What’s Going on at Best Buy?

I am completely baffled by Best Buy’s selling strategy.

It has long bothered me that Best Buy tries to force an extended warranty purchase on unwilling customers, unintentionally sending the message “this thing is crap and will likely break shortly after the manufacturer’s warrant expires”.

And now they’ve one-upped themselves by “optimizing” netbooks, desktops and laptops and offerring these for sale with additional Geek Squad fees attached. In fact, over the Christmas season, much of Best Buy’s laptop inventory was pre-optimized and few customers could actually purchase out of the box laptops for the advertised price. The problem was so great that this article surfaced on The Consumerist today.

So now, my Best Buy laptop is of poor quality, AND it comes preloaded with so much junkware, that we’re asking you to pay for us to remove it.

Compare this with my Costco buying experience.  I purchased a laptop online, automatically DOUBLING the warranty period.  It arrived (no shipping charges) within days.  As it turned out, there was some issues with the factory install of Windows 7 (it couldn’t load iTunes or Microsoft Office 2007 without throwing cryptic errors) and so I had to return it to the nearest Costco store.

Returning it was a BREEZE.  I showed up with my defective laptop and they gave me cash.  (I purchased with Visa and they don’t accept Visa in their stores, so they’ll provide you with a store credit or refund your money).  A PAINLESS process.

Wake up best Buy – before it’s too late.