4 years ago I bought my mom a JVC Everio GZ-MG155U Camcorder. Considering it had a hard drive in it I thought it was a good idea to get the extended warranty for it because I knew the thing would need cleaning, a new battery and just to be on the safe side to protect it if the hard drive fails.

Things have been working ok with it over the years until recently where I noticed some of the video files started becoming corrupt or unplayable. I deleted the files and even reset/reformatted the hard drive after backing up the usable data and things seemed to work again after awhile. The battery, which normally lasted around 90 minutes also began losing it's charge which was to be expected for a camera bought back in 2007.

So I decided to utilize the warranty since I did pay for it and it was about to run out. I dropped it off at the nearest BB Geek Squad area and asked what would happen if they can't fix it and they said they would either get me a similar model with similar specs or store credit to get whatever I wanted.

In doing my research I found there was no models that had a 30 gig hard disk.... it was either a smaller flashed based unit or a 60 or 80 gb hard disk model. uh ok...

Anyways fast forward to last week where I got a call from a repair agent in the Texas Repair center. According to his diagnoses everything was fine and he found no problems with the camera.
Hmmm.... lets see a hard drive that *may* be going bad and a battery that is losing charge and both are covered under warranty. I told them that can't be right as I told him about the file corruptions and the battery. He then said he "Did find the corrupt files..and that the battery was holding still holding it's 90 minute charge." He then revealed that he formatted the hard drive............*WAIT WHAT?!?!?!*

This really pissed me off because he didn't have to format the hard drive to do it's diagnoses. When I asked him what was the percentage of corrupt files did he find and he said he didn't check that and all he did was format the hard drive then goes off on me and tells me it was "consumer's fault" because I should have formatted the hard drive often. Oh that really starting to piss me off now. I went off on him saying that no matter if I formatted the hard drive on a weekly/monthly basis that thing would still fail in time that's why I got the protection for it so it could be serviced or replaced. Then he goes off and tells me that the hard drive is showing green across the board.... so I asked him if he took out the hard drive and he said no.

I told him that there is no way in hell it can be procedure to wipe out someone's hard drive without notifying them or backing up the data and then I stated when someone asks me to check out their computer I don't go ahead and format the hard drive just for the hell of it. He then tells me that someone will be in contact with me as it was his time to go.. Now that was really making things worse. So I went off on him again saying he had the nerve to tell me that he called me to not only to tell me he nuked my camera's hard drive, but to say it was "Consumer's fault??" I told him that as a tech and a former retail manager that he was giving me shitty service and when I was a manager I stayed passed clock out time to make sure the customer was happy. He said he "promised" me someone would call me tomorrow and I said no, I want to talk to someone now...

So he puts the phone down and I could hear him talk to someone else stating it's consumer fault and so on and he needed his help.

Now I was talking to a new person, which I doubt was a manager. I went off on this guy as well saying that this is the worse customer service experience I have ever received and his diagnoses is wrong. Here is where things went from bad to worse. When I asked about the 90 minute battery he went off by saying it's going on for nearly 2 hrs now. *WAIT WHAT??!?!?!*

Two things that caught my attention here, first there is NO WAY IN HELL a Li-ion rechargeable battery for this camera can maintain a 100% charge after 4 years of use, nor can it suddenly acquire an ADDITIONAL 30 minutes. That's IMPOSSIBLE!!! All batteries eventually lose their charge efficiency and I never expected to be at 100% after 4 years!. What's strange is when I dropped of my camera, the geek squad agent refused my charger saying they didn't need it. The only way I can think of the unit getting power was from a wall charger. So they were feeding it direct power which is fine, but when they start telling me the battery now has 2 hrs of life in it, you better have some sort of scientific explanation to back up your statement! He told me that he was the "Laptop" supervisor. Again I asked him if he has ever encountered a portable battery built around 2006/2007 that could sustain 100% charge after 4 years and acquire an additional charge during that time and he couldn't explain it.

So I called him out on this. All of a sudden he got real quite , then I heard "sorry" from this guy in a scared voice. He lied to me and I caught him lying to me. He then asked what do you want us to do to make this right for me. I told him for one thing you need to retrain "His best camcorder employee..." for one and two that I want not only the battery to be replaced with a brand new one (and I even warned him don't even try to clean the contacts to pass it off as a new battery..)but I want the hard drive replaced as well because of the concern it will have a total failure soon. And to boot, I want the inside and outside of the camera cleaned out (because of normal dust build up with these things). When asked if he can do that he said he could.

Wow, just wow. All of this happened while I was on the way home from work. It would have been worse for him if I was at my computer and pulled up some facts for him to read and asked him to back up his bullshit statements, which we both knew he couldn't.

Shortly after I checked my geek squad repair status online and found that an authorized exchanged has been made and approved. In other words he could NOT replace the hard drive or the battery!!! Earlier today I got a call from the local Geek Squad telling me that the repair center has declared that the unit will cost more to repair so they have authorized for a new camera. When asked what kind of camera they said I have to come into the store for more details....hmmm

I am going to call corporate tomorrow to complain about this bullshit because Geek Squad lied to me.