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Best Buy charges $70 extra for optimization, as if your computer was like your car.

via consumerist.com

This is an example of the 'new computer setup' form that gets filled out when you buy a new computer at Best Buy.

Are we buying consumer electronics, or are we getting our car serviced? Because it seems like one way or another, we're getting fleeced.

Consumerist has the inside scoop on the $70 scam of 'pre-optimized computers' that Best Buy has been trying to pass off as a product. All they do is remove some of the Norton crapware that come pre-installed. Isn't that funny? In a mad grab for more consumer dollars, the consumer electronics apparatus has created scam upon scam, first with computer makers over-monetizing their out-of-box experience with absurd preinstalls, and then with retailers charging $70 on top of the whole thing to uninstall it.

Insanity piled upon depravity, is this how the computer industry plans to eke out extra profit?

Posted over 3 years ago

6 responses

Sachin Agarwal said
wow that's terrible. Thing is, that Dell is $70 cheaper BECAUSE it has all the preinstalled crap on it. So this just balances it out. Unbelievable.
Sachin Agarwal said
The win/lose on this:
Dell: Even. They get paid $75 by malware creators, discount cpu by 75. nothing changes
Consumer: Even. they pay Dell 75 less for the cpu, pay best buy 75 to clean it up
Best buy: winner. they make 75 for doing very little
Malware creators: losers. They pay 75 but don't see the end user

Overall, i'm happy with this.

Pat said
Garry, What kind of firewall do you recommend? I have Norton Anti-virus. Thanks, Pat Prucnal
Karim Shehadeh said
Ack. The worst part about this is that I know about computers. Certainly stuff like this is being done in professions I know nothing about it - say mechanics, doctors, real estate, and just about anything else. It's been said many times before but: it's hard to remember or imagine what we did without the internet to help research possible scams.
Dan Osmundson said
I just bought a laptop at BB before xmas and they tried one of those "services" on me. They told me that HP did not include CD or DVD media with OS and apps and that they had laptops that they "set up" and "created" media, so customers would have a way to restore their systems, etc. I can't read the image above but it was a ridiculous amount for something that only took me 3 DVDs to do on my own. And, of course, while telling me that HP no longer includes backup media with their laptops as a cost saving measure (and pitching their wonderful "to the rescue" service) they did not tell me that there is a restore partition (D:\) on the HP with software to create your own DVD discs. What a scam!
jonathan9880 said
Its really a nice post. I really like this post. Keep it up.

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