BestBuy’s PSP on Laptops FTW
If you’ve ever bought electronics from BestBuy odds are the sales person pitched their PSP (product service plan) to go along with your purchase. I use to work in retail and was required by my employer to do the same. On most things I wouldn’t recommend actually spending the extra dough for the ext. warranty, especially if that particular item isn’t ridiculously expensive and already comes with a manufacturers warranty.
When it comes to buying a laptop computer, there are many benefits in buying the PSP plan or extended warranty. For instance after about 1 year of wear and tear on any lithium battery, it starts to lose it’s life or memory, and your laptop that once lasted up to 4 hours running on battery power now only lasts under 1 hour. Batteries can be pretty expensive, in my case a replacement battery cost ~$100 and not only was I able to get my battery replaced by BestBuy 3 times over a 3 year period but I also got 2 replacement A/C battery chargers. Which alone covered the cost of the PSP plan for a term of 3 years ($249.99). It was also pretty convenient being able to go out to any electronic store, buy the parts I needed and just submitting the receipt to BestBuy to be reimbursed.
February 28th was the last day of my 3 year term, so trying to take advantage of the PSP plan I decided to bring it my 3 year old computer (Gateway 4540GZ) to get a couple things fixed on it before handing it down to my mother. The home key was broken, one of the LCD clips that hold the monitor shut was broken and the battery was only lasting for about an hour. So I was hoping to get these few things fixed up so my mom had somewhat of a new computer. I bring it in to BestBuy on February 25th they tell me they will send it off for service, no problem. About 2 weeks later I get a call from BestBuy saying “Hello Mr. Ciccarelli our service team has looked at your laptop and decided to replace it with a new one at no cost, so please bring in a copy of your receipt.”
At this point I was quite surprised, thinking to my self what in the world could of happened to justify replacing a 3 year old computer that works absolutely fine with a new one. I began to wonder if they had maybe lost my original laptop, certainly was a possibility. So without any complaints I go into BestBuy and work with a Customer Service manager to pick out a new computer. Apparently my Selection was limited to those computers of similar specs. Which was fine because the lowest end laptop they had in stock trumped my original purchase in every specification (RAM, Hard drive, vMemory etc.). I ended up getting a brand new Gateway M-6309 with an Intel Dual-Core 1.6 GHz processor, 15.3″ Ultra Bright screen, 1GB Memory, 160GB HD, Super Multi Drive w/ Dual-Layer capability and all the other little features that come standard in most modern laptops (Wireless LAN, 5-in-1 Memory Card Readers etc.) The laptop only retailed for $600 which was a sale price and my original purchase was for a $1400 laptop but it was also over 3 years ago.
While I was filling out the paperwork I asked the manager why they decided to replace my laptop and if it is something they do often. Apparently it is, if they feel a laptop is not worth more than the repairs, cost of shipping back and forth they will just approve the replacement of a new computer. I’ve herd a lot of horror stories regarding BestBuy and I’ve never been a huge fan of them my self, but I have to admit they took very good care of me in this situation and I didn’t even have to twist any arms.
