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Big Box Store Reps Push Unnecessary Recovery Discs
Ed Albro, PC World writes "At PC World, we've got a story today on salespeople at Best Buy and Circuit City pushing consumers to pay the stores' technicians to create recovery discs for their new laptops. Recovery discs are important to have, of course, but the fact is that they're easy to make yourself. Or you can get them from the manufacturer of your PC, often for half of what Best Buy and Circuit City charge you. The salespeople often tell you that you can buy from the manufacturer — but they claim you'll pay twice as much as the stores charge."
The manufacturer can make more $ by saving those few pennies. ( even 10 cents adds up when you sell millions of units )
And, if you dont create one and then have your PC crash they might even get a service call out of you too.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And the sales associate at Fry's, while trying to sell me the extended warranty, said that warranty replacements on the Wii take forever and are expensive because you have to pay to ship to Japan.
He was flat-out lying, as warranties for North American Nintendo sales go through a center in California, and Nintendo pays for the shipping. But the Fry's employee (a department manager nonetheless) insisted that the shipping/replacement costs and delays were a reason to purchase their warranty instead.
Never underestimate the sleazy, underhanded attempts that a salesperson will go through to get your money, especially if they work on any kind of commission. As a corollary, the less knowledge and understanding the salesperson has about the product they are pushing, the more likely they are to be underhanded in their push.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
for the more tech savvy, i recommend making an image of a harddrive after the OS and whatever other programs have been installed. I did this for my mom's new computer; i reloaded XP (it came with vista home or something along those lines), installed all her favorite programs, set them up, did a virus/spyware scan, etc etc. after everything was said and done, i loaded Acronis True Image, made an image, and burned it to a boot-able DVD using their boot image.
So now, if there is some weird software glitch or she installed / uninstalled too much crap, i just tell her to back up all her personal documents, pop the dvd in, reboot the computer and voila. a few screens and clicks later, she's back to how it was when she first got it.
seriously, that little app has saved me so much work and time. (not a slashvertisement! i don't work for them, i swear!)
This sig contains repetition and redundancy.
It's been awhile since I bought any computer equipment from a big box store, so excuse any ignorance, but don't the manufacturers include recovery CDs in the packaging?
Not necessarily. The T61 I bought from Lenovo came with a tool to create recovery disks which, I assume, are based off the recovery partition present on the hard disk. 6 CDs later, and I had a freshly minted set of disks which are now safely stored with the rest of the documentation for the laptop.
You should get the full os install disks for free you are paying for them and M$ should have them up for download as ISO images that need the key on the system.
I had to download a torrent of XP media center 2005 to run a repair install on a system that I was fixing for some one and they did not get a install disk / restore disk with there system.
Some recovery disks wipe out all of your data.
Check out this blog post about 27 Confessions of a Former Circuit City Worker.
There's lots of insights about what the deal really is behind extended warranties, backup discs, and such. For example:
10. When buying a PC you will be asked to have a backup DVD made for a charge of $30. This is done through an application found on all computers, sometimes hidden. You could do it yourself for free. Also, it was very common to sell this on Toshiba laptops. Little do the customers know, it's already in the box. So we would charge, and do nothing.
> One thing that slashdotters forget is with MS Windows, don't underestimate the stupidity of the average user.
> Most probably don't even know what a recovery disk is.
I honestly had no idea what a "recovery disk" was until I just googled for it. I've been using computers for over 20 years, and have made a career as a software engineer for the last 12. I've always just had the full OS on disk. I guess that makes me stupid.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
I did a few stints at Comp USA, and the management at both stores harped on the extended plans really hard. The hardware guys were on commissions, but us software guys weren't. We had a 'performance reward' though if we managed to push those pieces of crap. They even wanted us to peddle crap warranties on mice, keyboards, speakers, and other crap that is so cheap, there was no reason to worry about a warranty in the first place.
Not that Comp USA was a great place for management. I had 1 manager who was skimming the drawers. 1 who was convicted of evading taxes. Another that was caught raiding the RTM cage. 1 who was arrested for some sort of under-age porn thing. 2 that were their store's primary pot dealer (oddly enough, 1 of them actually ran a pretty nice store!)
Ahh the memories.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Yeah but here is the flip side of that.
:(
What happens if the drive gives up its magical go smoke ? How does one recover after that ?
I have had multiple customers come to me with HP's just out of warranty with HDD that failed. I had to order the dvd's for my customers and they were very unhappy about it. What I would do was get an oem install disc off the local piracy sites and just use the oem cd key off the side of the system and when the discs came in I would go deliver them their discs.
I hate that they don't give OS install cd's. Even though most people lose them
This package Does Not Contain a Winner
Funny, I always just cracked open the case and taped the recovery cd(s) to the inside of the case. Always seemed to save me a lot of headaches finding the exact right installer for that paticular revision machine.
As soon as you get a new PC you should call the manufacturer and request recovery media. If they tell you "it's in the recovery partition" or "you can make a set with our BIOS/Windows utility" demand that you want the recovery media. The worst scenario to be in involves a wrecked partition or hard drive, or burned (not pressed) CDs/DVDs that have disintegrated over time. I was able to get recovery media with my Thinkpad free of charge after I received it; I just called, they confirmed that the laptop was in warranty, and I got it a few days later.
If the salesman refuses, raise hell with his manager. Purchaser gets the disks for free, salesman gets reprimanded (or fired).
I hate to break this to you, but that's not the way it works. I worked for Best Buy for four years, at three different locations across two different states, so I say this with some authority.
See, you seem to think we (I don't work for them anymore, but I'm going to call them "we" anyway) make a lot of money off the computer, but we don't. In fact, when you count my wages, electricity and heating, and all the other costs associated, we're breaking even if we're lucky. More likely, the store is losing a few bucks on the purchase. And me personally? I'm not on commission, and I'm not rated on how many computers I sell, so I don't really give a crap.
So, I look at the other stuff you're buying, to see if we're making any sort of profit on you at all. If you're loaded up with stuff that we actually make money on, I'd be happy to do you the favor. Otherwise, I'd be more than happy to sell that computer to someone we'll make a profit on instead.
Go ahead, threaten to take your business elsewhere. We'd much rather you buy the computer somewhere else, and cause a competitor to lose money. Raise hell with my manager if you want. He'll promise you that I'll be "dealt with" just to make you go away, and then he'll come over and say to me, "man, that guy was a total asshole." I can't even tell you how many times I saw that happen.
There are exceptions, of course. If it's a slow day (meaning the techs aren't busy with customers who actually paid them), and if you were nice to us, we might just do it anyway. We're people too, after all. So many people don't treat retail salesmen like people. If you do, they recognize that, and will do you all sorts of favors. If you're a prick, forget about it.
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
On average, you lose money when you buy insurance regardless of scale. That's, in fact, the whole point of insurance: you pay slightly more than your expected costs up front to negate the risk of unexpected costs greatly in excess of either your expected costs or the insurance cost.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to insure a computer if you are fairly certain (1) you are going to replace it eventually, and (2) you will always have the reserves to replace it at need in an emergency.
OTOH, if may be essential to replace it, and you may not be able to do so out of cash, it may be worth insuring.
on average, that's true of every kind of insurance, regardless of scale. Insurance is worth it (if it is at all) based on the consequences of the potential unexpected downside it protects you against and the degree to which it mitigates that risk, not because you will on average save money with it. Risk is a real cost, even though its monetary value may be highly subjective.
Speaking as a former Best Buy employee, I can agree with most of what you say. I would just add that while there was no "formal" commission, I would routinely be reprimanded for letting a laptop or PC be purchased without selling an extended service plan and I would get small things like giftcards and gift certificates if I met my extended warranty "goals" (quota might be a better word with the way they railed on us to sell them). Part of the first day of training they made it clear that in the shopping cart with that PC I better have sold them a $30 gold plated parallel cable for their printer, an extra ink cartridge, and a warranty.
This is why Mexicans and Asians try to haggle at Wal-Mart. In their world, everything is negotiable. As it is in professional America.
-OJ
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Macs still do. Yet another of the little bonuses you get from Apple. Not just a "restore" disc that wipes your HD and makes it like it was out of the box, but actual install discs for all the software that comes with the computer, so if something gets borked - even the OS - you just reinstall that one thing and the rest of your apps and data are unharmed. The OS install discs even work on *gasp* other computers besides the one it shipped with, so if you can only find one install disc and it's not for the machine you want, so long as that machine is older than that install disc, it should work. (You're on your honor not to install it on machines that aren't licensed for that version of the OS, though). Comes with real paper manuals too.
At least, they were still like that a year or two ago when we bought our latest machine at work.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."