Micro Center — Attraction in Town of Hempstead

UPDATED -- see bottom of review:

I am writing to express my extreme dissatisfaction with my recent experience with Micro Center's support team.

On February 24, 2024, I purchased a Levono laptop from the Westbury location.

Not five months later, my Windows OS became corrupted. Since purchasing, I have literally checked email, gone on Facebook, played a video game via Steam and watched some streaming services. I also migrated over years of documents -- personal writing, photos, etc.

On July 11, I took the laptop back to MicroCenter. The next day, July 12, I was informed via text that the 2 year warranty did not cover OC issues. Nevertheless, the manager was willing to give a courtesy OS reimage. However if I wanted my data backed up it would cost $150 -- for the service and for an external drive.

I explained I had my own 2 Terabyte drive and could provide that for the data migration. The rep took the external drive and said they would transfer my data and then do the OS reimaging.

On Sunday 14th, I was texted that my device was ready. I came in and paid the $86 fee for the data migration. To be safe, before taking my laptop home I checked my external drive and discovered little to nothing had been saved. All my word docs, photos, etc were gone.

The service rep and manager said that what was on the external drive was what they migrated over. I informed them that there was a great deal lost and I had trusted them to recover the data. They said they would try to see if they could save anything else with a hard drive recovery.

On Monday evening, I texted the rep to ask for an update but heard nothing. On Tuesday there was no follow-up either.

Finally on Wednesday, July 17th I went over and asked for my laptop back. The Manager informed me they could do nothing and were unable to recover any of my data. I was not offered anything for this critical loss. I had to ask the manager for a refund on the data migration, which he did give. But I was given no apology at all. I felt extremely dismissed and undervalued as a customer.

Further, I had purchased the ESET security product when I first bought the laptop. I was told to simply go back to the site, log in and use my license key to reinstall. However the site did not recognize the laptop anymore so it thought I was trying to install on another device. When I cleared the device from the account, the key would not work. So now I'm out security protection as well.

To add insult to injury, several apps were having trouble installing because the wrong clock settings (Pacific time) were left on the device. Your team couldn't even give me back my laptop in proper working order.

At this point, I feel like my two year warranty with Micro Center is worthless, as I don't feel I can trust your team to ever touch my laptop again. I am extremely disappointed in the experience and will be warning my friends and family to reconsider using your support services.

UPDATED 07/25/2024

I am adjusting my review score and adding this addendum thanks to the response I received from Manager Miguel.

He reached out last week to apologize for the situation. He went into far more detail about what happened and the challenges they faced in trying to recover my data. I told him that had I received the detailed explanation he had provided from the Knowledge Bar team, I would still have been frustrated, but at least would have better understanding of the steps that were taken.

He also was kind enough to provide a new key for the security software.

I am still a little wary of the Knowledge Bar at this point, but Miguel did work hard to regain some...

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I used to love micro center my dad is a computer engineer and two of my best friends are programmers. We all used micro center for 10 plus years but I just can’t say it’s the...