First of all, my apologies. You will find I already wrote this in a thread below. I know it's poor etiquette to post it again but because I'm still so bitter, I think it deserves its own post so more will read it and not fall for this either.
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Here is another to watch for in the big box stores selling PCs.
Besides the annoying rant about why the extended warranty is soooo important, the new gimmick is to offer a special package where they will install the latest antivirus, firewall and probably some random piece of third software just to make it the magic number of 3. A cost of two to Three hundred dollars AND you have to leave it there for an extra two days for 'all that' work to be done.
Here is where it goes bad. While I definitely do recommend buying Anti-virus and Firewall SW, many of the mainstream computer companies already preload this software right onto the hard drives as part of the 'value add' package. Stuff like that used to be found in the product description in the store to make you want to buy it. Now, this advertising seems to be missing so they can upsell you the 'service'.
I recently helped my brother in law who needed a new PC in a bad way at 8:00pm to do payroll the next morning. At that time of night, Future Shop was his only option. After choosing a PC and being aware of this scam, I questioned the 'PC expert' as to if it might already be on the HP already? He told me definitely not, we definitely needed this great deal on the package and installation. We declined anyways because he was bugging me and because my brother in law couldn't wait the two days for it to be installed.
So we get it to his home, boot it up and guess what.... "Please enter some information to activate your copy of Norton's Internet Security," Norton's firewall and antivirus in a single box package!
We would have paid him 280 extra dollars to fill in a name or two and then sit back while it automatically downloaded the latest virus updates.
I want his job!!!
Last edited by Murph; 01/11/07 03:52 PM.
