P-7811FX and Best Buy

So I purchased my P7811FX the day it came out on Best Buy's website and I loved every aspect of the computer...that is until today the headphone jack broke and pretty much the top potion of the keyboard (where the orange accent is (and meets up with the bottom portion)) is coming off of the keyboard (this happened of a period of time).
So I have the order receipt and my accidental damage PSP ready to take into Best Buy tomorrow.

A few questions

1. Is the headphone jack actually broken or can it be fixed by myself. (I don't like the speakers on the laptop so I use my massive pair of Sennheiser HD 555 Audiophile can)

2. Will Best Buy give me a new laptop, repair it, or give me store credit for the $1449.99 I paid for it? Do I choose which I can have done? I prefer to keep my current laptop (I love it so much!), however I am also interested in getting the new Gateway® FX6800-09 Desktop which costs around $1600 and I can pay the difference. Is their a way I could get money back and purchase something else?


3. If it does get repaired will the repairers look at what is on my HDD? I prefer that they not see my family pictures and videos I have, as they are personal. I read the contract and Best Buy is not responsible for any personal items left in the product to be repaired...so should I delete them/store them on another HDD?

4. I have a laptop backpack for 17' laptops, could the weight of this hefty beast damage it while in a backpack?


Thanks for the help.
-Cheezburgez

 

If you are worried about the HD you could always take it out while your lappy is with them. I doubt they'd go onto your computer anyway because if they were found out then their whole chain would get a bad name.

 

1. not exactly sure if your jack is broken

2. best buy will fix your laptop and if they cant fix it some reason they give you credit for the price you paid for it and you can pick out a new laptop. they will not give you store credit you can only pick out another laptop. if you want a more expensive laptop you just have to pay the difference but if you get a cheaper laptop you just loose money.

3. i doubt they will really go through your hdd.

4. i dont think it is heavy enough to damage your backpack.

 

If you don't want them to see the pictures, remove them.

I hate best buy geek squad, but if theres a hardware problem you have to return it.

 

Ask them if they reformat the hard drive. I had an Alienware notebook and every time I sent it to them they always did that. Quite annoying really. Anyways I dont think Best Buy goes through your personal folders. They have better things to do, I'm sure that's a waiting lawsuit to happen if they do so. There is no need to go through your personal folders to fix hardware problems and very little if you are trying to fix software issues.

 

A friend of mine is a BB store manager, and he's told me stories of the tech guys getting snagged snooping around on HDs. If it were me, I'd pull it, most def. Check with them first though, don't give them a reason to void your SP by pulling your HD.

 

But will it damage itself?

 

Wrong, if you hand a computer over for repair the files can possibly cause issues and the person repairing the system has perfect right to access the files as the user/admin would. Now using personal information, such as passwords or financial information falls to within their own domain(s) as fraud etc..

I know this as once I had to turn a guy in with some really bad, and I mean severly ill, kiddie files on his computer. I found them as he also aquired a virus and other nasties that led me to those files...............

 

i put my 6860 in my backpack all the time and its never been damaged.

 

If your really worried about them going through your files, Password protect them with
http://www.folder-guard.com/

 

LOL if you start using 3rd party programs you will confuse the hell out of geek squad. They'll tell you your hard drive is bad and wont give it back to you

Get a USB flash drive and cut and paste all the files you dont want them to see. They're cheap now you should have one if you continuously use computers.

 

Folder Guard runs silently, no popups, no hint that its on at startup, no try Icon, nothing.
All it does is when you click on a folder that has a lock on it it prompts you for a password or it wont open the folder. So unless they TRY to access those files (Which is what he doesn't want them to do). They wont know anything about the 3rd party program.

 

Ohh well, guess I was wrong

 

I assume it's in the Start menu under programs and also in the startup tab in msconfig though. I also assume you could simply pull the hard drive and attach it as storage through another OS, change ownership, and access any file you want. Due to my experiences with best buy I don't trust them and probably never will. They are one of the main reasons I became a computer technician, I didn't want them to ever get their paws on another one of my computers.

Its much easier to just buy an 8GB USB Flash Drive for ~$20 and move all the stuff you don't want them to see onto there.