Pros
BASICS: First, I already had my A+ certification going into the job, so my experience may be slightly different than somebody coming in with just a high school diploma. I get to work with clients, and do not have to do much more than that. As a consultation agent, 90% of the time you will simply check-in customers. If a customer does not have a technical support plan, you sell them one in order to get coverage to fix their devices. PC SETUPS: During the time you are not working with customers, CA's are responsible for completing small repair tasks on computers including program installs, updates, restores, data transfers, etc. ---- Essentially, it is the CA's job to complete the setup process of a new computer, so customers are protected by an antivirus, updated, and ready to use their machines as soon as they arrive home.For the New PC setups, its the CA's job to make sure they are always running something. As long as all the PC's are working on a task, and you have no customers, you tend to encounter a lot of down time which can be used in a few ways. DOWNTIME: Your manager will want you to use down time to go on the Learning Lounge and earn Best Buy certifications. However, most of the time managers are ok with utilizing down time to talk to coworkers and use your cell phone. A vast majority of the managers at my store are very lax on the phone policy. Basically, as long as your phone is NOT preventing you from delivering high quality service to customers, and your are NOT using it for extremely long periods of time, you will be ok.
Cons
OVERPRICING: Technical Support plans start at $200 which is very steep for a lot of small repairs, this makes me cringe as I have to sell a very expensive solution for many simple problems, which makes you feel like Geek Squad is screwing our customers. SALES DRIVEN, NO COMMISSION: Furthermore, the main objective of your job is to sell these plans to people, so you must try and give each person a sales pitch to buy one. I will add though, for an inexperienced computer user, these plans can be extremely beneficial and well worth the cost because of the support the client gets (phone/store/online), the included antivirus for 3 devices, and the ability to have 3 computers covered by all Geek Squad services. LACK OF QUALITY TRAINING: I did NOT receive any in-depth of well designed training on computer systems, how they work, and common issues. I already possessed this knowledge however, and may have been able to skip some training because of my A+ certification. This lack of training affects other people though, most of my coworkers have a very basic knowledge of how computer systems work, and tend to give incorrect or bad advice that usually costs the customer more money than they would need to spend if a solution is planned logically with cost efficiency in mind.