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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."
I remember when it was commonplace to get a recovery disc along with your computer; now you have to pay (quite a bit) for software that's already on your system. What happened?
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I think this was covered in the story a while back about the ex Circuit City employee who disclosed all their "secrets". It wasn't in the main story, but was in the linked story.
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).
Heh.
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?
Are the big box stores removing the manufacturer's CD from the packaging and either tossing it, or re-selling it? I can't imagine the latter would go over very well with the manufacturers.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
I remember when win95 first came out. My company bought a new Dell or something, and it came with Win95 but no recovery disks. This machine had a pristine 1x or 4x or something CD READER, and a floppy port. I was one of two SW Developers at this company, so I took it upon myself to make recovery disks before corrupting the machine's harddrive with our development environment. The "make recovery media" utility asked for 30 pre-formatted floppy disks. It took me all day to make those things. Then I got yelled at by my boss for wasting a whole day doing nothing.
And you didn't mention to him that this was attempted fraud, (while writing down his name)?
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Most of these in-store warranties are a substitute for your existing warranty, in that you just bring your console into the store, they replace it with one of their retail stock, and they (are supposed to) mark your old console as defective and return it to the vendor as a sales return. So, your turn-around time is a lot faster.
However, in today's era of Internet purchases, this usually partially/fully disconnects you with the stuff you bought on the console. For example, if you replace your 360 in Best Buy, you have to submit documentation to Microsoft detailing this exchange before they'll reimburse you for any purchases for your paid downloads.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
I remember when you got the whole OS in it full retail box... With manuals no less. Heckpirate., I remember when MS was spouting that getting your manuals was a primary reason not to illegally copy your software.
I hope someone mods this up, especially since there are a lot of folks like me that have ACs auto-modded down.
You're right on the mark. Here's the thing. If you buy warranties on everything you buy that they're offered on, at some point, you will come out ahead on some particular item. A laptop, a refrigerator, a microwave oven, a television, an iPod... Something. And, as the parent post noted, good for you.
However, that thing that you came out ahead on has a nasty way of ingraining itself into your selective memory. You remember that thing that you came out ahead on, because wow, you saved hundreds of dollars. You tend to forget the thousands of dollars you lose $50 to $100 at a time by buying extended warranties that you never need or use.
It's simple psychology, and retail stores are taking advantage of it, along with people's lack of knowledge about computers and their tendency to react to fear, to make billions of dollars a year. Ask any financial expert or consumer advocate and they'll all say the same thing: The only time you should ever purchase a warranty is if you literally cannot function without whatever it is you're buying the warranty for.
Plus, that doesn't take into account the fact that most of the time, it's a lot harder to actually get companies to follow through on their warranties than the salespeople claim it will be. Keep in mind that when companies have to pay out warranties, that's taking money away from them that they had considered pure profit. It's very likely that they'll avoid fulfilling the terms based on some technicality. For example, did you keep all of the original packaging? Even the driver CD? My dad got burned on that one once. He tried to claim an extended warranty repair, and they wouldn't fulfill the warranty because he had thrown away a three-year-old driver disc.
Last, but not least, it may seem like a bargain to buy a $200 five-year extended warranty on a $2000 computer. But in five years, what will that computer really be worth? If you're lucky, maybe $100 on eBay. You can get a replacement cheaper than you can ship the durn thing.
Just don't do it. Take all money you would have spent on extended warranties and put it in a savings account. You'll earn interest on it, and in no time, you'll have enough money in the bank to replace anything like that that you would buy and you'll never need another warranty again.
As for your 1 year warranty bit... *smirk*. Maybe you don't do much with your computer. Or maybe you're just a troll. Take a look at failed HDD rates from every manufacturer except Sony (for some reason they seem to have the least failed HDDs). You'll see a helluva lot start happening around the 8 month mark, and peaking at pretty close to 16-18 months. Seems a bit outside your 1 year. Laptop batteries? Forget it. If you use that thing at all, that bettery WILL need to be replaced at some point within 2-3 years (the limit of BBYs service plans, 4 years for CC). Batteries CAN be (although certainly not always) hellaciously expensive.
And what happens if little Billy son-of-a-bitch spills his coke acrossd the laptop keyboard? Oh I'm sure Gateway would LOVE to help you there (along with about a $1,200 bill for parts & labor). Here's the thing, ACCIDENTS HAPPEN. Now that BBY and CC both offer plans that protect against "Accidental Damage" it's almost stupid NOT to get the plan. Wait until the plan is about to expire, spill some coffee on it (damn thing doesn't work now), and as you walk in the store, when the niec young man in the pretty yellow shirt start to put a sticker on it, lose your grip and drop it (now he feels bad too, to which you can amicably say "ah hell it didn't work anyway"). Well, it's a good thing you have that service plan, now you're getting a brand new laptop after 3 years (you have to wait a week or so for them to discover that parts aren't available, or are prohibitively expensive), and instead of costing you $1600 (if you bought a fairly decent one), it cost you a whole ~$300. I've been through 4 laptops in the last 2 years (finally got a good one), and would have been totally screwed without that service plan.
And for those of you that are quick to praise the MFG, think about this. HP Voided the warranty on the laptop I had prior to this one (It's actually HOW i got the one I have now, because HP wouldn't honor the warranty, and HP didn't supply a specific part that it needed, saying they did that repair themselves, but they would NOT do it under any kind of service contract, so BBY replaced it right then and there), because I installed Windows XP Pro on it. The machine came with Windows XP Home, I burned the recovery disks first thing, grabbed all the drivers that the hardware was using, then wiped the laptop and put XP Pro on it.
The video issues I had noticed within a day of having it became worse (I seriously thought it was just my eyes that were bugging out). After 3 weeks it became something that was absolutely without a doubt screwed up. I talked to HP, and they said, and I QUOTE "We do not support upgraded drivers like Windows XP Professional. Since you no longer have the XP Home driver, we cannot warranty your laptop."
As for the recovery disks costing $29. Again, services like that are not for me, they are not for you, they are for the people that either can't be bothered to do it themselves (and most people won't), or don't know how. Period.
If a salesperson is lying about anything to try and sell something, they need to be fired. I was the best sales person in all the stores I worked for services, and not ONCE did I lie to any clients. I always told the truth, absolutely, told peop