Best Buy & Geek Squad Policies

[irobosys]

I purchased a brand new Macbook Air last Friday.  I left the laptop to have some programs installed because time crunch I had of traveling on Sat.  I got to the store.  Installation was not done on time.  I asked for the items so that I can do it myself.  Then I got charged for $40 for the "Optimization".  One of the Geek Squad guys says something about reconfiguring the registers, etc.  I did not have time to look into this but are you kidding?  Brand new Mac and Optimization is required?  I stopped by the Macstore and I also discussed with local people and developer familiar with Mac and I am told I was scammed.  Give me your best shot in answering this before I take serious action.

[Adamtech Emerging Expert]

The Mac optimization does do a lot of thing that would take the customer quite a bit of time to complete. It tweaks settings to the best possible end user experience. There are, however, no registry changes because the Mac OS does no have a "registry".

[Nokia]

An opto is definitely not required to purchase the computer.

[TheLexMachine]

It sounds as if they did scam you. The optimizing thing is primarily a lot of nonsense that amounts to removal of junkware that comes pre-loaded on your machine. I'm not really sure how they would apply it to a Mac. It wasn't something we did at all on Mac computers, in fact we never did anything for anyone who bought a Mac system other than the occasional random memory installation, when I worked for Geek Squad and they sold the same Apple products back then that they do now. I think in this case, they pulled a fast one to ensure that you wouldn't walk out the door without giving them some blood.

[Barron_River]

Wow, I had BB do the Optimization on my HP laptop because it was LOADED with trial garbage. I've never seen any of that stuff on a Mac though. I'm going in today to buy a portable hard drive that's on sale... I'll ask my usual computer guy there what gives, he's always been straight with me when it comes to telling me about what I need and don't need.

[John-BBY Community Connector]

Hello irobosys,

I was disheartened to read about your Geek Squad® experience.  I believe that it’s important that we keep our commitments to you, especially when we tell you that work will be done at a certain time.  That you ultimately had to complete the work yourself and were assessed a fee you weren’t expecting would provoke a strong response from anyone, I do believe.  I’d like to offer my personal apology for what has happened.

Generally speaking, Macs don’t require “optimization” in the same way that many PCs do.  That is to say, Apple doesn’t install any third party software on a Mac by default and the removal of third-party software to streamline a PC is part of a typical optimization process.  This doesn’t mean that the system can’t be optimized, however.  In the short time since Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) was released, there has already been an update to 10.6.1.  As part of Geek Squad®’s optimization, this update should have been installed for you and other performance enhancing adjustments made as well.  You should also have requested that this service be performed at the same time you requested the software installation services and not been surprised with a charge after the fact.

I’d like to look into this further, but will need some additional information from you.  Please watch for a private message from me.  To check your forum inbox, please sign in with your user name and password and click the envelope icon in the upper right.

I’m grateful that you took the time to write about your experience and look forward to working with you!

Sincerely,

[Barron_River]

Okay, so I went to BB today and talked to my usual computer guy. He said that this may not be the same for every store, but when his Geek Squad performs a 'Mac Optimization', they download any software and firmware updates, set up email and install/setup MobileMe if the customer happens to purchase it. He said a lot of his Apple customers take him up on the Optimization, but it's never "required" in any way shape or form.  He kind of shook his head when I recounted the OP's experience. 

Hope this helps...

[RealGeorgeW Valued Expert]

I personally think the optimization on any system(PC/Mac) is worth the time saved on updates alone.

Most of the time it takes at least a good hour to get all of them done.