Complaint Review: Best Buy Geek Squad - Miami Florida

Just to clarify what Best Buy's official policy is on this.. because I think it's fair (if followed by store management) Best Buy will typically offer a "door-buster" laptop deal in a weekly flyer in the $299-$599 price range, with a guaranteed minimum listed of say 10 units in the AD. If the store recieves 40 laptops. the first 10 will have nothing done to them.. 25 will have Geek Squad optimization ($39.99) done . and the remaining 5 will have some type of Antivirus/antispyware suite ($130) this meets the legal requirment of having the 10 avail that are listed in the AD, The Game now is for the sales person to "sell" the optimization service benefits to the customer.. if the customer absolutely refuses and the only PC's left are the one's that have been 'pre-optimized" the store can't refuse to sell the Laptop to the customer under Best Buy Corporate policy.. they will either just give away the optimization for Free or if the local store manager wants to "punish" the customer for not giving his store the additional profit margin.. He can require the customer pay the normal price but wait up to 24hrs to pickup the PC so the store can Reinstall the OS.. to out of the box factory specs.. if this wasn't followed then a quick letter to Best Buy CEO, with a copy of your reciept & this posting should get you a refund of the Service... only you can decide if it's worth $39.99 of your time to do this - but forced bundling is a big NO NO.. and store managers can be Fired for this.. simply because Best Buy doesn't want hundreds of complaints to the Attorney General's office that forces them to take action. (Best Buy has over 1000 stores, so crazy things happen once in a while in each store.. it's consistant pattern of behavour that causes problems) in answer to your question.. there are two types of Optimization Geek Squad offers ... Quick (or Pre-optimization) & complete. Quick or PRE) Optimization.. they basically run a script that does about 100 registry changes to Vista that makes things like Menu's appears faster, network TCP/IP for peer-to-peer file transfers go faster etc. Each of these changes were Offically Reviewed by Microsoft and wont damage your PC.. The Registry keys are public on Microsoft website, but Geek Squad doesn't list them out.. just the benefits of the service Some stores will install critical security updates as part of this, others set your OS to automatically install updates when you get home to save time Complete optimization in addition to the above, Install every windows update from microsoft, Java update, remove most games, all trialware (except antivirus trail for security reasons unless specifically requested by a customer) or whatever the customer requests be removed or not removed. this can take 3-4hrs the reason the Quick optimization doesn't remove services like AOL, or 60day office trial.. is that some people actually use that stuff and get upset if it's removed, anyone getting a Pre-optimized PC can actually requested a complete optimization for no additional cost but may have to wait the 3-4hrs (or next business day) -vs- the "grab-n-go"