Best Buy Charging $30 for Free PS3 Firmware Update

[jdog]

RE: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=19783

It's understandable that margins are often slim on certain items in the retail business, and companies look to offer additional services to help bolster the bottom line. However, Best Buy seems to take things to the extreme at times.

Best Buy's Geek Squad division often comes under a lot of scrutiny for high-priced services. Earlier this year, The Consumerist called out Best Buy's “worthless” $40 optimization service for new computers. Today, however, the electronics retail giant is being called out for PS3 firmware updates according to DualShockers.

A Best Buy in New York is offering customers a service which tacks an extra $30 onto the purchase price of a new 120GB PS3 system that has been upgraded to the latest firmware. According to Best Buy, the firmware update includes:

• Play(s) all Blu-ray movies and PS3 games
• Eliminates bugs and glitches
• System runs smoother
• Improves connectivity to Facebook
• Power save settings
• Photo gallery and video editor
• Adds PlayStation Plus
• Improved system settings

What a sin. Updates are done automatically once you connect your PS3 to the internet. It's a shame that Best Buy is ripping people off $30 for something like this.

[Sir Jig-A-Lot]

Corporate.Greed.

[jdog]

Shit, my father got an HP there a few years ago. They charged him $100 to open the box, activate the Windows OS, run updates and create a backup image of it. All HP computers already come with a pre-existing system restore partition. :|

[Sir Jig-A-Lot]

That's fucked up!

[5829]

If you ask them they will probably say that they are not charging you for the product, but the a labor charge for the time it takes and use of their equipment.
Just like hotels that charge you to make a toll free call (area codes 800/888 etc). They say that they are not charging you for the call but for the use of their telephone equipment.

[jdog]

The point is that both are unnecessary.

My worst story about Geek Squad involves a PC that I built for my mother. It had a Pentium 4 2.8GHz, 2GB DDR333, an Intel 865G motherboard, etc. Decent computer from spare parts that I had.

Anyway, I shipped it to her via USPS and at the last moment I put $400 insurance on it. When it arrived, for some reason it would not boot. Not sure what happened. I told her to go to USPS because I put insurance on it. USPS needed proof that it was broken so my mother took it into Geek Squad just so they would look at it and give her a quote.

They claimed that the motherboard and power supply were bad - which was odd because both were working perfectly and barely used when I shipped the PC. They quoted her $700 for a $50 motherboard and a $50 PSU. I told her to just get it back and take that quote to USPS so we could get the insurance money for it. Oh, they did charge her $70 for looking at the PC.

We got our insurance money from USPS and she shipped it back. When it arrived I checked and the motherboard appeared fine. I took the CPU heatsink off and found all 478 pins had been mashed and bent. I had a spare Pentium 4 2.8C and put it into the socket. The PC booted up without a problem.

So Geek Squad:

1. Lied about what was wrong. In reality it worked without a problem.
2. Quoted her $700 for $100 worth of parts. Typical computer labor is $50 an hour and it doesn't take 12 hours to switch out a PSU and motherboard.
3. Damaged her computer by mashing all the pins on the CPU, ensuring that it wouldn't work after she got it back.

Geek Squad truly is a disgusting company as is Best Buy. I am surprised they are still in business with how many lawsuits they have had.

[Sir Jig-A-Lot]

That's FUBAR!

[jdog]

Yes, it is. They were very lucky that I lived in Florida at the time. Had I been in Ohio I would have went to the store and punched the Geek Squad manager in the face. Jail time might have sucked but I would have gone to the local news with proof of their damage.

[puppydog]

i haven't had any experience with geek squad but after reading some of the stuff on here i'm gonna steer clear.

[AYHJA]

No doubt Bro, I won't say they don't know shit, but they don't know shit...I service PC's all the time, I either charge my customers $40 or $50 an hour, and if it goes beyond a few hours, a flat rate of about $100...If all I'm doing is updating it, cleaning it, etc, no need to try and rape people...There are tech heads all around man, they'll find out eventually that you raped them and you'll have lost a lot for that little bit of cash you made...