You
Broke It! You Bought It!
Once again Leila pulls all
the plugs and packs it up. This time the computer,
monitor, the keyboard, even the mouse are packed into
their original boxes. We take another trip out to Best
Buy. There is only one thing to do now. They broke it.
They bought it!
Leila is willing to trade her
computer for a new one. Even up. Never mind all the time
and trouble she will go through to reinstall all the
programs, find a local technician to install the scanner,
and set everything back up. She is done traveling. Keep
in mind that this is not some ancient piece of equipment!
It is only two months old. It is a nice 3.2gig Packard
Bell that Leila bought from Best Buy.
When we walk in the door,
Best Buy is ready for us. It turns out that we are not
the first dissatisfied customers that they have run into.
They have everything all mapped out. First you run into
the long Return and Exchange line. It is in itself an
education. You have plenty of time to talk to other Best
Buy customers. One guy was bringing back his brand new
Compaq computer. It seems that he had the Best Buy
computer technicians do the FREE SETUP on it. The Best
Buy technicians set it up so that it would not work at
all. You can hear lots of stories in that line. Not all
of them about computers. Boom boxes, TV's VCR's. There
were people with problems on just about every thing that
Best Buy sells. Leila looks and me and I can tell she is
going to skip the Free Setup.
When we finally make are way
up the the desk Leila points out to the Best Buy employee
that she bought the Performance Service Plan for $99.99.
She has been lead to believe by the bold print that if
something goes wrong with her computer she is entitled to
a new one. Never mind who broke it. She figures that Best
Buy employees are included. The bold print says one thing
while the fine print refines things a little. You do not
necessarily get to return the computer to the location
you bought it and have the NO LEMON policy apply. You
must have the computer shipped out to the Livonia
Michigan store three times before you can get a new one,
no matter who broke it.
Best Buy's computer
technician has an explanation for the different values in
the config.sys file. "It must have happened in
transport." He says. Yaa, right! You can drop a computer
from an airplane and the impact will not change the
values in the config.sys file.
Dick Schultz, CEO of Best
Buy, wants to make these plans 2.5% of his over EIGHT
BILLION-dollar gross. No wonder. If you sell quality
products in the first place. They take care of
themselves. Any thing that is going to go wrong with
solid state electronics will happen within the first
year. The NO LEMON policy still does not apply since
you are already covered under the manufacturer for the
first year. Way to go Dick! This is a gold mine for Best
Buy. It's a little tough on the consumer, but a few
pissed off people will not be missed. We are talking a
whopping TWENTY MILLION BUCKS A YEAR for doing absolutely
nothing.
Read the Fine Print Here.
I have enlarged it for those of you who find it hard to
read six point type.
Before you buy one of these
plans from anybody . Check with your insurance company.
You may already be covered. There is a big push to
purchase the NO LEMON plan when you buy the
computer. Resist it. Believe me you will need the $99.99
for software. Most major computer manufacturers offer
extended warranty plans. If you are going to have to ship
the computer. It might as well be shipped to the guys
that built it. Not to some guys that took a few informal
classes from them.
The push is on to sell these
plans. I bought a coffee pot from Best Buy the other day.
At the checkout I was asked if I wanted to insure it. A
$30.00 coffee pot! The cashier seemed a little
embarrassed to have to ask.
