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Do You Want Best Buy Opening Your New Laptop?
An anonymous reader writes "I went to Best Buy the other day to get a new laptop for a client. I didn't realize till I got it home that they had broken the seal and opened the box. They put a sticker on the box that said, 'Inspected by Best Buy.' I found they had created the user profile, recovery disks, and installed a trial of Trend Antivirus. Seems to me this is more of a marketing agenda than inspection."
Any big ticket electronics I buy from best buy gets unpacked, plugged in and inspected by the employee and myself as proof that the device works, that its not scratched, dented or damaged and we both sign off on it. The difference here is, they do it in front of you. They have asked me before if I want their shit installed on the laptop before I leave and I always decline. I've purchased 2 laptops for personal use and 5 for friends/family (not as gifts, just helpful shopping) and never ever had this happen
Indeed. Business class laptops are better built.
Okay. I am not employed by a computer manufacturer or distributor, so you know. I don't even really like the brand I'm about to talk about. I'll probably catch flak for using this particular brand as an example, but it's pretty common that people consider it when buying a PC.
Take for example the Dell Vostro, the "home user" aka consumer grade model. Then look at the Dell Latitude. They can be ordered with similar specs, but the Latitude costs a lot more for the same specs. Why? Well, besides the obvious "because a business will pay more" factor, they have sturdier mounting hardware that holds everything in place inside the chassis. That means when you carry it around every day, it won't fall apart as fast. It WILL fall apart eventually - that's always been my experience with laptops in general - but the Latitude will reliably outlast the consumer class Vostro by a great amount. Then again, you've still got a Dell.
When you call the company for support on an enterprise class laptop, you'll have a different number to call, with a different length queue, and different agents to talk to. Even the website you visit is different. They have to maintain a specific level of service or businesses wouldn't do business with them, so you get in on that if you spend enough money on the computer.
So you're absolutely right. It makes a difference.
I work at Geek Squad.
Before I worked here, I abhorred the Geek Squad. But I needed a job, so I took this one. It's not really that bad.
Tons of people actually want this service. They pay $100 for us to turn on the computer for the first time, go through the Windows out-of-box experience, uninstall the Norton/McAfee 30-day trial, install 1-year (or more) Trend Micro/Kaspersky/Webroot of their choosing, burn recovery discs (since the OEMs don't include them anymore), and install all Windows updates.
All this takes about 2-3 hours and we use automated software to do this stuff.
We "preset" computers as well, meaning we take them out of the box, perform all of these services, and then rebox them up and badge them as "Set up by a Geek Squad Agent." We are only supposed to pre-set up a certain percentage of our stock, however, a lot of what we agents call "cowboy managers" (managers who break standard corporate operating procedure) make agents set up 50% or more of the stock, hoping that people will be more inclined to purchase setups if they are already performed and they're all that's left.
A lot of times at my store we give away the presets because the client doesn't want to pay and the preset stock is all that's left. It sounds to me like you got one of the preset units and they never charged you for it.
By the way, the only two types of tape available in the entire store are "Inspected by Best Buy" tape and "Geek Squad Priority" tape. The tape says "Inspected by Best Buy" because it indicates that Best Buy is the one who sealed the box last. It doesn't mean that the presetup process is an "inspection."
Given the high demand by some to buy their computers pre-set up, I don't think it's such a horrible service anymore. Some people are just stupid and want to turn on the computer for the first time and just click IE. The out of box experience, as silly as it sounds, can be confusing to many users, and they would rather walk out the door knowing that the antivirus is installed properly, even if that isn't hard to do at all.
Before you go hating on Best Buy, keep in mind that margins in PCs are extremely low. Best Buy _loses_ money if you buy a non-Apple computer without any Geek Squad services. This is called selling a "brick." The PC sales market is extremely cut-throat. Office Depot makes its money by hoping you never send in a rebate or send it in incorrectly. Best Buy makes its money by attaching services. Without this, the price of buying a computer from these stores would go up.
Scorta futuere amo!