I was overjoyed when I received the call last night (and again this morning) that my PC was back from the Geek Squad and could be picked up at any time.

“It has a new motherboard, a new card reader and is running like a dream,” I was told by the enthusiastic Geek.

Then I got it home.

The first sign of trouble was this: my PC, which had great sound when I sent it in over two weeks ago, now recognizes NO sound device as being installed; not my speakers, not my headphones; nothing!

The second sign of trouble was when I received a runtime error when trying to run some of my games; they refuse to play, even after being uninstalled and re-installed.

So I called up 24-hour Geek Squad Support and was told I’d be connected to a techie who could fix things over my internet connection. Nice enough, I supposed.

Thirty minutes goes by; still on hold. At forty-five minutes I lose patience and fire up the 24-hour support software from Geek Squad. Takes ten minutes to get someone on a chat window with me.

And what does she tell me, even as I’m burning up an hour’s worth of minutes on hold, waiting for a live techie to help me?

“Oh, you need to take it back to the store anyway. We can’t help you.”

They couldn’t have told me this fifty anytime cell minutes ago?

So during all that time on hold, I got curious; I opened the box to see if maybe a wire wasn’t connected that would acknowledge the sound card. Nope, it was attached.

Then I looked more closely at my PC icon and noticed… my card reader’s slots were still invisible!

And right about then, my PC’s video started freakout out and sent my to a blue screen!

What? I realized the truth, then: all the same problems were still there, new motherboard or not.

I can’t say for sure whether my PC has a new motherboard in it, but I can say all the problems that were there are STILL there!

Then I remembered a KEY fact: My extended warranty was scheduled to expire on February 15. I renewed it for a year, though.

My suspicion? Best Buy gambled that I wouldn’t renew it, sent me the broken unit back un-fixed, and hoped to catch me out-of-warranty so they could either charge me for the repair, or force me to buy a new PC.

Heads will roll when I take this thing back to Best Buy Richfield tomorrow: BELIEVE IT! Outer banks foreclosures will be more pleasant!