Yet another reason to boycott Best Buy.

Geek Squad representative to customer: The $1,200 Mac you purchased will not work unless you purchase our $40 "optimization" service. Also, you probably want our $300 extended warranty as well. (Emphasis mine.)

Services rendered under the "optimization" plan, according to the Geek Squad representatives the author spoke to:

• "Putting the customer's name onto the computer" (...because Best Buy customers don't know how to type their own names in when prompted?)
• "Checking the computer's network connection" (despite the fact that whatever network the customer uses will be entirely different from the in-store one?)
• "Scanning the drives" (brand-new drives that shouldn't have anything wrong with them?)
• "Installing an anti-virus program" (...on a Mac?)

And a grand prize of one dollar to the person who can guess how much value the customer gets out of the warranty.

...Yeah. On the one hand, it's perhaps unsurprising that Best Buy is resorting to such tactics when selling Macs - the profit margins on the computers themselves are pretty thin already, and I'm guessing most of that goes to Apple, so a $340 upsell is a pretty big prize for them. And they probably give the Geek Squad members lucrative commissions on them, which (when compared to the base salary of minimum wage) is a pretty strong incentive to lie to the customer. But Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ - how on Earth do they think that this kind of policy is going to win them any customers? Even when dealing with the technologically illiterate whom they can scare into shelling out the cash, all it takes is one knowledgeable friend or relative asking a few questions to let them know that they've been had. And customers who feel cheated aren't likely to come back.

A quick Google tells me that this isn't anything like the first scam they've come up with, either. Somebody explain to me how these people are still in business?

Yet another reason to boycott Best Buy.

Geek Squad representative to customer: The $1,200 Mac you purchased will not work unless you purchase our $40 "optimization" service. Also, you probably want our $300 extended warranty as well. (Emphasis mine.)

Services rendered under the "optimization" plan, according to the Geek Squad representatives the author spoke to:

• "Putting the customer's name onto the computer" (...because Best Buy customers don't know how to type their own names in when prompted?)
• "Checking the computer's network connection" (despite the fact that whatever network the customer uses will be entirely different from the in-store one?)
• "Scanning the drives" (brand-new drives that shouldn't have anything wrong with them?)
• "Installing an anti-virus program" (...on a Mac?)

And a grand prize of one dollar to the person who can guess how much value the customer gets out of the warranty.

...Yeah. On the one hand, it's perhaps unsurprising that Best Buy is resorting to such tactics when selling Macs - the profit margins on the computers themselves are pretty thin already, and I'm guessing most of that goes to Apple, so a $340 upsell is a pretty big prize for them. And they probably give the Geek Squad members lucrative commissions on them, which (when compared to the base salary of minimum wage) is a pretty strong incentive to lie to the customer. But Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ - how on Earth do they think that this kind of policy is going to win them any customers? Even when dealing with the technologically illiterate whom they can scare into shelling out the cash, all it takes is one knowledgeable friend or relative asking a few questions to let them know that they've been had. And customers who feel cheated aren't likely to come back.

A quick Google tells me that this isn't anything like the first scam they've come up with, either. Somebody explain to me how these people are still in business?