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."

Comments

No suprise

[Dynedain]

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.

Re:No suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you're joking (or trolling). Have you ever sat down and done the math on those kinds of insurance? You are always losing money on those deals, since the expectation cost of equipment failure (probability of failure times cost of replacement) is much lower than the cost of the insurance. (If it wasn't, then the store would lose money on selling the insurance.)

To those of you still under the delusion that insurance on small-cost items is the same as insurance on high-cost items: it isn't. The reason it "makes sense" to get insurance on high-cost items (your house, your car, etc.) is that the replacement "cost" is not merely the price of the item, but the associated inconveniences (e.g. without a house it is hard to keep your job and keep making the money to buy a new house). Essentially, the "value" is non-linear: it's worth more to save it since losing it is worse than merely the dollar value.

When it comes to electronics, unless you are very poor, it's cheaper to simply buy a new one when it breaks, rather than to buy insurance for the item. In this case, the object's value is linearly related to its replacement cost.

So, basically, you should only get insurance on items that are so expensive that they are outside of the "linear range" of the cost-to-value plot. And, in addition to all I've just said, it's important to note that electronics devalue very quickly (as compared to property, which usually increases in value) that the replacement cost (for identical hardware) drops below the insurance cost in a surprisingly short amount of time.

Re:No suprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Good for you.

However, just because in this particular case you came out on top (replacement costs were higher than insurance costs) doesn't change the fact that, on average, you lose money when you buy small-scale insurance. If this were not true, statistically, then the insurance company would be losing money.

So, unless you know ahead of time that the thing you are buying is in some way defective, it's best not to get the insurance. This will lead, on average, to more money in your pocket at the end of the year.

But otherwise: winning once on a slot machine doesn't mean that the house doesn't win on average.

screw 'factory' recovery disks

[LiquidMind]

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!)

An employee's perspective

[SKPhoton]

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.

I is stupid people

[mypalmike]

> 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.

Re:RECOVERY PARTITION

[daveywest]

Easier for tech support and users who lose discs far too often.
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.

Re:Turnabout!

[CrayDrygu]

What people buying from them should do, is, upon being told about the disks and the charge for them, DEMAND they be included free, or they will not buy the computer.

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.

Point of insurance

[DragonWriter]

However, just because in this particular case you came out on top (replacement costs were higher than insurance costs) doesn't change the fact that, on average, you lose money when you buy small-scale insurance.

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.

So, unless you know ahead of time that the thing you are buying is in some way defective, it's best not to get the insurance. This will lead, on average, to more money in your pocket at the end of the year.

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.

Re:Turnabout!

[rgbscan]

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.