Hardware 2.0

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Best Buy charges $30 for "free" PS3 firmware upgrade

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | October 7, 2010, 6:27am PDT

So best Buy is charging a $30 (or $29.97 to be precise) surcharge for selling PS3 consoles with upgraded firmware. Is this just good business or a total rip off?

Basically, this service involves hooking the console to the internet and then pressing a few buttons. No screwdrivers or installer discs or complex spells involved. Best Buy defends its pricing and goes on to say that “the service goes beyond a firmware updates, and includes user account setup, parental control setup and other components.”

Personally, I don’t think we should get all wound up about this. Sure, $30 is a lot of dough, but there are always people who are too lazy or have money to burn or who probably couldn’t do the update for themselves, and this “service” caters for those individuals. I’m more likely to get worked up at companies trying to upsell $50 HDMI cables by claiming that they are better than $5 cables. This charge is an optional charge, and as long as there are standard, unmodified PS3s available, I don’t see a problem.

That said, it’s still an over-the-top price for sure.

Thoughts?

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Topics

Best Buy Co. Inc., Sony PlayStation 3, Parental Control, Firmware, Firmware Upgrade, Cable, Telecommunications, Personal Technology, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

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Cables are always the bigger rip off

Zorched 8th Oct 2010

At least the tech actually has to do SOMETHING on the upgrade for the $30.

A $100 cable probably costs Best Buy at most $10.

The profit on those are so insane it makes company CEOs giggle maniacally in their meetings. They will say "It's how we make up the profit for our low margins on the big ticket items." And I've got some ocean-front property in North Dakota to sell you...

If people are so unwilling to learn about the technology that dominates their lives, even the basics, then they have no right to complain when it collapses around them.

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they are joking, right?

nothingness 7th Oct 2010

30 bucks to press a few buttons, wow, that's just unbelievable, but the sad thing is that there will be a few people who will pay that...

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

pc boss 7th Oct 2010

conflicting statements don't you think. The word "free" means that it is free of charge. What nerve they have to do that. It is not a big deal to setup the ps systems for protection. However if you really want to make it very secure.. Don't hook it up to the internet.

My kids system is very secure...

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

TG2 7th Oct 2010

@pc boss Yup... but again.. they are not charging for the "Upgrade"/"Update" ... they are charging that 30 dollars for one of their people to press the buttons or to make access to a form that the person fills out for easier updating of the unit.

Partly this issue is that people don't realize how much *their* time is worth. And in using such optimizing or "fill in for you" forms and apps, you are saving your time rather than your dollars.

Some of it makes sense.. other parts of it make no sense what so ever ... and the reason ... is because they may not publish *all* of their steps and choices, for a user to have for reference.

ie. they offer the same kind of "setup" options for their computers (laptops/desktops/etc) where they transfer files, email and settings, etc..

But when they do so, they may not make some choices.. like in outlook... before 2007 .. I would always disable "Word" as the HTML editor (because of the bastardized f**king html it does) and would turn on the spell checker, and make sure "uppercase" is selected so that the spell checker *will* check those ALL CAPS words... but best buy didn't do this for my aunt's PC .. so I had to manually come behind this idiots and try to discover all the "optimizing" *they* did because they don't list everything they do or don't do ... and did I get the 50 bucks that BB gets for this? nope.. but sure enough I knew what my aunt needed a little better than they, and yet they got the $$. (no I wouldn't have charged her, but that she paid good money to them and for simplistic service boils my blood to no end)

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

Droid101 7th Oct 2010

@TG2
It still makes no sense. Either you're waiting 30 minutes for the updates to complete in the store, or you're waiting 30 minutes for the updates to complete in the comfort of your own home.

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

eshelman 7th Oct 2010

Most people that feel comfortable updating firmware on their own probably don't frequent the Geek Squad to begin with. Their target customer is a parent buying a PS3 as a Christmas gift and getting hooked into the 'upgraded' HDMI cable, the 2 year extended warranty, and the $30 piece of mind that the system is ready to run right out of the box and little Jimmy won't throw a fit that he has to wait 20 minutes to download patches on Christmas morning. Sure, it's evil, but it's genius evil.

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Both

pmcgrath@... 7th Oct 2010

But most rip offs are.

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Cost of doing business

Rick_R Updated - 7th Oct 2010

The bottom line is it's a "cost of doing business". Best Buy had to investigate what needed to be done and then develop training materials and pay hundreds or thousands of people to learn how to do it. They also have to pay those people for their time spent doing it. And that assumes everything works perfectly each time. Last night I received an (upgraded) replacement video card, uninstalled ATI Catalyst Control Center (per the instructions) and tried to install the newer CCC version that supports the card. It won't install. Now even older versions won't install although they worked with the new card before I uninstalled them. So now I have to spend hours trying to find out why. (Judging from posts I found, it seems to be a fairly common problem.) And that's with "everything installed and running correctly".

Plus, of course, the BB employees will have to spend time dealing with idiots who interrogate them about, "Are you SURE this won't screw anything up?" "Why do I need this?" "Are you SURE you know what you're doing?" "But my son ...." Etc.

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

s.freeman 7th Oct 2010

If you ask me to do the same (or install Ubuntu) I'll charge 20EUR. The upgrade is free. Upgrading costs (if you are too lazy to do it yourself)

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

Ray (Canada) 7th Oct 2010

I have to agree with Best Buy on this. While it is a stretch, a car shop charges for labour because you don't want to fix your own car. So a computer shop should be able to do it as well. You don't like the price, shop around. If you don't like getting your hands dirty under the hood, pay someone else who knows what they are doing.

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

leilalex 7th Oct 2010

And that's why I hate Best Buy and never buy anything from them. They don't know anything and they charge you like crazy for something you can get cheaper online with fee shipping !!!

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If circuit city were still viable (and maybe this newer HHGregg ...)

TG2 7th Oct 2010

See now in a perfect world .. where a company that competed directly against best buy ... Circuit City ... could have caused BestBuy to make this option available to customers for free as a "perk" for paying the exact same dollars at best buy rather than their competition ...

Now that there's HHGregg coming round, and it seems replacing the former Circuit City ... its possible that competition will again start to have such things go for free.

Before Circuit City died.. (yeah they live "on line" now) you could see this easily in DVD movie releases. Bestbuy & CC were always trying to best each other by offering perks.. like BB use to have lithographs or booklets included that you could only get if you purchased that dvd at their store..

Now they only do this when they really want to get a presense in the store for purchasing other items.. etc.. So maybe with HHGregg in town ... this will start happening again (freebies, add ons, perks for buying at one store or the other)

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

mcmasjc 7th Oct 2010

Anyone dumb enough to let Best Buy touch their equipment deserves to get ripped off.

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

dale@... 7th Oct 2010

There are those who would probably pay to have someone screw in a light bulb for them too. But there is no way I'd pay Best Buy or anyone else anything to upgrade the firmware on a PS3.

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I think its reasonable if...

davagain 7th Oct 2010

I think its reasonable as long as Best Buy notifies buyers that they have a choice about doing it themselves for free or hiring BB to do it for them. Geeks sneer at those mere mortals who don't know how to do relatively simple stuff like this, but what is the opportunity cost of spending the time and effort to become a geek in order to make this "obvious"? For many people, the $30 is insurance so they don't have to waste their time and effort if something goes wrong - and we all know that this does happen at times.

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Why is this such a surprise?

semi-adult 7th Oct 2010

The whole POINT of 'modern business' -- pick yourself an example, but telcos and insurance spring to mind -- is something for nothing and your chicks for fee.

ALL of them are pretty much sinking in the same swamp. BB is just more visible to folks with an interest in tech. Malwarts is the leader of the lemmings... "Always the cheap crap" isn't just a slogan.

It seems there is a horde of almost-grads with netbooks working on the notion that service is a cost, and costs must be eliminated.

Get used to it.

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probably but..

rengek 7th Oct 2010

I would expect most PS3 owners to be able to do the upgrade themselves and not be bother with best buy doing it for them. But it is a service, a lame one but a service nonetheless.

Some people argue why bother taking your car for an oil change because they know how to do it and can do it within 30 minutes. For me, it would take a lot longer and not worth my time. For $20, I am happy to trade that in for the service because my time is valuable so $20 seems reasonable.

Or when you go to a hotel and have the bellhop carry your luggage to your room. Technically, you could do it yourself but maybe you don't want to risk pulling your back or you just don't feel like it. Its a service.

Call it lazy, call it fearful, call it a smart choice. Its a service.

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

awake247 7th Oct 2010

I work at a gamestore in the netherlands. we do that for free. We even go to some of our customers homes to set up a network. No Charge! Sometimes a customer insists to pay something for the effort. So that's considerd a tip.

it's called service.

"a happy customer is a returning customer"!

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Many reasons...

sframberger@... 7th Oct 2010

1. I doubt BB hooks the PS3 up to the internet and updates the firmware that way. They've certainly got a USB flash drive with the latest firmware.

2. Folks that don't have an internet connection, but want to watch the newest BR movies will eventually need to do firmware updates. If they don't have a friend who can do it for them, then BB is a logical step.

3. If the firmware update hoses the PS3 (it has happened), then BB will have to repair or replace it. I can also only imagine how many scumbags have tried to get BB to replace their dead PS3's...

While it seems on the surface that BB is "ripping off" customers, they really aren't. They are accepting quite a bit of risk when updating PS3 firmware, and the charge is reasonable.

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

cyberslammer 7th Oct 2010

@sframberger@... Have you looked at a Geek Squad price sheet?

It's enough to make any IT geek gag what they charge.

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This coming from the company

Cylon Centurion 8th Oct 2010

That forced their "Optimization" ready PC's on consumers, which really did nothing in the way of optimizing.

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On the subject of extortion

keebaud@... 8th Oct 2010

We're a business customer of Dell and if we want the BIOS preconfigured then Dell will do it for us - for ?4 per machine PER BIOS SETTING! So if we wanted to ensure that the shipped machines booted to the first hard drive, had virtualisation turned on, and had the USB controller set to enabled (normally all default options) then Dell would happily charge ?12 per machine.

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RE: Best Buy charges $30 for

levstein 8th Oct 2010

Charging $30 for a setup for people who feel uncomforable about doing it themselves is nowhere near as bad as charging $50 or $100 for an HDMI cable that will work as well as a $10 cable.