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Best Buy Abandoning "Optimization" Service?
ddillman writes "According to The Consumerist, Best Buy is apparently dropping some of its 'optimization' services, and will instead provide the 'Best Buy Software Installer,' a new tool that the company says will 'radically simplify how you set up and customize your new PC or upgrade an existing one.' Translation: instead of you paying Best Buy to delete trialware from your new PC, Best Buy will get paid by software makers to try to get you to install it. A page on the Best Buy web site states that the new installation tool will be available January 17th, and 'gives you choices and options to configure your computer, and saves you time by making it easy to discover new software, then download and install with a single click.' According to an alleged internal Best Buy document obtained by a technology blog, Best Buy stands to make an extra $5 per PC just by including BBSI."
of the new Virus.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I hate to bring cars into this (obligatory car analogy?) but it's kind of like saying that it's an opportunity to become a mechanic if the new car you buy needs a lot of "under the hood" tweaking to get to run correctly. Obviously, you can always tweak anything you buy to make it better (aftermarket parts) but the thing should be street worthy straight out of the box.
Some people don't want to be mechanics, they just want the damn thing to work after you pay lots of money for it. If they wanted to put in the effort they would have bought a kit car (newegg or other such a la carte setup) and built it themselves.
I dare say that those who visit a store such as best buy to get a computer (laptops not included, can't do much about those proprietary pieces of *grumble*) generally need a lot of hand holding. You really can't expect the people who fall into that demographic to be the kinds who want to put in a ton of effort.
"preinstalled on most PCs, except Dell and HP"
Wonder if they are going to install it on Macs.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Other than needing a router, cable or something else on an emergency basis, you get what you pay for at BB. I watch in amazement when I hear someone purchasing a computer and the blue shirt drone is trying to force them into buying all the extra crap.
Except the "noobs" don't want that. They want to play games, watch porn and get on with their lives.
Then wonder why their computer is getting slow, and eventually think "i should just buy a new one".
Ice Cream has no bones.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The margins on PCs are ridiculously thin.
That's why manufacturers have resorted to bundling crapware, and now apparently retailers as well.
Having worked for Geek Squad one summer while in college, I can say that the services they offer are overpriced and not a good value. Management told me time and time again to sell more of their 300 dollar advanced diagnostics tests to people that were suffering from simple issues. They try to package everything into ridiculously priced "package deals". Meanwhile, we werent given the tools to solve many of the problems they claimed we could do, and also encouraged us to try to fix. Its a simple problem of idiotic management, over-zealous marketing, and crappy tools. Don't use Geek Squad, and dont use this stupid utility they are trying to push on everyone. I would bet its just another attem
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Geek Squad employee here, I read an internal document that said the complete opposite. I thought about making a copy for myself and taking it home, but I'm not quite that ballsy.
From that memo, it seems that Best Buy admits that there's not much of a speed boost in it, certainly not $40 worth, but they still justify it as a time-saving procedure. That is, if you're some CEO and have a shitload of money but little time, then you don't want to waste it uninstalling trials of NetZero and Microsoft Works (which we don't actually uninstall anymore, we just prevent it from starting up automatically, since some customers complained that their new computers came without the great software trials that HP/Sony/Toshiba advertised).
It didn't seem like they wanted to stop the service, although they DID remind everyone that optimizing more computers than are likely to be sold and then making customers pay for them even if they don't want it is illegal and a bait-and-switch. Which is great, because the managers here in a central North Carolina store were seriously considering optimizing 90% of stock and trying to get rich that way. Bastards.
well thats the thing and always has been. there is no profit in computer sales. i worked at BB for three years and learned that every time i sold a computer. it was always about the accessories and services. One time i got dragged back into in office and given a warning about my salesmanship because I helped a customer make their computer package better. They had bought $2000 worth of computer and $2500 of accessories (printers, cables, ink...all kinds of stuff). however i got yelled at because i swapped a piece of "learning place" software for a router, they had the same dollar value, but of course the router was less profit. But that wasn't the issue the REAL problem was that it lowered our stores daily sales numbers when applied to other Best Buy stores in the area (not against competing stores).
I was instructed time and time again to "walk" customers if they weren't getting additional accessories or services, and at least once a day i did. So even though we weren't "on commission", something we were told to tell every customer, that didnt matter because we treated everyone like we were.
i know these stories are told every time an article about Best Buy pops up, i just wish more people could hear them. It has never been about providing "exceptional products and services in a user friendly environment", it has ALWAYS been about the fact that BB loses money when they sell computers without attachments.
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
Funny, I got my first Windows PC (A 486DX running Win3.1) because the guy that had it owed me $100 and had gotten it full of malware and didn't know how to fix it. He figured it was a good excuse to lose the debt and at the same time give him a reason to shell out nearly $3K! on a brand new P100Mhz to play...was Heretic or Hexen first? Ehhh one of the two.
I got into doing PC repair for a living when I stopped by my local shop to score some RAM sticks and heard the boss cussing his brains out. He got stuck with a truckload of Gateway Astro from some guy that owed him a grand, and while they all had restore discs no OS was installed and it refused to take the restore discs. I told him "why don't you just use a standard Win98 disc?" and he swore to me because of the funky USB everything on those it couldn't be done. I bet him the RAM sticks I wanted I could do it, and after the Win98 install simply stuck in the restore discs and installed the drivers manually. He handed me the sticks and said "Grab a seat, there are 40 more of those in the back". I ended up being "the scary biker guy in the back that does great work" for 5 years. It was funny to hear little old ladies go "is the scary biker guy here?"
But back to the topic at hand, the problem with Worst Buy (other than they suck of course) and these other groups that offer "optimization" is they don't actually understand the customer. I too offer optimization, and my customers love it and talk about me like I walk on water. The secret? The average customer does NOT want a faster PC! I repeat, they do NOT want a faster PC they want an easier to use PC. So what I do is basically set them up a "toaster". Any customer that pays the $55 for optimization gets a PC that autoupdates, has AV set to autoscan and autoupdate, it automatically cleans the registry and temp files, defrags itself, has all the codecs (thanks to K-Lite Mega) installed, flash, Java, .NET, Silverlight, all installed, Firefox with ABP and ForecastFox installed, and finally Go Open Office and GNUCash.
When I'm done all the customer has to do is "flip a switch and go" and THAT, not squeezing an extra couple of notches in some benchmark, is what I've found the customers REALLY want in a PC. Unlike my old boss I don't get folks coming back in a month or two infected like a Bangkok whore, but I have found the referrals more than make up for that. Give folks a good value, let them know you care about more than just their wallet, and they will go out of their way to brag on you and send business your way. Worst Buy doesn't care how bad your experience is, once they have your money and that is why they have a bad rep. Well that and the shitty service, pervs that go through your files looking for porn, geeks that don't know the right end of a screwdriver....
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Former GS employee here:
The whole "pre-setup" thing was a crock from the get-go. It was SUPPOSEDLY so people who wanted the service could get a computer faster, but it just ended up being wasted labor. Myself and MANY other employees railed against this practice from the start, and of course management refused to listen.
What would happen is we would get the ads for the next week a few days early. Of the notebooks in the ad, a certain percentage of each we got in were to have the pre-installed garbage done to it. This started out fairly low, but soon we were being pushed to have 40% of each model done this way. And of course the people on the sales floor were told to push the HELL out of these systems. Why? Because technically, if the customer truly did not want the service, we were to restore it back to factory, or simply not charge them for it. Obviously this becomes a problem when a lot of customers don't want the service and they end up getting it for free. This is where they stopped having the in-store people do said service because it was wasted labor to do something for free, and also wasted labor to remove something the customer didn't want. The solution? A heavy internal push to have all of this done by the much-hated "Agent Jonny Utah".
Who is "Agent Jonny Utah", you might ask (other than a crappy Point Break reference)? It's nothing more than Geek Squad Outsourcing. They hook the computer up to the network, and use a customized version of LogMeIn to let someone in Bangalore or wherever do their job for them. Only half the time they don't do anywhere NEAR what a store employee would do. For example, when performing the service upon request, we would remove ALL trialware, make sure ALL updates were applied, and run a few scripts to generally make things a bit quicker and less resource-hungry. I could do about 5-8 computers at a time and have them all done inside of an hour. Agent Outsource? It would be up to 2 hours before they would even TOUCH the system, and then they would proceed to install the updates and give it a GWB-esque "Mission Complete." This meant we STILL had to do work to the computer when they were done, because they didn't really do anything to begin with.
AJU is also the reason you don't take your computer to the store to get it cleaned up. The VAST majority of the time, they will just hook it up remotely (unless it's so infected it can't get an IP, in which case they'll just want to do a restore) and let the remote guys take a whack at it. Surprise, surprise, more often than not they botch the job. And of course when it took 3x as long because of having to re-do the work, customers got upset and WE got the blame. We were NEVER to let the customer even THINK that the machine was worked on by someone other than the people they see behind the counter.
And this is why there is such a backlash anymore. Of the people who were there when I started in GS, only one is left. In my store (not sure about any others), we thought of ourselves as techs first and foremost. Those with that attitude were forced to change or leave, as they don't want techs. They want salesmen wearing a shirt and tie using the perception of knowledge to hock more crap. In the end, all we were there for was to sell services, but not perform them. Software? Have AJU do it. Hardware? Do they have a service plan? Ship it to Louisville. Only a manufacturer warranty? Give them the MFR number.
When I was new to GS, it was a culture of "help the customer, get them what they need, and build lasting relationships." When I left, it had become nothing but "milk as much money out of as many people as you possibly can."
On a final note, if you DO make the mistake of taking your PC to them for service, point blank ask them if THEY will be cleaning it, or if they're just going to hook it up to have some hackjob in Hyderabad run a few scripts and say it's done...
The problem with the Geek Squad is that Best Buy managers are often so far removed from what the Geek Squad is and how it should work that it becomes a poorly managed mess in many stores. This is the crux of the issues many people have with the Geek Squad.
The truth is that the optimization service is a good one for many people. Best Buy creates the specifics of the optimization service based on feedback from their customers and from the Geek Squad Agents who work on their computers. You must realize that for the majority of the Geek Squad's customers, a computer (tower) is a "router," Toshiba is "Toshibia," Linksys is "Linksky," Windows 7 is "Windows Veesta 7," and that's only if they know the difference between Windows and MS Office (which MANY do not). We're not talking about people with even passing computer knowledge. For these people, not having an icon for Internet Explorer or My Computer on their desktop (as is the case in many freshly-purchased machines) is akin to having a car with no steering wheel or pedals. The optimization service is designed to maximize the usability of a new computer for those customers who need it.
The optimization service takes some time (30 minutes to an hour) to complete. To save customers some time, the Geek Squad will "pre-optimize" a small percentage of their computers. In doing this, they are not violating any laws provided they leave any minimum available quantity (if stated in the weekly ad) unopened. If you attempt to purchase a computer and all they have left are pre-optimized units, they are required to sell you the computer at the normal retail price. They can not force you to pay the optimization fee. They do have the option, however, to restore the computer to factory defaults before they allow you to leave with it, and they do not have to give you an open-box discount. If employees are breaking these rules (laws) it is because of the poor management I referred to earlier, but it is certainly not company policy.
The real villains here are Microsoft and the computer manufacturers for not providing a consistent and customer-friendly experience for new computer buyers. Some of it comes from simply economics and marketing: manufacturers can reduce selling cost by including loads of trial software, not including MS Office and antivirus software, etc. The savings are then (misleadingly) passed to the customer. (I am sure, though, that Best Buy's enormous purchasing power has some say in what the manufacturers do, though.)
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