Best Buy and never have, and it pains me to be defending them, but Engadget has gone too far... again. The only time you should be complaining about prices is if some type of monopoly structure exists, and computer service is probably one of the most competetive fields out there. Grow up you 3rd grade commies.

You guys really need to take your Journalism a bit more seriously and realize that your stupidity could actually cause somebody real life damage. Learn some responsibility.

[Josh @ Apr 15th 2007 5:23AM]

Best buy treats their employees like criminals anyway, why not become one?

They fired me for "stealing time" a year ago. I busted my clip-on tie for that store and they screwed me over because of a rumor that was going around. Then, 2 months later, they sent me a letter telling me to stop representing my self as a Geek Squad Agent and banned me from going in the store. Uh...if I'm doing jobs as an agent, where is all the money I am making off the jobs?

[Jamar @ Apr 15th 2007 1:20PM]

Oh god- I have a student internship in Best Buy (Geek Squad) coming up in a month- this is what I'm in for?! Well, I can't say I'm not worried. And to make things worse- I'm in China (yes, there actually is a Best Buy here- can't believe that I'm the student who wanted a tech-related internship, instead of say, interning at the Ritz-Carlton or the Four Seasons- should have listened to my teacher's horror story about Best Buy and picked something more reasonable) so I know I'll have to deal with American tourists asking "how do I put a local number on my Sprint/Verizon phone" (hint- it'll cost you- $50+ from what I heard from Korean classmates with SK Telecom phones, and it can't be done in Best Buy) and people thinking their service/replacement plan applies here (hint- if you have a CDMA phone, you're SOL because they only sell GSM, and if you have a US-market triband/dualband phone, don't complain when they replace it with the equivalent 900/1800/1900 phone or *evil grin* 900/1800 phone; same with computers- if it requires total replacement, have fun learning Chinese, or go buy a pirate copy in English). Then again, reading over what I just wrote- I can't wait for the internship to start- Best Buy in China isn't there just for the tourists, you know.

[James @ Apr 16th 2007 1:01PM]

"...still not a crime to charge clueless customers outrageous rates to tackle the simplest of tasks."

Heh. Confucius say, "Fool and his money are soon parted." If you can't be bothered to figure out how your DVD burner software works, and you want to pay somebody a few hundred bucks to show you... well, I want to be that somebody ;-)

Seriously, I think what you're paying in that $250 (?) situation is about $50 for the time of the guy doing the service, and about $200 for the confidence in the brand name -- or, I guess after this story, the illusion of confidence. Seriously, you could pay 50 bucks to the 16-year-old next door and he'd do it for you, but if you don't know any local 16-year-olds, you're stuck trusting a major retailer or other such "big name" company to weed out the creeps. Guess sometimes that doesn't work out.

Heh.

[James Pennington @ Apr 16th 2007 11:57PM]

@Devil's Advocate - Agreed with your comments. Unfortunately in this age of Internet blogs, it is not necessary for the poster to state their age and education level. Many posts are by 15 year-olds that work at McDonald's.

There are plenty of people in America that have no problem at all dropping a couple hundred dollars to have an expert, backed up by a nationwide corporation and warranty, make their computer problems go away. However, when you only make $75 a week at McDonald's, $200 seems like a lot of money.

BTW, Best Buy is still operating Geek Squad at a net loss with its current pricing.

[Navi Thach @ Apr 18th 2007 3:44AM]

I always thought Best Buy was a more expensive Wal-Mart, I have no respect for them. That's what Fry's and Costco is for...