Micro Center — Local services in Saint Louis Park

Absolute worse repair experience of my life. If I could give a zero star review I would. Under no circumstances take your device here to get repaired. I bought my laptop here which my experience was fine for that. Back in late June my hinge for my laptop broke. Brought it in they said they would have it for about a month. Fine, whatever I understand they have to order parts and repair it. I get it back about three weeks later maybe a little longer. I go and take it out of my bag three days later. Have not touched it since the day I got it back and what do I see. My hinge cover is broken and does not clip into place. I take it back and the person who I spoke with originally I could tell he did not really believe me when I told him I thought they did it. They leave and come back and tell me they broke too many clips off of it so when they put it on it looked secure and the slightest movement is all it took for it to not clip in properly. So, there I give it back to them to fix it in mid July. They have it for about a week and a half maybe two. I get it back and now I am in school and one of my classes I need my camera to take a online test. Come to find out my camera no longer works and I look for the camera on my computer and it is no where to be found. So, I call them sit on hold for about 45 minutes before the person who answers the phone looks at it and does me a favor and doesn’t charge me for looking deep inside my computer to see if it is something he can fix. They tell me I now have to bring it up there again. For me, it is about a 30 minute drive. I only brought it there in the first place cause it was recommended to me and that is where I bought my laptop. So, I bring it up there and thankfully it only took them a couple days to fix it because they did not properly install the module when they were putting my computer back together. I just find it very interesting they do not check what they take apart to make sure that it works after they work on it. Now I put it back in my bag again and take it home. The next time I take it out of my bag guess what happens. My hinge cover is yet again broken. Same problem as before. Too many clips where broken in the process of them taking it apart. I get the enjoyment of yet again driving 30 minutes to bring it to them to fix it again now for the fourth time off of the initial repair back in June. They get it at the end of September and I just today got it back for what better be the final time which is mid to late October. Now I am in school online it is midterms and it was a major inconvenience giving it back to them the last two times because they simply they did not check their work. I only brought it back because I wanted it to be under warranty and I did not want to have to pay for something I did not do. So, as much as I wanted to wait after the semester ended it just was not logical. Now, they did offer me to pick it up but when they offered it was towards the end of the week when I have already completed my homework for the week and I did not want to drive a hour if not more, round trip just to pick up my laptop to have to bring it back a couple days later and make another hour drive round trip. I highly recommend not bringing your device here especially if you want them to have it longer than you in the five months you have been dealing with it. There is literally nothing that could make me bring my laptop here again to be repaired. When people ask me where they should bring their device to get repaired, I will be sure to tell them definitely not Micro-center.

Update to my review. I open it for the first time today since getting it back yesterday and they literally took off every single sticker on here that came with it and I did not ask them to. It doesn’t even look like my computer anymore. Two of them were already off when I gave it to them. One the initial repair and the other from use. What happened to not doing anything without my consent? I am beyond livid with this whole experience. Added a photo the day I got my computer and now today....

I feel bad leaving a 2 star review because I usually love this place. I have gotten a lot of great electronics here for a great price, and the staff here is always very helpful and polite. However, three weeks ago I brought my PC into their service desk for repair, and I have been very disappointed by my experience.

They were great about the initial diagnostic. They told me I had a bad motherboard within a day or two of me handing over my PC. I texted with one of their techs, he quoted me a repair price, and I told him they could proceed with the repair.

My issue begins when I ask the tech how long my repair will take. He says they don't really have a good way of estimating how long it will take to get it through the repair queue. I assume it won't be too long.

I don't hear anything for a week, so I text the tech again for an update. He says there is still no estimate on when it will be done, but he says he will send the details of the repair to the repair tech tomorrow, and see if it can get squeezed in. I don't hear anything for another week, so I decided to go into the service center and just check and see if I can get any update. I just want to know if it is about to be worked on, or if I should be expecting it to be done in a few weeks.

The service desk person gives me more or less the same spiel. He says it is near the top of the repair queue, he thinks it will be done in a few days, and he will talk to the repair tech and see if he can work it in today.

I leave and don't hear anything for another week. At this point it has been three weeks since I dropped of my PC. I text the tech who originally helped me, and he says a tech (he names by name) will be working on it tonight. It has been 3 days since that, and I haven't heard anything else.

I don't mind that my repair has taken over three weeks. I am just frustrated by the lack of communication on when the repair will be done. There is page where you can check the status of your repair, but it is almost useless. It said my repairs estimated completion date was three or four days after I dropped off my pc. Because I am excited to have my PC repaired, I am compulively checking this page a few times a day to see if there is any update on when it will be done, and it is very frustrating to see no movement.

I know the employees are well intentioned when they say they will try to squeeze in my repair, but I end up more frustrated when they give me false hope of my pc getting worked on. I would rather them tell me that the repair would take a month than leading me on about when it would be repaired. It feels a little hopeless because I still have no idea of when my PC will be repaired.

I have a hard time believing that a store that has been open in that location for over twenty years has no way of estimating how long its repair queue is. I like this store, but I would not recommend their repair services to a friend until they improve their customer...

This review is around the "upgrade" replacement plan that has been advertised by Micro Center Sales Representatives. I've been shopping at Micro Centers for years simply for this reason. Knowing I have a product covered if it became defective or if the product is in good condition I could return it at the cashier counter for in-store credit (per the value of cost of the product at the time of purchase). Knowing this and having utilized it in the past, I went there today to do this with personal computer parts that were covered by the warranty. I got to the counter and the cashier informed me that parts that are older than 1 year with the replacement plan need to be done at the service counter due to a tax issue. I walked over to the service counter and was informed that the parts that are in good condition would not qualify under their warranty for in-store credit since it would be considered insurance fraud and that people have been taking advantage of warranties and the company was not turning a profit on the returns. At this point, the service representative said he could get a manager if I want. I respectfully declined the offer and another service representative questioned if he needed to get a manager in a defensive way. I shrugged it off and walked out of the store. As a frequent customer I feel like I essentially have no reason to come back to the store to buy any product simply due to fraudulent advertising by the company. Upon returning home I found that there's a community of customers with similar experiences. Unfortunately this is the 2nd experience I have had in the last year with Micro Center sales and service representatives. I previously had an SSD die on me, had the warranty that was still active, attempted to return it at the cashier's desk and told to go to the service desk instead. They said they'd need to test it before giving me store credit and claimed it worked just fine because it was detectable by BIOS. However, I explained that it was a boot manager problem because I couldn't boot into Windows in order to reset or reinstall it. The service desk advised that issue had nothing to do with the SSD and if the BIOS could detect it, it was fine- which is not the case since the SSD's job is to boot into the operating system (Windows). I went back the next day and was told at the cashier's desk that the previous service desk rep was wrong and I could return it under the warranty and was given store credit. I have been told 1 thing when buying their warranty then told a different thing when I try to use the warranty, which also doesn't match what I have been told in the years prior. I work in the field of software engineering and also work with computer hardware on a daily basis so am well educated in computer diagnostics. I have been shopping at Micro Center since 2018 and now that they want to jerk people around with their warranty process, I'll be purchasing...