It’s time to boycott BestBuy out of business. Really this is a follow on to my previous boycott post. Some little Keller MBA put together a spreadsheet for FedEx “proving” how much money they would save by eliminating all customer service and it’s time for we the consumer to put every retail business using FedEx out of business. Honestly, it is time for all of us to be surfing over to Top Class Actions and taking this to the next level. I mean, according to Statify
a lot of people read this blog, especially on the 8th of July. If that many people join a class action we ought to be able to get something done.
You – the retailer – are responsible for the entire customer experience. That means all the way to their door and fairly handling returns. Not Newegg, treating the consumer as their e-waste disposal site, refusing to take anything back and not using a delivery company having zero customer service.
Despite what AI says, there are no humans at the number. You cannot navigate to one. You can’t even find a phone number for the local FedEx offices anymore. They only publish that number where no humans exist. Fedex AI isn’t any better than Google’s.
You all remember how it professed there were black Nazi SS divisions in WWII fighting for Hitler, right?
How We Got Here
As you get older, unless you were born the world’s most perfect asshole, you start wanting to do things to help the human species. It’s even better if you can do this in a minor effort somewhat selfish way.
For more than a decade I’ve had a bunch of older, “spare” machines sitting on the BOINC rack (really a couple of benches). During my youth I got into BOINC for SETI. Then BOINC started getting projects looking for cures and to research various diseases. IBM sponsoring World Community Grid was a golden era for BOINC. Now WCG is hosted by someone else and they have a lot of issues keeping things going. Most other projects have nothing to do with making humans better. If they exist they are so under funded a single failed hard drive takes them out for months.
BOINC Failings
Most of the machines in the BOINC rack are really old. A few have died recently. The oldest, an AMD Athalon 6-core loaded for bear will soon be offered for free to anyone locally that needs a computer. NVIDIA f’ed the world dropping support for the older video cards without Open-Sourcing the drivers.
BOINC itself has become less and less functional on Linux. Especially detection of inactivity and percentage of machine use. That 6-core used to still have quick response after you wiggled the mouse. Now, when you restrict BOINC to 70% of CPU and RAM it still buries the box.
To use Cuda core on older video cards you have to run Manjaro. Arch developers have been valiantly maintaining the drivers in the AUR. Manjaro makes the install process not horrible.
The real problem is BOINC is dying. SETI went away in 2020. The few projects that still exist are horribly under funded. Even on the BOINC forums themselves you hear the BOINC is dying discussion. We leave our computers on and no work units get handed out. Part of the problem is the beggars have gotten far too picky. Many are coding only for the latest GPUs. Too many are ASS-U-ME-ing machines not more than two years old. My second oldest BOINC machine is an i7-gen6. 😲Of course, the limitless incompetence of D.O.G.E. and the Trump administration has left many projects looking to cure diseases without funding or staff. They don’t have the money to buy that hard drive for their NAS when it fails.
folding@home
I’ve posted about folding@home before. This is what BOINC should be in my opinion.
Just look at the list of diseases they are trying to cure! To those of you who didn’t understand when I talked about helping the human race in a somewhat selfish manner, this is it. No matter how immortal you think you are, those diseases could pretty much kill anyone of us. I’ve already lost family to Alzheimer’s. The Quack is certainly not going to cure anything.
The problem with folding@home is “they want the good stuff.” There is a list of “supported” GPUs, but many projects won’t hand out work units to the older cards. Because of that I may also give away my i7-gen6 machine in the near future. Even running BOINC at 70% it is starting to struggle. For someone who just wants to surf the web and check email, it’s kick-ass. Definitely not enough for folding@home. Tried that. A Dell 7070 seems to be the minimum for folding@home. You definitely don’t want to try HP Z2G4 or really any of the newer Z models, especially the Small Form Factor machines. I may have to find a good home for that machine, or stick an LS-120 in it and use it as my primary authoring machine.
Enter the New Machines
When I’m billable and can expense them, I try to build reasonable cost machines. Not cheap. They need to be loaded with RAM for yocto builds. You read about the i9-gen13 back in 2024. I’m still holding my breath with it comes to the CPU oxidation issue because I bought the stuff through Newegg. Last year I built
Around Christmas time I picked up a Dell 7070 for $500. Just couldn’t let that one slip.
It only had 32GB of RAM. I boosted it not long ago.
Latest Machine
Now, I’m putting together another Ryzen 5. It’s been a trail of tears. Was going to repurpose the tower case holding the Athalon but top mount power supply cases aren’t usable with today’s motherboards if you want to use those external bays. An 850W power supply is a lot longer than a 400W.
The plastic cover for the OEM CPU cooler was damaged. Of itself not a major issue. Trouble is one of the four screw tubes was bent. You could only get three of them to line up with the backing plate. Newegg knew this was shit.
A complete shit motherboard that will not run Linux. Going to offer it up on Craig’s list for $10 WILL NOT SHIP. Never buy anything MSI. They cut so many corners a great big rectangle becomes a little round dot.
The RAM Newegg wouldn’t stand behind.
As you can see, I’ve had a lot of experience with shit customer service and shipping. I spent four hours on the road making the round trip to Microcenter to buy a real mother board with three year protection plan.
If the MSI hadn’t been part of the bundle you would never find me adding it to a shopping list.
The Video Card
Got everything changed. Didn’t even need to re-install Linux Mint Mate 22.3. Everything just booted and worked. (Not what happens with MSI products.) Installed some more software and generally configured things, got the Samba server running, then opened up a text editor to start writing stuff down.
Both monitors quit.
Power cycled the machine and got the dreaded one-long-two-short beeps. Tried re-seating video card. Tried other things. Finally stuck it in the i9-gen13 and got the same dreaded beep sequence.
Wasn’t in the machine 5 days and it died. I don’t game, unless you count Solitaire. I’m an author and software developer. I’d rather waste time writing blog posts and books instead of playing first person shooter games.
This video card could not have had the decency to die before I made the trip to Microcenter so I could have picked up a replacement. Adding insult to injury, the “factory repair” place pealed the sticker off this video card. The one with the serial number. I cannot find my receipt because I might not have printed it and I deleted my Newegg account. Gigabyte won’t honor warranty without serial number and receipt.
Likewize is a Bust
Oh joy! They put a Likewize one year protection plan on this. It’s even registered.
The serial number they have listed for it is NOT a legitimate Gigabyte serial number. I try to open a claim. Likewize refuses. Automated insult states the card is still under manufacturer warranty. Gigabyte tells me if the serial number was still on the card it would have a 90-day warranty. That’s all they give factory repairs. Speaks volumes about the level of confidence they have in their repair techs!
Yes, I filed all kinds of complaints. Getting nowhere. Looks like I’m going to have to wait 90 days and file a claim stating it “just died today.”
How BestBuy Screwed Me
BestBuy had this card at a not horrible price.
The bastards did not give me a shipping option! Free next day was it. I desperately tried to change the destination to the Dollar General store near me. No. BestBuy shipped it with some flag blocking re-route.
No, you can’t enter delivery instructions without risking identity theft!
I didn’t choose FedEx. I wanted to choose the Post Office. 45% of all data breaches happen in “the cloud.” The only thing more insecure than “the cloud” is your iMbecile Phone.
Read up on Pegasus Spyware which installs with a single missed phone call. It’s one of many commercial products that can penetrate your phone without you doing anything.
The Situation
I have my mail on hold because the road in front of my place has been torn up since this time last year. It’s supposed to get oiled on the 24th. Road Commissioner put barricades up days ago because he finally got the road smooth and doesn’t want tires cutting tracks. I understand that. Any track cut in the gravel will be a track in the blacktop for the life of the road. You have to have smooth packed gravel for a smooth blacktop road.
Ordinarily, when you order something you get to choose the shipping method. Back when FedEx was a legitimate company, they had customer service. You could call and re-route to Dollar General (where FedEx has a booth/desk/whatever). Those people verify who you are before you pick it up. I’m okay with that.
I’m not okay with BestBuy putting my identity at risk by forcing me to open a FedEx account.
Identity theft is a massive problem. Far too many corporations are moving things to “the cloud” where they have zero control of where the data is or how it is secured. Think I’m making that shit up? Look it up. Iran attacked Amazon data centers. Data centers for “the cloud” got built there because it was cheap and welcoming. When you use “web services,” doesn’t matter which flavor, you have no idea where that shit is. Despite what the contract says, you have no idea how it is secured. Cheap labor is usually not prompt with patches and management is loathe to pay for the time and resources required to actually test patches.
BestBuy Summary
It’s time to boycott BestBuy until they either go out of business or cease doing any business with FedEx. “We the people” really should look into a class action against one or both. One of the biggest sources of identity theft is being required to open a free account. Yes, identity theft insurance will help some. About as much as life insurance helps you get over the loss.
If a company has to “have an app” for that, it’s not customer service. The flip phone movement is real. It’s powered by people who actually have a life. There is even the flip phone cleanse. Don’t forget that really old people who have more money in CD’s at the bank than FDIC would ever cover have land lines. Their parents grew up during the Great Depression so their children put every nickel they could find in the bank.
A “free account in the cloud” is one more entry in the identity theft lottery. It’s the truth man. We have all got to purge the number of places that has our information. Running head to head with a “free account in the cloud” are the fake job openings posted on Indeed and its ilk where you have to submit a copy of your driver’s license and the last 4 of your SSN to apply.
You, retailer, are responsible for the entire product chain, both from and to the consumer. You choose a shipping service with zero customer service and you don’t have any customer service.
I’m done doing business with BestBuy. I really don’t know just how much stuff I’ve purchased from them in the past 12 months. Two refrigerators for certain.
Join the boycott!
If this post has inspired you to set up a computer for folding@home please consider joining team Twenty of Two.
