People have been informing me about a situation that they have experienced in trying to buy a laptop on boxing day through various Future Shop stores here in BC. Based on all the information I received, it seems like the company advertised a Toshiba laptop that was being sold with very limited quantities at a low price of $499. However, people are complaining that they were forced into buying a $99 recovery disc of some sort as a mandatory add on as they were told the laptop would not work without it.<\/p>\n
I then contacted some of the people that I know who would have inside knowledge of this to try and get a better understanding if this was a corporate decision or simply one bad management decision from a store level on a case by case basis. From what I was told, there were instructions given that about half of the laptops were to be pre-configured in an attempt to get people to buy the $99 add-on although some stores got greedy and made all of them as such. I guess that is certainly a good reason for people to complain about false advertising.<\/p>\n
The senior vice president of the company did issue this statement on the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s web site forum:<\/p>\n
Dear Customer,<\/p>\n
Future Shop is committed to delivering great customer service and honouring all of our consumer policies<\/p>\n
In an effort to make customer shopping experiences in our stores faster and more convenient, especially during high traffic days like Boxing Day, a percentage of laptops and desktop computers are pre-configured with set-up and recovery CDs.<\/p>\n
If you feel you were not given the option to buy a laptop or desktop computer without the pre-configured package on Boxing Day, we apologize for this inconvenience. Please feel free to contact us to request a refund. Contact us at your convenience either in-store, at 1-800-663-2275 (select language option and then select 2), or send an email to service@futureshop.com. <\/p>\n
We are deeply committed to ensuring our customers are satisfied and that their interactions with our stores, web site, and call centres all deliver that promise. This is of the utmost importance to the Future Shop team.<\/p>\n
Sincerely,<\/p>\n
Moe Amirie<\/p>\n
Senior Vice President<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I was asked what recovery discs were too. Generally speaking, it is simply a tool used to start up your computer in situations such as if you downloaded a virus and your computer won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t turn on properly anymore. So it is no way a mandatory requirement initially and you can easily create one yourself for free. <\/p>\n
One thing that was kind of shocking to me though was how apparently a store technician had to actually open the new laptop in question to create the disc as well as essentially having to sign the End User Licensing Agreement for the customer. Granted no one usually reads those, but it sure places the business in a sticky situation.<\/p>\n
As mentioned above, you can request for a refund if you were one of the people who were forced into buying the $99 disc. Would this be considered as shady business practices you say? I personally wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t there so I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really comment on whether or not they were simply trying to profit off the less technically savvy crowd who were in that shopping frenzy mode. <\/p>\n
One thing that I do know is that retail is an extremely low margin business and very often people resort to misleading others to make a profit. Although to be fair, sometimes it is a result of ignorance from the person serving you. May as well save your money by getting a refund if you are one of the people who feel was tricked into buying that recovery disc.<\/p>\n
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