I went into Best Buy to get my sister a laptop. After telling the sales guy to wrap one up he goes on about how it's important to have Geek Squad do some setup, create a backup of the OS, and install virus protection and that'd be about $100. I thought back to when I got my laptop and remembered doing that and though it's a bit of time to do it, there's no way that's worth $100.
It felt like dealing with a used car salesman. They were definatly determined to upsell Geek Squad's services. Seemed completly contrary to a comercial they're currently airing. I suppose people that aren't comfortable setting up their own computer might feel that it's worthwhile but they weren't doing anything that a person who could follow instructions couldn't do.

Well, think about it from the perspective of the business: Your margins area already slim enough on the product itself. If you offer a service to set things up for the customer, you can make more money. Not only that, but it could potentially lower the number of returns on such items from people setting them up improperly.

But yeah, it's not hard to plug in a cable or two. I'd hope that someone intelligent enough to buy the machine is also intelligent enough to hook it up and use it the way it was meant to be used.

I loathe Best Buy. They take complete and full advantage of peoples' ignorance. I can't wait until people discover that buying online isn't so scary and they go out of business.

yes $129.99 is too much, but there are far greater rorts occuring all the time.
Especially rife with lawyers,

Something that would be 1/2 hour work. bam $2000 thankyou very much :)

If you call a plumber to fix a leaky tap, he's going to charge about the same (maybe a bit less depending on whether it's a weekend). Now, I could go to the hardware store, buy a 50c washer and fix the tap myself in about 5 minutes, but that doesn't mean the plumber is unjustified in charging that much.

Yeah, it seems like an outrageous amount to charge for those "in the know," but I suppose any sort of technical service is going to have to charge a lot to make up for overhead. For example, liability is usually more costly than what people realize (although I have no idea if or how this would relate to Geek Squad).

As a side note, I did recently have an argument at a local BB over the price of their HDMI cables. The salesman was convinced that $75 HDMI cables were necessary for "the best possible picture" on a TV, even though I tried to explain otherwise. I left the store and ordered 3 cables for $3. This seems more like a rip-off to me: blatantly lying to customers in order to gain an incredible profit margin (the misinformation this salesman was spewing out was unbelievable).

Granted, BB is not the only culprit -- a while ago some other electronics store tried to tell me that their special (expensive) optical cables were shielded better from interference (wah?!), and a cheap optical cable would make my sound system sound like crap. Yeah, sure.

Ugh, sorry, almost turned into a rant there...

Quote: Original post by laztrezort
Yeah, it seems like an outrageous amount to charge for those "in the know," but I suppose any sort of technical service is going to have to charge a lot to make up for overhead. For example, liability is usually more costly than what people realize (although I have no idea if or how this would relate to Geek Squad).

As a side note, I did recently have an argument at a local BB over the price of their HDMI cables. The salesman was convinced that $75 HDMI cables were necessary for "the best possible picture" on a TV, even though I tried to explain otherwise. I left the store and ordered 3 cables for $3. This seems more like a rip-off to me: blatantly lying to customers in order to gain an incredible profit margin (the misinformation this salesman was spewing out was unbelievable).

Granted, BB is not the only culprit -- a while ago some other electronics store tried to tell me that their special (expensive) optical cables were shielded better from interference (wah?!), and a cheap optical cable would make my sound system sound like crap. Yeah, sure.

Ugh, sorry, almost turned into a rant there...

Worth ranting about.

I had some douchehorse in one of these stores tell me that the more expensive version of the fiber optic cables for digital audio was necessary to "prevent interference." Another one tried to tell me that AMD processors were better than Intel processors because they "meshed with applications better". I'm not kidding, this completely absurd bullshit came out of these peoples' mouths.

Quote: Original post by capn_midnight
I had some douchehorse in one of these stores tell me that the more expensive version of the fiber optic cables for digital audio was necessary to "prevent interference." Another one tried to tell me that AMD processors were better than Intel processors because they "meshed with applications better". I'm not kidding, this completely absurd bullshit came out of these peoples' mouths.

"Geeksquad" or regular worker? If he/she is from "Geeksquad" then they /really/ should know better. If ihe/she was a regular worker then that's not at all unique to BB. I knew kids that admitted knowing shit all about TVs that sold TVs in their department; yes, people consulted THEM about their $2000+ purchases.

Quote: Original post by kevtimc
"Geeksquad" or regular worker? If he/she is from "Geeksquad" then they /really/ should know better. If ihe/she was a regular worker then that's not at all unique to BB. I knew kids that admitted knowing shit all about TVs that sold TVs in their department; yes, people consulted THEM about their $2000+ purchases.

Honestly its a low paying chain store job that people get for a easy paycheck, what can you really expect? Maybe if you want them to jack up all their prices 20% so they could actually pay knowledge people to work there it might be a bit different.