Best Buy 'repairs' customer's gaming laptop by simply removing half the RAM— claims unit in question only accepts 32 GB of RAM despite listing a 64GB configuration

Lenovo Legion Pro 5 — (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Recent updates

Update 18 Aug 7:40 ET: This story has been updated with extra detail and clarification regarding the purchase of the laptop from a third-party reseller, as listed on Best Buy's website.

There was a time when PC RAM and storage products were sold with lifetime warranties. Replacement of these components was an inconvenience at worst, with parts exhibiting great reliability and sold at trifling prices. In 2026, the tide has fully turned, and we see even the largest businesses wriggling to avoid warranty repairs and replacements with little shame. Yet another anti-consumer case in point is shared by GRINZ_DOCTOR on the Mildly Infuriating Subreddit. It appears to be a bizarre episode where Best Buy ‘repaired’ an under-warranty laptop by simply removing one of its SODIMMs, testing it worked reliably, and then sent it back to the customer with half the memory it originally shipped with installed, confusion possibly caused by a purchase made from a third-party seller.

Best Buy sold me a 64 GB RAM laptop and it worked for 8 months, but then broke. I get it repaired under warranty and they tell me this computer will only accept 32gb RAM.
from r/mildlyinfuriating

You can see at the top of the letter from Best Buy/Geek Squad, dated August this year, the device sent in for warranty repair was a “Lenovo – Upgraded – Legion 5 15.1-inch WXGA Gaming Laptop, Intel i9-14900HX, RTX 5070, 64GB DDR5, 2TB SSD, +1TB dock station, Win 11 Pro” laptop in black, available to buy at Best Buy in the exact configuration. One possible reason for the mishap is that the linked product here is sold by a third-party retailer, PC Heaven, which offers "professionally customized and upgraded configurations." Upgraded in the product listing may be a giveaway that this is, in fact, one of PC Heaven's souped-up options.

GRINZ_DOCTOR sent the eight-month-old 64 GB laptop in for attention after beginning to experience repeated blue screen crashes. The notes mention that underlying software issues were basically ruled out ahead of the warranty return, as reinstalling Windows didn’t help.

Amputation was the chosen 'cure'

The technician accepted the Legion 5 in good cosmetic condition with “no visible wear or damage.” After investigations, the blue screen issues were clearly pinned on RAM, as the Best Buy tech closed the case with repair notes as follows: “Unit has two 32GB sticks for a total of 64GB; this unit only accepts 32GB RAM maximum. One stick of 32GB has been removed and sent back to client with unit.” Before ending the note with the punchline “Unit passed all tests.”

Of course, we don’t know exactly what was done by the repair tech during their fault-finding and resolution process. While GRINZ_DOCTOR insists they bought the unit as described on the upper section of the document with 64GB pre-installed, a product you can still get on Best Buy right now, it seems the most likely explanation for the snafu is that the customer bought an upgraded model from a third-party reseller. Best Buy's insistence that the laptop only supports 32GB of RAM does clash with the user's report that the laptop worked for eight months. Moreover, this certainly doesn't change the fact that they simply took the RAM from the machine without the customer's input. Best Buy also continues to list a configuration of a laptop on its website that the company admits is unsupported by the hardware.

Best Buy laptop — (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Plenty of commenters have advised escalating the issue with Best Buy. They are advised to go to the store in person and keep escalating until a proper remedy - meaning a new working second RAM stick, or a like-for-like laptop replacement - is done. However, if they did indeed buy a third-party offering, their options may be limited.

Earlier this month, we reported on Micron offering pennies on the dollar for Crucial RAM returns. Meanwhile, in NAND-land, SK hynix reportedly ran out of replacement SSDs and is instead insisting on original purchase price refunds.

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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

16 Comments Comment from the forums

factchecker

Smh how many more sites are gonna cover this crap. Best buy clearly mailed the ram if you actually read. Just delete this article and save ursel..ur editor the embarrassment.
Reply
mevinyavin

factchecker said:
Smh how many more sites are gonna cover this crap. Best buy clearly mailed the ram if you actually read. Just delete this article and save ursel..ur editor the embarrassment.
Yeah, and no mention is made (at least here) that the SELLER was NOT Best Buy (they are called PC Heaven, which may explain why there was a RAM stick that already went to heaven).
Still, I don't know if he had a contract with Geek Squad made with the purchase. If so, they should have replaced the RAM under their terms. (And maybe BB will throw out all of these third-party sellers so we can have a normal site back instead of the garbage site we have now.)
Reply
PEnns

I am not a great fan of WorstBuy but:

If the seller was not BB... then why did the customer bring it to them for repair? If they were subcontracted maybe? But this wasn't clear enough in the article.

As to WorstBuy: The lappy was working fine for 8 months despite the "too much RAM" lame excuse....maybe they removed the one defective stick and called it a day (instead of replacing it).
Reply
Jabberwocky79

"One stick of 32GB has been removed and sent back to client with unit.”

I read this to mean nobody stole any RAM, they just sent the uninstalled stick back to the owner. Why is this an article?

Facts aside, I really hated it when big retail started copying the Amazon model and accepting sellers from anywhere on their platforms. It became very confusing, and I mostly stopped shopping at Newegg at that point.
Reply
hardware_fixer

Intermittent failure could be due to timing issues. The i9 processor spec shows two memory speeds, suggesting that a lower clock speed may be required for multiple RAM modules.
That could be set in the BIOS at poweron.

A second possibility is that there is too much heat
in the unit, exacerbated by heat from
the 2nd RAM module, or the Best Buy test
was not stressful enough or not long enough for heat buildup. Check that fans are working and that airflow is clear. A cooling
laptop platform may help.

Memtest or a high CPU/memory stress test
like high performance linpack (HPL) can
help to force an error to show itself.
Reply
mevinyavin

Jabberwocky79 said:
Facts aside, I really hated it when big retail started copying the Amazon model and accepting sellers from anywhere on their platforms. It became very confusing, and I mostly stopped shopping at Newegg at that point.
Yeah. Newegg, Walmart and Best Buy. At least on Newegg, you can still filter out everyone else. Nearly impossible on Amazon, Walmart has a button to check that does nothing. On Best Buy, I filter by selecting in-store pickup. :cool: Works like a charm.
Reply
beyondlogic

most likely the ram socket has failed from board usually by using another stick that isnt compatible i literally had this happen to a lenovo few months back were it stopped functioning until i removed the ram and kept only 1 in. seems to be quite common with them.
Reply
Randi Poling

PEnns said:
I am not a great fan of WorstBuy but:

If the seller was not BB... then why did the customer bring it to them for repair? If they were subcontracted maybe? But this wasn't clear enough in the article.

As to WorstBuy: The lappy was working fine for 8 months despite the "too much RAM" lame excuse....maybe they removed the one defective stick and called it a day (instead of replacing it).
Sadly, they make it hard to know if you're buying from a 3rd party or not. They make the font small, and so out of the way that you actually have to dog around for it. So if you aren't that familiar with their site or changes done to it, you'll just be assuming you're buying from Bestbuy themselves.
Reply
SteJBorchard

- Old man coughing into camp fire tone-

Back in my day, I wanted to be a geek squad tech around 2005 ish. Got my Comptia A+ and one other cert.

Applied and applied and never any response.

Then someone told me that I was way over qualified for the position especially since they only wanted sales.

Since then, not a darned thing that Best buy does surprises me.
Reply
Freak in the Spreadsheets

SteJBorchard said:
- Old man coughing into camp fire tone-

Back in my day, I wanted to be a geek squad tech around 2005 ish. Got my Comptia A+ and one other cert.

Applied and applied and never any response.

Then someone told me that I was way over qualified for the position especially since they only wanted sales.

Since then, not a darned thing that Best buy does surprises me.
I was a Geek Squad tech for a few years before moving up to bigger and better things. It's about as bad as you can imagine.

Most of what they see is either user-error or just a lack of knowledge around technology - mostly answering questions from boomers. On the flip side of that, most of the actual repair stuff gets sent out to a service center. They do the actual repairs and then ship it back. There are very few hardware "repairs" handled in the store, and most of those are just replacing failed hard drives, adding/replacing RAM, or upgrading graphics cards. About 95% of the stuff that gets fixed in store is software-related - viruses, malware, failed updates, "got hacked", etc.

The "agents" who are actually knowledgeable don't really stick around for long. The work is mind-numbing, repetetive, and there's only so many times you can deal with seniors and their bevy of forgotten passwords. Then add on constantly being hounded by management for not hitting metrics like selling so many plans per shift, making calls to customers to come pick up their stuff, etc. It's exhausting and not very rewarding. Burnout is high when you're over-qualified to be a password resetter.

Then you have your "agents" who are just there to see stuff. They know nothing about anything, will fib or straightup lie to customers, and couldn't troubleshoot simple issues to save their lives. But the old farts love them and will buy expensive (and unnecessary in most cases) support plans from them. Management LOVES these "agents" because they bring in the most money. Subsequently they also cause the most problems due to their lack of knowledge and inability to properly set expectations. I don't know how many times a customer has gotten in my face because a coworker told them we could do something that just wasn't possible ("Sure we can magically make the speakers on your $200 laptop louder even though you already have the volume maxed out everywhere") and I had to break the bad news to them.
Reply

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