Yeah, like Crayzieman said, Geek Squad is hit or miss. Their hiring practices are limited, and generally ignored at most locations. I know this more than most, because, much to my shame, early in my former IT career, I was once a DCI (Deputy of Counter Intelligence) with the Geek Squad. It was just their cutesy name for Supervisor. I had a badge and everything. Besides myself, I had 3 guys qualified to work in IT. Certs, training, experience etc. One guy was a network admin/IT supervisor at a major corporation in the area and worked Geek Squad part time for the employee discount.
That was great. The problem is, I had 15 "Agents" in my department. So that's 12 that weren't qualified at all. Most were just people who couldn't cut it on the sales floor (which is ironic since part of the job was supposed to be selling Geek Squad services both at the counter and on the floor), and one was a girl who my manager thought was cute. She could barely even check her e-mail let alone diagnose computer issues. Yeah. I had no say in who was hired or transferred in my own department. It was maddening.
All the unqualified people I just trained to do the basic shit. Install software, run scans, send stuff in for warranties, basically anything they could do off a check list. Sure, if they had a brain in their heads they would pick up some basic skills, but they were mostly only good for busy work and I didn't have the time to do any in depth training. So the heavy lifting was left to the 4 of us who could handle it, and 70% of my time was spent dealing with other responsibilities. So that left most of it to my 3 qualified techs (2 of which were part time).
So yeah. It was a completely hit or miss proposition for our customers. The 4 of us couldn't check every computer that came in or interact with every customer, so there were plenty of times when customers got less than stellar service. This seems to be the norm at most Geek Squads I interacted with as well. A couple guys who know what they are doing who just got there by luck, a few who are relatively competent with low to mid level stuff, and a bunch who are glorified scan monkeys, and routinely screw that up. And yes, you are pressured to sell services (necessary or not) and high margin software while ignoring lower margin software.
Some precincts did this to a T, others tried to balance it with what the customer actually needed (which is what I tried to do). My basic rule for my guys was that if it was a problem that could be fixed in 5 minutes or less at the counter, then it was free. No point charging them for something that simple. Advice on how to handle the problem themselves was cool too, as long as it was relatively simple, the customer could handle it and you warned them of the dangers before hand.
So like I said. Hit or miss. You might have a good experience, you might not. Really depends on who you happen to interact with, and what type of precinct their DCI ran. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to sleep off all the Jack Daniels that was forced down my throat at the bar tonight. Night night.