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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
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.