Anybody have an experience like this one with the Best Buy?

We bought a Compaq laptop and took it in for service under the manufacturer's warantee because the USB ports and the power cord inlet were malfunctioning through normal wear. At the time we took it in, there was nothing else wrong with the computer.

The people who were working on it told us over the phone that it was going to cost $600 to fix it because they said they found liquid in the computer. The computer only cost $500 dollars to begin with.

We told them we weren't going to spend $600 to fix a $500 dollar computer that didn't even have $600 worth of damage when we brought it in for repairs. So they sent it back to the store without repairing the ports or the inlet.

When we got to the store, the Geek Squad guy told us to sign a form saying they had done the repairs we requested and that we were satisfied with the work that had been done. And the form also said we owed them $50. We said we weren't going to sign that form because, A. it wasn't true, and B. we didn't owe them $50.

They said, "no, you're not signing the form because you owe us any money, you're just signing the form to acknowledge reciept of the computer". We said give us a form to sign that doesn't say the repairs were done, or that we are satisfied with the work that was done.

They also told us the reason they didn't do the repairs on the ports or the inlet was because the liquid they found in the computer voided the warrantee. We said that other than the ports and the power inlet, there was nothing wrong with the computer when we dropped it off, so if there was any liquid in the computer when it got to the shop, someone at the store must have put it there. So we said we wanted the store's manager to sign something guaranteeing that the computer was in at least as good shape when we picked it up as it was when we dropped it off.

The manager was unwilling to do that. We didn't have the power cord for the computer when we went to pick it up, so we couldn't see for ourselves whether or not they had done any damage to it, so we had to leave it at the store. They wouldn't release it to us without our signature saying we were satisfied.

We think they either put liquid in our computer to void the warrantee so they wouldn't have to do any work on it, or someone in their shop accidently spilled something in it, or they're lying about there being liquid in the computer so they wouldn't have to honor the warrantee.

We also had a bad experience with a camera we bought from there. They tried to convince us that the problem was with our computer (another laptop) and not with the camera. We had the laptop with us, so we were able to show them that the problem was with the camera. But had we not had the computer there with us, they wouldn't have honored the warrantee.

Has anybody else had bad experiences with customer service at a Best Buy store? If so, how did you resolve your problems?

We have a friend who had problems with them and eventually, he got hold of the Best Buy president's phone number and got things straightened out. But he's lost the number and doesn't know how to get it back.

We've decided to go back with the power cord and test the computer for ourselves before taking it out of the store. If it doesn't work at least as well as it did before we took it in, we're thinking about suing in small claims court.