[Infowarrior] - Best Buy Optimization Scam

[Richard Forno]

Best Buy Optimization Is A Big Stupid Annoying Waste Of Money
By Meg Marco on January 4, 2010 8:28 AM 59166 views
This "warning" appears on a Geek Squad sales info folder.

Over the past year, a number of you have been telling us that, due to  
"pre-optimization" of computers, it's difficult -- sometimes  
impossible -- to walk into a Best Buy and leave with the advertised  
deal (in effect, you would be paying a $39.99 surcharge over the  
computer's advertised price). We decided to look into your complaints.  
We sent the Consumer Reports secret shoppers to 18 different Best Buys  
in 11 states, and one of our shoppers was denied the price advertised  
for a specific model because only pre-optimized computers were  
available. When the Consumer Reports engineers compared three  
"optimized" computers to ones with default factory settings, there was  
no performance improvement. In one case, an optimized laptop actually  
performed 32% worse than the factory model.


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http://consumerist.com/2010/01/consumerist-investigation-best-buy-optimization-is-a-big-stupid-annoying-waste-of-money.html