Is Office Depot diagnosing non-existent computer problems?
Is Office Depot diagnosing non-existent computer problems?
Office Depot is under fire for services that a former employee believes take advantage of unsuspecting customers. An undercover investigation by CBS affiliate KIRO appeared to capture the company’s technicians diagnosing computers with problems that did not exist. KIRO’s Jesse Jones, who broke the story, reports.
This is fact! I quit because of it.
I love Jesse Jones!!!! He’s AWESOME!
I had a laptop looked at there paid out the nose and a couple years later i got a letter in the mail with a $54 check saying that a class action lawsuit was filed against them.
And I was about to apply for a job.
I’m unplugging my computer and running down to the local Office Depot right now… oh wait, I didn’t vote Hillary, so why start being an idiot now?! Never mind.
Get familiar with tech, at least enough to be a informed consumer. Stores wont protect you youve got to protect yourself. Age is no excuse, I had plenty of older informed customers when I worked Tech retail. Working with them there was a lot less mistrust of the sales person and they were happier with their purchase.
Why is this not considered robbery its literally whats happening
I liked this store though I never used it for computer repairs. I don’t trust anything they do now. I won’t spend any more money there.
As a current employee of Office Depot, I can also attest to this business model. However, I can also say that this practice is NOT occurring at all Office Depot stores. Although I will admit, distinguishing which stores are and which are not may be difficult. The reality is that it’s dependent on the experience of the associate at that particular store.
I know for a fact that over the years there have been employees that have questioned the ethics of this model and we were dismissed without question. Apparently, the 6 figure salaried bean counters at Corporate know more about ethics and computers than us lowly people at the store level. Hopefully, now that this has gained national attention, the powers that be will ‘fix’ their broken procedure and perhaps listen to those of us that may actually know more than they do in this particular instance. Things are going to be interesting in the coming days/weeks for sure!
Office Depot is at fault for lying to their customers and the customers are at fault for being stupid enough to believe them. Basic maintenance of a computer is not difficult. If you’re too lazy or dumb to figure it out it’s unsurprising you’re being taken advantage of elsewhere.
Office Depot employee here.
I have mixed feelings about the free PC tune up. While you are getting a "honest" scan of your computer, it’s basically just a free virus check. I’m been in "training" on the tech team for a while and I can safely assure you it’s really just a virus scan. We do not do any "tuning up" and if we do find a virus or some malware, we don’t do anything until a service relating to virus removal is bought. Plus, (other then the free tune up) we cannot lay a finger on a PC form a customer unless they bought a service.
So I lost my job because I was against this service when they rolled it out. How would I go about getting compensated? I worked for Office Depot for 8 years and was an Assistant Store Manager when I left. I’m really knowledgeable about computers and was head of the tech department. When we first got the new "Free PC Check up" I expressed to my supervisors how I believed it to be dis-honest and I was met with resistance. In fact, they made my life a living hell and I eventually quit because they drove me out.
NEVER let a PC shop INSTALL SOFTWARE on your computer.
NEVER use AVG, Avast, Norton, or Mcafee
If someone is charging more than $50 for a virus removal or more than $100 for a complete OS rebuild, they are RIPPING YOU OFF.
Technicians at Geek Squad aren’t directly incentivized to sell services. So if they mess your stuff up it’s not because they’re trying to screw you, at least.
My store does that and hates me where they will refuse certain refunds and i’m a tech repair guy that never would charge those prices. One made a comment about her son going to the same school as me and i’m sure that was being used as some excuse to have my character questioned.
Anyone who went to that school was there because the parent was looking for a cheap solution for someone else to parent their kid. Then they be like "I had no option because I was told this" I wont even go to office depot to make a purchase because the locations refund policy is "I can decline refunds and have my employees make sure you don’t get any refunds by giving them your ID and not alerting cooperate because it’s my store"
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I took my PC to Office Depot on Saturday and now there program is gonna tell me I have viruses and more. I have frequent blue screens but those happened when I restored the computer to factory settings and before.
I was offered the tech job at Staples and the manager said if you want full time you’ll need to be selling $100-$300 in additional goods and services ON TOP OF ripping people off with fake virus cleaning for every walk-in computer diagnosis. I was pretty shocked and offended and turned the job down.
Not surprised, Geek Squad was/is another company doing this, and yes I’m aware not all employees are on-board with it. This makes all IT techs like myself, look bad and we have to distance ourselves from this.
Just download more RAM solve all your problems ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Are they paid off commission?
Happened to me at the Geek Squad. To analyze my computer would have been at least $150. I said no thank you. The next day reinstalled my Dell myself. Not a problem since then and this was back in April.
CBS is a paid hack of Best Buy
I work at office depot. And my store doesn’t do that. 😂 we are an honest store. We just have the right employees
Office depot’s merger with Staples was blocked so both companies are likely on their way to going out of business, with Staples being the bigger company likely outlasting them. The company heads probably raised sales goals to unrealistic heights and put extreme pressure on their tech employees to reach these unrealistic goals as a way to try and save the company.
Worked for the company for a year and a half, last year was senior tech. I was asked to demote several times cause I refused to over charge.
I work at Office Depot. Commission incentives are no where near enough for me to falsely sell services. Most of the time I help people for free. Only time I really charge people is if it’s a problem that legitimately takes some of my time.
Another OMAX ex-employee here. True. I talk about how to get hired there tho in a video haha
Poor students
This article pins the problem on the employees, it is NOT the employees that are doing this. It is the program that is flawed.
I used to patronize and loved Office Max until Office Depot bought them out. They screwed that company up so bad. They are just like Staples now. All of the help is gone so they don’t have time for their customers any longer and one more time the little guy gets screwed over again. I won’t set foot is any of the big box tech stores for this very reason. Quotas are killing the business sector in this country. Manufacturing is already gone so now they are working on the retail and service industries to drain everything they can get out of them as well until they are gone too.
Can confirm, I have been yelled at by my boss for not charging someone $100 for a standard pop up scam.
I got a trojan in an office depot usb wich was soooo bad that when my antivirus deleted it the conpuer kept crashing even in safe mode so i had to hard reset the computer. I wasnt taking it so i got to OfficeDepot and there was like 15 more people with the same problem :/ at least the staff acted like they care and they where kinda nice
I’m sorry but I have to say: Please come see us at Computer Depot and experience what it is like to be talked with instead of at. For 12 years now, we have treated our customers with the utmost respect and have never talked down to anyone seeking to know why something happened or how or if they can prevent this in the future. If you live close to the Computer Depot at 2433 Highway K in O’Fallon, MO and have tried the Office Depot down the street, I invite you to come see how it feels to NOT be intimidated and know you are speaking to someone that does really care. Computer Depot can be contacted at 6369780900. PS. We are about to franchise should there be interested entrepreneurs reading this. 🙂 Check our Google reviews.
I am a Ops manager at OfficeMax. Let me just say OfficeDepot is the worst company to work for. Our employees are under paid. They have a title when hired but don’t work doing what their title description says. They are lied to and underpaid and force to lie about products that we know are shitty. But the only way they get hours is to keep lying and making the company money. The employees are paid for what the title says they are to do, They don’t even end up doing what they are hired for. They end up doing managers jobs and reports and copy and print department and the truck when they get a new shipment. If you can do all three of these tasks along with your own task then you can consider yourself an employee opportunity
the news station that did this story has done a follow-up story on this. it turns out they have some internal documents, a FAQ, that says if anything is checked for the free PC scan, that it will automatically find something wrong with it, regardless. So it is rigged. I am waiting for the class action lawsuit now.
Do staples next, you will find far worse. https://www.reddit.com/r/Staples/comments/5dgzx4/tech_services_at_staples_is_over/
First off I work for office depot in the tech department so I will have some bias but let me explain a few things. Bear with me here.
The PC check we run is complete bullshit and honestly I would say is utterly useless. Our store only uses it as an incentive to get people in the door and that’s it. If the person thinks they have a problem, they probably do, otherwise why bring it to someone to take a look? We almost never run the PC check software with a customer present (it’s just not necessary, it’s useless if you know what you’re doing), we take a look at the computer, try to determine what issues they are having and make our own recommendation based on what we see. Yes, that may include a repair service for 149 or a restore starting at 169. Some problems are very obvious (those fake AV programs that pop up and say you got thousands of issues and to call them or pay them money to fix it, the irony right?) while some may not be (pc running slow, no obvious signs of viruses, at which point we would recommend a repair to try and find out what’s up with it).
What we do is run the software after we finish the repair because they track how many times it has been run weekly, if we don’t meet numbers, we’ll hear about it for sure. If we do meet the pc check up numbers but miss sales, we will hear about it as well. We are lucky to have people in our tech area that know what they are doing and won’t just hit a checkbox and say alright so we found malware, give us 200 dollars to fix it. I don’t think the free pc scan does anything, at least not in terms of scanning for viruses. It does check if the PC has an antivirus, and if it’s up to date. It cleans out the recycle bin and a few other small things, but in general completely useless. The program we run is based on being truthful. If the customer says the computer is crashing, rebooting, or freezing often then that is a sign that something is wrong and should be looked at. If the problems do not present themselves while we are looking at it we will recommend a repair, we can’t just say well we don’t see any problem, take it back home it’s fine.
Here is my assumption, the tool was made to be used as a helper or guide, probably for people who don’t know what they’re doing. Hell, people may not even know about the software saying it finds malware symptoms 100% of the time if you check any one of those boxes. I caught onto it very quickly and asked a manager about it. We got a great manager who is very knowledgeable and told me it is ultimately up to the employee to determine if it needs any sort of repair, period. However, I have no doubt in my mind that this is being abused intentionally by other people for that measly 5% commission, not worth it in my opinion. Some of us do care about the customer, the prices are already quite expensive in my opinion, if someone buys a repair from us, we typically go way beyond what is required of us and what they paid for at the expense of usually getting yelled at or scolded for spending too much time fixing a computer (it’s supposed to be connected to a remote tech and that’s it, no input from the actual associates).
Worst case scenario, this gets me fired, hopefully not, but if it does, so be it. I have no guilt, I always did what I could to be as honest as possible, in several cases sending customers to get their computer fixed elsewhere if it’s something we can’t do or if they simply could not afford it. I never pressured anyone to purchase something they can’t afford, but I always offered our repair services, protection plans, and everything else they want us to push aggressively otherwise I would have been fired. I’m not going to get into working conditions, management, policies, or anything like that. It is a completely different discussion, just know that not all of us are greedy assholes out to exploit and scam people out of their money.
Trash company
I work there and I knew it was a scam from the get go. They force employees to shove things down customers throats with agressive sale tactics and dry to as much money out of people as they can. They also make you try to sogn people up for as many reward cards as you can. I signed up for one with a brand new email adress, and I started to get spam mail from other companies reward program’s hinting that they sell your information which doesn’t suprise me.
Corporate Merica
im sorry but if you cant handle malware or anything of the sort then stop using a computer. last time i had an issue (moneypak) it took me about an hour in safe mode to manually delete all files.
People seem to be acting like this is new in the retail/service industry.
This sort of thing happens all the time in other areas such as motoring – there a millions of people around the world that would have payed for a new car part they didn’t actually need when they’ve taken their car in for a service.
Any time you have people with no-knowledge of something going to people with knowledge of that something in exchange for cash, you will always get people who will take advantage.
Yes is ALL about the $$$. None of the employees know how to fix the PC. All done by 3rd party. 1st thing they do is connect your pc online and the 3rd party co. will take over.
buy a mac or a chromebook
people are so gullible. It’s so wrong of them to take advantage of them like that.
UGHH I hate big chain stores so called cookie cutter approach to repairs.
I used to work at Office Depot, i never worried about sales goals. They were too high to meet for the area we were in. When someone brought their computer in I rarely used the “diagnosing tool” because it was a load of garbage. I know how to work on computers and diagnose whats wrong, most of the time there was nothing, except that their computer was slow. I would offer to do a Hard drive swap to an SSD (Solid State Drive), which always gave the customer way better performance and reliability. They were happy, also i found a way to charge them half the price, which also made them happy
i worked for Office Depot as a Tech this is 100% True.
So a customer comes to a store saying they want there computer checked out, and people are surprised that the store wants to charge for the service?
I really don’t understand the issue. Even if you do have a brand new computer. You take it into a store because you think something is wrong with it. The store is going to charge you to check it out.
It is true that you don’t need to take it to the store. You can reinstall the operating system yourself, or even check it for malware. But these people aren’t doing that, they are taking to a store. A store isn’t going to get in the business of fixing computers for free. If I had a computer repair shop, I would do the same thing. I wouldn’t have some fancy auto scanning software, but if I suspect malware I would charge you to fix it.