Speedy laptop repair a priority at giant Geek Squad center in Kentucky

HILLVIEW, Ky. — The nation's top electronics retailer didn't pick Silicon Valley, India or another high-tech hub to build its hospital for personal computers. It chose the Kentucky countryside, known more for racehorses and bourbon distilleries than geeks and microprocessors.

Geek Squad, the quirky PC-service division of Best Buy, opened its 165,000-square-foot Geek Squad City warehouse just south of Louisville late last year with a goal of cutting the time it takes to repair and return a PC — especially laptops.

Computers with broken motherboards, hard drives with death rattles and viruses begin streaming into the warehouse at 5 a.m. from a nearby UPS air hub in Louisville, one of the key reasons that the business was built here, said Wes Snyder, Geek Squad City's top manager, or "mayor."

Inside the facility's sprawling repair room, hundreds of computer techs — Geek Squad's "agents" — fix more than 2,000 laptops a day. More than 700,000 PCs will be repaired here this year, said Michael Rodgers, Geek Squad City's "ambassador," or spokesman.

Laptops are the majority of personal computers sold nowadays, and the smaller and more advanced they get, the more complicated the repairs. The portable PCs also endure more abuse than their larger desktop cousins.

About half the laptops are repaired on the same day they arrive at Geek Squad City, but the average time is about three days, Rodgers said.

Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group research company, said the turnaround time is faster than any other computer retailer.

"From a store perspective, I'm not aware of anyone else doing this," he said.

Others follow the lead

Circuit City Stores, Best Buy's main competitor in the retail electronics market, launched its own PC-repair service, called Firedog, in October. It offers in-home and in-store service, similar to Geek Squad. Circuit City declined to comment on Geek Squad City.

Most of the thousands of computers sent to Geek Squad City could not be fixed by employees at Best Buy locations, typically because the store didn't have the proper parts.

Swift repair time is crucial in an industry with customers who don't want to be away from their private files.

"Laptops are very personal, and people don't like a personal element of their life to be out of their reach for two or three or 10 days," said Richard Doherty, president of The Envisioneering Group.

Another approach

Some smaller, independent tech-support companies forgo shipping computers and have instead built their business around online troubleshooting services. HiWired.com, a small Massachusetts company, repairs computers with remote screen-sharing technology, said Singu Srinivas, its co-founder. A typical service call costs from $75 to $100, he said.

"What we've found is 93 percent of problems can be actually solved remotely," Srinivas said, "because most of the problems people have these days are less, 'My key is stuck on my keyboard,' but more about, 'I saw a new piece of software on the Internet, and my PC was working fine before that, but now it's running sluggish.' "

Minnesota roots

Founded in 1994 in Minnesota by Robert Stephens, Geek Squad began with house calls to customers. Stephens sold it to Best Buy in 2002. Best Buy offers Geek Squad service packages that range from $29 to $299. The company also fixes computers not bought at its stores.

There are no customer walk-ins at Geek Squad City, but employees still don the standard-issue black tie and pants with white, short-sleeve dress shirts. About 350 of the facility's workers are computer technicians, most from nearby Louisville. Rodgers said the facility is already planning to hire another 350 workers at wages ranging from $9.50 to $31.50 an hour.

Though it's been open since October, management is constantly streamlining methods.

"I've never found a problem that somebody here couldn't fix," said Justin Meade, a 21-year-old Geek Squad City worker.