Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Big Box computer Scams

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!!!

It just comes down to they are salesman working on commision and don't really know the products they are selling, not enough traning if any. That's just one problem with commision sales, make as much of a sale at any cost.

Back in the early 90's I was looking at purchasing a new car and when I looked underneath the fresh drops off the truck from the factory they already had undercoating on them, but when I went to purchase the car they tried to sell me the "Complete car care package" which included............undercoating! I called them on it and they said they just spray over what was there and in a few spots the factory misses.

What gets me about buying computers at best buy is;
If you want to add more memory, and do it yourself, they try to tell you the warranty is void, if you are not certified to repair computers. then they tell you they will install the memory for about $50 or so. Give me a break. I've never exercised the warranty on the few store bought pc's I have deal with, so I have no idea if they actually void the warranty, but they do have that sticky tape that alerts them the box has been opened.


Another thing that annoys me is all the 'bloatware' or trial versions of software installed on new pc's. I feel it is nothing more than advertising. I wonder how much the manuf gets for selling that little bit of real estate on the system tray. I do realize it ultimately translates to a lower cost for the consumer though. On a pc I will be maintaining, the first thing I do is wipe the hard drive and install the OS from a regular installation disk, not the restore disk. Yea you have to locate the drivers and such, but it puts the pc at a known starting point for the inevitable troubleshooting that follows. Note this probably voids the warranty also.

Randy