The beginning of Charles Dunstone's partnership with the American electricals giant Best Buy was low key. It came in 2007, in the form of a regiment of Vespa-riding computer nerds with white short sleeved shirts and clip-on ties.
The Geek Squad is Best Buy's after-sales support team, helping customers from within stores, over the phone and on 24-hour home call-out. There are similar offerings both in the US and in the UK, but the Geeks are regarded as best in breed, the US retailer's point of difference from other sellers of consumer electronics.
Dunstone brought them to the UK in the aftermath of Carphone Warehouse's chaotic "free" broadband offer, when the group's ill prepared call centres were overwhelmed as millions rushed to install their connections. The doomed joint venture to create a chain of out-of-town Best Buy UK electricals stores, selling everything from kettles to computers, followed two years later but met its end this week after failing to turn a profit.
Geek Squad, on the other hand, is still going in the UK. It is safe to assume fixing IT problems for householders is not a big cash cow – Geek Squad's numbers are not published separately. But its importance can be judged by the fact that its founder, Robert Stephens, who sold to Best Buy nearly a decade ago, has moved on to become chief technology officer at the retail parent.
What the service does is monetise a need that is most often been met by friends and relatives. With the aim of spending less time staring at screens, I gave my mother and mother in law Geek Squad annual membership a number of years ago, and to my surprise and relief they have renewed ever since.
An American analyst once described it as the "IT staff for the individual". It joins the dots between the network – be it broadband or 3G – and the device, meaning consumers faced with a problem don't have to put up with being batted back and forth between the call centre at their telecoms operator and their laptop maker's helpline.
Now Carphone is on a mission to join the dots between network and device in its stores. Having gone lukewarm on selling fridges, and prompted by the consumer appetite for smartphones, it will instead focus on stocking a greater range of devices – tablets, laptops and e-readers – in up to 400 Wireless World stores around Europe by March next year.
It took just 18 months, from the opening of the first Best Buy UK big-box shop at the Lakeside shopping centre in Thurrock in April 2010, for Dixons and Comet to send the new entrant packing. With the likes of John Lewis serving higher-spending customers, there was not really a gap in the market for another white goods retailer.
But no one is yet offering what Carphone's Wireless World format can: a collection of devices from a range of brands and the broadband, Wi-Fi or mobile phone contracts needed to make them work.
Apple comes closest, although its shops only stock the one brand. And while there are "geniuses" in store for those prepared to sit on a bench and wait to be seen, Apple won't send help to customers' homes.
Everything Everywhere, the uncomfortably named union of Orange and T-Mobile, would probably have removed its umbrella brand from the high street by now were it not for the fact that consumers rather like the shops that use it. They offer a wider range of devices and higher quality sales advice. But there are only plans for 30 so far, and they can only sell connections to two networks.
My fantasy consumer electronics retailer would be a one-stop device and network shop combining John Lewis-like informed sales staff, a wide range of products, supermarket-beating prices and top-notch after-sales care. It's probably too big an ask, but Carphone and its Geeks are well placed to scooter in and make the market.
• This article was amended on 18 November 2011 because the original said you can't buy a 3G connection in Apple stores, when in fact you can.
