Update: Circuit City says the repair should have been free. Here’s their response. Travis writes that a friend of his just bought a new computer from Circuit City, and after turning down all of the Firedog’s “it won’t work unless you also buy this” offers, he noticed a $40 fee on his receipt. Turns out the associate claims he had to flash the computer’s BIOS or Vista wouldn’t work. Travis writes, “Regardless of the fact that Vista booted up just fine with out the update, he was more disturbed with the fact that Circuit City would sell him a computer that they knew didn’t work, or so they say.” So does Circuit City sell computers that don’t work without a preliminary repair, or do they lie in order to generate extra fees?
A colleague of mine recently purchased a new Acer desktop for his dad from Circuit City in Lancaster, PA. After the checkout process he noticed a $40 charge from Firedog on his receipt. When he questioned the Circuit City employee about the charge, she replied “Firedog had to fix the computer by updating the bios.”
He had seen an advertisement in a local newspaper for a desktop that he felt was a good buy. He knew that his dad was still using an aging desktop and thought this system would be perfect for the kind of tasks his dad uses the computer for. So he drove 30 minutes to pick up the system to give his dad later that evening. When he got to Circuit City, he quickly picked it out proceeded to an employee to purchase system. The first thing out of the sales associates mouth were, “You’ll need to upgrade the system if you plan on using it for anything beyond surfing the web.”.
A little history about my friend, he is the new systems purchaser for the company we work for. He knows about hardware and software and what they are capable of doing. He is NOT an inexperienced buyer when it comes to computers.
So he turned down the video card upgrade, the hard drive upgrade and memory upgrade that the sales associated recommended he would need. Of course all of these upgrades were services that Firedog could perform for a fee. He told the sales associate, “Look, I know what I’m buying and this is all I need.”. After convincing the sales associate of this, they finally started the check out process. So he slides his credit card through and signs for the purchase. The sales associate hands him his receipt and he is on his way to his dad’s with his new computer. Until, after a quick scan of the receipt, he notices a $40 charge from Firedog. He turns right around and asks the sales associate what the line item was for. The sales associate replies that Firedog needed to setup Windows Vista and flash the bios for the computer to work.
What?
To which he replies, “So you setup Vista, which was working just fine in order to update the bios?”. Yes, says the sales associate. Regardless of the fact that Vista booted up just fine with out the update, he was more disturbed with the fact that Circuit City would sell him a computer that they knew didn’t work or so they say. Unfortunately, he was short on time and did not press the issue in the store. Later the next day he sent off an email to the Firedog supervisor for the store explaining his disappointment in the nickel and dime charge.
Back to school shoppers beware!!!
Travis, your friend shouldn’t stop with the Firedog supervisor of the store. He should contact Circuit City’s executive level and let them know that you specially refused any additional “help” from this Firedog associate, only to have him meddle with your purchase without your consent and then charge you for it. They owe your friend a $40 refund.
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Actually acers had a huge recall because their bios had a problem with them. I bought my computer from circuitcity. They called me up, asked me to bring back my acer so that they could do the bios upgrade, FOR FREE.
There are still some stores that do look out for the customer.
As far as changing the powerupply in a computer, circuitcity charges $40. They changed mine. ( i am not very computer savy) and i really don’t want to bother my friends computer work.
Its called an ” FD QUICKSTART”… if this guy thinks hes alone, hes crazy. Thats totally normal. Sometimes they clean up your start up and do the initial set up for you before you bought it and just add on the labor. These are called ” Pre Ops(Pre optimized)”
Silly customer… everyone knows geek squad and firedog are just taught to ram you in the …. yeah
Circuit City: NEVER NEVER NEVER!!–45 mins of aggravation and 4 reps + supervisor to return an unopened laptop (and free printer)–all still in sealed boxes and never even removed from CC’s shopping bags!! Found preferred model at Staples next day–and ret’d orig to CC after 1 day.–I wouldn’t accept a free pen from them–as if they gave one! Staples. by the way, has always provided professional svc, stands by their products, and will take back electronics w-in 14 days–opened or not. No I don’t work for Staples but shop there often and have gotten some terrific deals.
I don’t bother to look elsewhere.
@Inglix_the_Mad: At one of the jobs I had there was a policy, heavily enforced by management, that sales reps could not stop offering add-ons until the customer said No THREE times.
It wasn’t a popular policy, but our corporate office put it in place and managers and reps alike could take a lot of shit or even get fired if it was not followed.
I wouldn’t doubt other places have similar dumb procedures.
@sketchy: I agree. The last several systems I bought were just parts. Cheap case, motherboard, memory, random hard drive I wasn’t using, etc. Usually much less than a pre-built system. Built me a quadcore server with 3 TB of disk for about $800. Couldn’t get anything near that from CC/BB. Last boxed PC I bought was a Dell Optima with a faulty capacitor problem, which is now a boat anchor since Dell won’t deal with it. My first and last Dell.
Colin Brechbill: I just bought a Gateway Monitor from them and when i unpacked it at home it looked used, but appeared ok, but would not turn on. I went to return it and they insisted i had broke it, but i had it for less the 3 hours, they refused to exchange it and made me send it to the vendor. i am out the money and still no monitor.
BBW: Colin Brechbill
@joellevand: Your post might make sense, if there were some mention of Fry’s in this thread before your own…
“Fix” Firedog’s revenue or your computer?
@joellevand: @jswilson64: Fry’s has it’s faults, but fraudulent “repairs” generally isn’t one of them. Know what you want, avoid the aggressive commission seekers (trying to get credit for sales on items you selected and picked up yourself, right…), don’t get open-box items, and keep track of their sales. Follow those simple rules, and Fry’s is pretty much the place to get your geek fix at reasonable prices from individual components to full built systems.
Like most “consumerists” you jump to conclusions, don’t ask questions (the right ones) and fail to troubleshoot the source. While Firedog is not entirely in the right on this scenario the consumer isn’t either. The service they are selling doesn’t “Flash the bios” It’s called a quickstart.
[www.circuitcity.com]
All associates must who sell the said product must offer the “Quickstart” service at a minimum. (There are other tiers) Some overstock computers have this feature done which is called “Pre Optimization.” The only reason this kind of stuff passes is by word of mouth because some ignorant customer comes in to buy a $499 sale laptop at the end of the sale period only to find all that’s left is several of these “Pre Optimized” versions. Many will instantly claim “Bait and Switch” No. This is not the case, sales are clearly labeled as FCFS. They get pissed, storm out, bitch to their friend, they miscontrew the story on the internet, it leaks to sites like this and snowballs from there. People never read the fine print. I can’t tell you how much I hate it when people fail to look in to things. If it’s “Too good to be true” IT PROBABLY IS! Seriously guys. Do yourself a favor and act your age. I digress though, whoever said that is flashes the Bios is an idiot or just trying to make their numbers look better and should be delt with justly. & They’re supposed to state that the product has this charge! It’s no different than going to the package store, buying cigarettes and them adding a lighter to the ticket. Oh well, it’s not like this will ever stop. It happens in everywhere…but mostly in High School. Not retail chains. Grow up people.
@Trai_Dep: Instant win in the thread.
To everyone else, Firedog and GeekSquad and the like do have their places. I know tons about software, but hardware is a different story. If you give me a stick of ram, I can install it (provided you gave me the right kind. I don’t know the difference between DDR and DDR2.) HDD? I can install it but I don’t know how to tell if a machine can handle SATA. Give me a pile of parts and the manuals, and I’ll slap it together. But I couldn’t pick out the parts. For this, I’d use Firedog or GeekSquad. Software issues? Fuckoff!
Good for you. Only you can get the same level of service at Costco or several small local computer shops. For the same price.
Plus Costco extends manufacturer’s warranty for free for an EXTRA year.
So you don’t have to shell out 3-4K for a Mac to get good customer service.
I can’t help but find it disturbing that they would take a computer out of the box and mess with it. If I bought a new computer that is just what I would want: a new computer still factory sealed in the box and not touched by their amateur hands!
Acer=crap. We’ve had 2 acers completely crap out. Sent it back 3 times. Acer makes you pay to ship it to them, and then ships it back still broken. This is after you spend 2 hours on hold with them.
@Dyscord: no, common sense tells you not to buy an Acer, because they can be just that shoddy.
@The_IT_Crone: when it was opened for an unwanted, unrequested service? Um, no. That seems like a good way to royally piss off a customer.
@Sorshha: if they sneak it in, I would honestly relish the time they spent, denial to pay for the service, denial to pay for an open box item, and the demand for a proper sale of a new sealed box
. Given that my first desktop was made of leftovers from my father upgrading other people’s PCs, and having never owned a prebuilt PC, I likely won’t give myself the chance.
@sketchy: you speak truth (I don’t get the 4GB RAM bit, though–I’ve come within hundreds of MB of using my available 3.6GB). My last entry to CC was for a wireless NIC. I got it, I plugged it in, it worked (it actually tells you it’s an Atheros on the box!). I think that covers me for another year or so.
@InThrees: No, they knew it. They probably knew it before CC ordered a single unit, too. Acer does not have a rosy history when it comes to quality.
@Corporate-Shill: It’s just like Linux or Mac. The people with esoteric crap whine, or someone decides to jump on a sale without spending 30 seconds to run a Google search, and it is the fault of the OS. If you are capable of installing the OS yourself, chances are you are miles above that level of idiocy. I’ve been reading and hearing it since I was gaming on NT4 with plug and play cards.
@Bush2008: yes, it’s OK to be ignorant. It is not OK to scam a customer, which appears to be what happened.
@Victo: or, you know, a $1k Mac…
CC makes very little money on PCs. The profit is in the crappy extended warrantees (50-60% goes to pure retailer profit, and only 25% to repairing the pc, so you are betting against yourself. And you can bet that somehow software is involved in most problems, sorry that isn’t covered. And if eg a key breaks on a notebook (they are fragile), unless you bought their ‘plus plan’ for about 50% more money, it isn’t covered. It is worse then dealing with a car dealer.
BTW, the percentage profit numbers came from a Business Week article (I’m in a Business mgt major pgm at college) about 2006, so this is good data.
Same thing with firedog. Their whole goal is to sell you services, where about 3/4 of the cost (my guess here) is pure gross profit. And yup, if you buy the optimization deal they open the box, and poof goes your chance of returning it within the two week window without a restocking fee. Most people have friends who are geeks, their own AIT mgr at work etc can help, etc with setup. And AVG free is great antivirus software, and the best solution to viruses also is to use Mozilla firefox, (free also on the web) as a browser, and ignore microsofts piece of sh.t internet explorer, which is still full of holes.
I get this from some of my friends from school who work at circuit city. I don’t know a lot about best buy, except some scattered info that says that they will high pressure you and scam you even worse then CC, but this is not solid info.
Make a scene and keep beating the issue up the chain in the store till they decide you are worth more quiet then screaming and being a victim of the threaded fastener.
And much of the software most people need can be purchased at colleges for much less money, usually without having to prove you are a student.
I believe what the purchaser was trying to convey was that “IF” they flashed the BIOS, the operating system had to be working to do that. If the OS was working, then why the need to flash the BIOS?!