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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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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!)
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Selling computers without a recovery disk is just not smart IMO. Once you have sufficient problem to warrant restoring the computer, you're already pissed that its broken. Maybe your not pissed at the manufacturer of the PC at that point, because its not necessarily their fault.
But once you find out that its now NOT fixable because they were too cheap to give you a 25 cent to make recovery disk with your $400+ PC you WILL be pissed at them.
Its just bad business practice to me.
If the salesman refuses, raise hell with his manager. Purchaser gets the disks for free, salesman gets reprimanded (or fired).
You forget the managers job. His job is to ensure his staff have the tools and pliable morals to sell you things. He won't be reprimanded or fired instead he's be "coached" on how to sell it to you without getting you angry. Perhaps he'll be told a better lie to use.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
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.
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.
You assume too much:
1. That the manager will give them to you for free.
2. That just because you complain, a salesman who is following company policy will get reprimanded or fired?
While I agree that you should get OS installation media at no charge with your computer (and refuse to buy one that doesn't come with any) why do you think you are entitled to demand it? You are not. Your recourses are: buy it, haggle or don't buy it.
You may end up getting the media for free, however more than likely the salesman and his manager will talk later on that day about that "whacko customer" they had earlier.
And if you stick to your guns, you'll either have free recovery discs, or be certain they didn't rip you off (and get a computer elsewhere, along with spreading bad word-of-mouth about their practices).
I would love to discuss the mindset trend in North America where people think it is OK to "get free stuff" by creating complete asses of themselves. The very notion that if one were to act childishly and annoying enough that people will just throw stuff at them to make them go away seems completely crazy to me. Why and how do you think this trend started? More importantly do you think this trend can be reversed before our populace is filled with hyper selfish middle agers with an inflated sense of entitlement who refuse to work? This could very well be our empires lead poisoning.
They're just following orders from higher-up, and if they don't have any moral qualms with it, they're assholes, so who cares what they say amongst themselves?
How about the moral qualm of working for a living? Feeding your family? Supporting yourself? The way I see it is this: they are offering goods and services for a price. You do not have to buy it. What is immoral about that? As long as they are up front with you, tell you "yes, you can make the discs yourself" then there is no problem. I am always wary of someone who invokes "morals" but insists that anyone who doesn't agree with him is wrong. Because you belive it to be "immoral" you are willing to make an asshole of yourself in an attempt to get items you did not pay for? Remember, the cost of those recovery CDs are not included with the price of the computer. Who is the asshole now?
It's not that severe of an issue, but it's still trying to take away the right to have a copy of what you paid for (and no, most sellers won't tell you that you can make a copy yourself, nor should you have to. The software was part of the purchase price).
It is not a "right", and the copy that you purchased is on the hard drive. The copy that you purchased also has built in capabilities to duplicate itself for backup purposes. If you bothered to RTFA you'll notice that most sellers DID inform the buyers that they can make the backup themselves.
Again, if you don't like the terms of sale, don't buy it. You do not have some magical "right" to a recovery disc.
Personal responsibility, where art thou?