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Q. I'm
upset about what I consider a computer store rip-off. My
daughter will be a college freshman in the fall, so we
went to
Best Buy
and purchased an HP laptop and a
$200
, three-year warranty.
By that
night, our daughter realized something was wrong with
the PC and returned it to the store. A technician there
removed the Norton security software that came with the
PC because it was interfering with the Webroot security
software we had purchased. Two days later, the PC was
really slow, and she took it back to the store again.
Best Buy
said the PC was totally corrupted and replaced it for
her. They also sold her their
$40
computer optimization service.
I'm upset
for two reasons. First, so many things should not go
wrong with a new computer.
Second,
Best Buy
said we should've purchased the optimization service
initially to remove all the (junk software) that comes
with the computer. This might sound stupid or naive, but
shouldn't a new computer already be
"optimized" and at its peak?
And I
don't understand why I should have to pay
Best Buy
for additional service after I'd already bought their
three-year warranty. What else will I end up having to
buy when something else goes wrong?
A, You've
learned the hard way that buying a PC can be far from
simple. Here's what I think happened:
You had
the entirely avoidable problem of dueling Webroot and
Norton firewalls. Two firewalls can't run simultaneously
on the same PC;
Best Buy
should have warned you that the PC came with a firewall
pre-installed.
The
"corrupted" PC probably had a bad hard drive,
an unavoidable manufacturing flaw that appears
occasionally. (It's better for your daughter that the
drive failed before she stored data on it.)
The
computer optimization fee is partly the result of PC
manufacturers and retailers working against each other.
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