My mother can't even turn on the DVD player. I'd say it's a pretty good, if ridiculously overpriced, service for those technophobes out there (though why they have a PS3 in the first place is beyond me)

Companies profit from people's lack of knowledge all of the time. Most gear heads laugh at people who pay 30 for an oil change, and tech guys laugh over people paying 30 to have memory installed. Its just the world we live in.

I work for geek squad, and honestly we get one of these setups like every month, and honestly most of them just want updates because they don't have Internet, or it's their first console ever and just want to make sure it's done right... I'm personally a gamer too so it takes me no time to do one, but some people don't even know how to setup their psn or xbox live and we do it for them :D

Ignorance of the masses is not a valid excuse for such a service. Why not tell them that once they turn on the machine, they can scroll to the left and the system will essentially hold their hand through each process?

If no one involved with the purchase of the PS3 (whether the direct customer or the intended recipient) can do even that, I doubt they would be able to handle the overwhelming complications involved with operating it on the day-to-day.

My boss's cousin works for Geek Squad. This sort of fee is mainly for the rich people who don't have the knowledge or will to set something like this up on their own. It's why they pay several hundred dollars to have them come down to their houses on the beach to set up their HDTV and BluRay player.

I don't mind companies helping you set up your system and updating it. Just about every store at least here in Sweden gives you the option to do that when you buy a TV or PC or something. Here's the thing though, that's for free. $30 is downright exploiting the market.

Anyone complaining about this obviously doesn't know how much BB charges for "basic installation" of an HDTV, which basically means they unbox it and hook up your cable box and bluray or dvd player. It's usually something like $50-60(unless they throw it in with the tv) and in the age of HDMI they are literally plugging in 2 cables.

..and still some people do need that service because they just don't know what to do and are terrified to try for themselves. It's not a big deal. If people thought it was that bad, they wouldn't buy it and BB would stop offering it.

Someone mentioned oil changes above. That's a great point. I'm kind of a car guy and *could* do my own, but i just don't feel like it. I figure I'd spend $15 for the stuff to do it on my own, so to be able to drop it off down the street, relax at home for a while, and pick it up when I'm ready, it's well worth an extra 15 bucks. No big deal.

To follow your logic Conrad, this is ultimately Sony's fault for providing confusing and or insufficient documentation of their consoles features.

Personally, I still find this to be a deplorable practice by Best Buy to capitalize on the ignorance of their customer base. It also gives ignorant parents yet another avenue to escape blame for what their children play. "But I asked Best Buy to set up the machine so that Johnny couldn't play Grand Theft Auto...yes I never bothered to even read the manual that came with the console...Best Buy said they would take all my worries away and I wouldn't have to worry my silly little head off."

What should have Best Buy done? Offer supplemental information to parents or at the least let them know that Sony has detailed information found with in the console packaging and online.

Does it state anywhere that the firmware update will take 2 hours to complete since it's fucking PS3? Seriously, Sony needs to fix that.

I can't believe that people honestly bitch about Sony updating the firmware. They're adding new things for you in the vast majority of cases.


I believe it when they're removing features, that's a fair grievance, Thank Geohot.

To be honest, this seems stupid to us because we know. Most gamers are the equivalent to car mechanics as regards their consoles. Something goes wrong? We know how to fix it. We know how to tweak it so our six-year-old daughters can't play Gears of War and understand the one-hour download and install time on a fireware update.

Mrs SoccerMom who doesn't connect her PS3 to the internet doesn't know any of the things we know. She just wants her PS3 functioning properly so that she can stick the game in and distract Billy and Janice.

Thrillho said it best: This is just as stupid as paying a mechanic to change your oil. It's a utterly, completely simple task which requires no effort and very little technical expertise. Yet I'll bet fully half, if not more, of the people screaming about what a rip-off this money-for-hassle-free exchange is take their car in like clockwork to a Mr. Lube and shell out the $39.99 for an oil change every five thousand miles.

In short? Shut the hell up. Seriously. Think about the money you pay for things you don't really care to do and try and convince yourself that this is any different for someone who doesn't read a gaming blog and doesn't know what the hell a firmware update really is. Go ahead. Explain how this is different from an oil change.

I'll wait patiently.

wts PS3 Firmware Upgrade $28.99 pst

Regarding anyone in the Central Ohio area, if you need help upgrading your PS3 or Xbox 360 firmware, I'll gladly do it for $20.

Eat that Best Buy.

But seriously, if you don't have an Internet connection, I guess their service is okay to use. Even then, if Best Buy finds a way to make money, and people buy into it, all the more to them. You can't say that people don't know what they're getting for their $30, and if they later learn how easy it is to do themselves, then they had better not bitch about paying to have it done for them.

How many of you pay a mechanic to change your oil instead of doing it yourself? Oil changes are crazy easy, but even I don't want to be bothered with them sometimes, so I just pay a guy to do it for me.

I've personally considered putting something on Craigslist offering to get people hooked up with wireless to network their home devices together for entertainment purposes. Ridiculously easy to do, but there are plenty of people who don't know how to do it and don't want to learn, so if they want to pay me to do it, who am I to stop them?

That said, both Sony and Microsoft's firmware updates for their systems tend to be pretty damn straight forward, usually requiring no more from the user than an agreement, then a download and install, and those last parts are handled by the system itself.

"The service goes beyond a firmware updates"

How does a Fortune 500 company release a two sentence-long statement with a grammatical error? I'll offer them my English Squad service of basic editing for $30 a statement.

Congratulations BestBuy ..... You can rest assured that you are on the short list of brick and mortar businesses I will avoid like the plague. Where as I used to enjoy going into my local bestbuy for my random tech needs.

If anything this should have simply been offered free of charge at the POS of new systems as a gesture of good will to encourage costumer loyalty. way to screw it up.

Or they could do it for free or even provide a nice, easy step-by-step guide with every new purchase. I realize that this is a corporation but that's just a level of contempt for the customer I didn't think would ever be a corporate policy.

Dude. I still have to disagree with you Conrad. The service is a huge rip-off not only because it charges for something that's free, but because it makes it seem (to the ignorant) that its something best buy does exclusively to make their particular console better.

An advertisement for Firmware upgrades implies to the ignorant that not every PS3 gets firmware updates. I work at a video game store and when people have questions about these sort of things and they call us, We walk them through it over the phone for FREE. Parental controls? I can do that from the store FOR FREE. If there's something I can't answer I'll refer them to a first party customer help line who helps them FOR FREE.

However, at time of purchase of the console at Best Buy, they insist that upgrading the firmware is a good idea for $30. The ignorant don't know that they can get this for free so they might be tempted to do it anyway.

Its very misleading, and Bestbuy are a bunch of fucking crooks for doing it. Its not like an oil change because you can't get an oil change for free. Even if you do it yourself you have to buy oil. Its not like ordering pizza because AGAIN, You don't get a free pizza for an initial purchase.

Here's a good analogy. Lets say you order pizza and it comes with Parmesan cheese in little packets on the side.

Well lets suppose you go to Best Buy and buy a $10 pizza. They ask would you like for us to put the Parmesan cheese on for you? Its $2.99 additionally. Some people may assume that its an additional topping when really they're just reaching in your box taking something thats free and putting it on your pizza.

It'd be like charging a service fee to salt fries. Saving you the convenience of opening up a pack of salt. Its fucking misleading and wrong, and no amount of "People are ignorant and need the service" will change that.

To anyone that says they shouldn't do this: this is America, and we have the right to sell nearly anything. Best Buy is offering a service. And some idiots will take advantage of that service. Those people do not know any better, and the service is aimed at them. Those same people would not properly configure parental controls. They might if a service technician asks them, "hey, do you want parental controls."

Capitalism is a good thing. They're not taking advantage. And if you're worried about the 'idiots' of the world, you need to find something better to worry about. White knighting is stupid.

@ LackoPants,

"They're not taking advantage."

I was with you up until this. They're definitely taking advantage and Capitalism is not always a good thing. But that's a conversation for another time.

Luigi takes over: I can see where you're coming from there. Perhaps I can offer some additional perspective.

I won't disagree that the ad we saw a photo of was terrible. It was probably produced by that particular store, however, and not Best Buy corporate. Big chains like this often allow individual stores to produce flyers and ads specific to their market and it would be my guess based on the quality of the ad that this is what we have here. So, rather than hanging out the entire company to dry for that, let's try and keep that in mind.

As to your statement about your store providing these services for free, that's wonderful that you do that. In addition to having worked on the big chain end of the retail business, I've had experience working in a family-run shop and we would do things like that all the time as well. It engenders good will with the customers and creates a relationship that encourages them to return.

Of course, my small videogame shop didn't have the same kind of demands as a Best Buy would. It's pretty easy to maintain a small game shop, but the amount of work that goes into keeping a big store like a Best Buy fully stocked with easy to find merchandise for the customers is staggering. Similarly, Geek Squad employees have a lot of work to do already between their installation and repair services just on PCs without having to deal with game consoles.

Which all comes down to this question: How much do you value your time or the time of the employees that you pay? If you're in a small shop and you don't have a bunch of customers that you're dealing with at the same time that you have to put product out on the floor and maintain a huge quantity of small merchandise that is shuffled about by literally hundreds of people on a daily basis, then it's easy for you to offer free services. By contrast, Best Buy neither has to create that good will with their customers nor should they be expected to offer an additional service for free. Because it's not free to them. It costs them manpower which could be applied to other necessary tasks.

Don't get me wrong. I would love it if Best Buy offered free education on how to do this stuff to all customers. I think any time you empower consumers with knowledge, you create a better environment for the business as well. Informed customers are both happier and make better purchasing decisions, meaning that they'll more likely buy more accessories and games as well. But to expect them to do it for free simply because your store does that is absurd. They're a business, one which has to be very tightly managed in order to keep stockholders happy and everybody employed. Sometimes you have to make difficult decisions as to what's most important to you.

Funny, I thought Sony included instruction manuals with their consoles on how to do all this, but I guess it's easier to shell out money then read a boring indexed manual.

To those saying that this should be free, all I have to say is that time is money. An employee doing this for a customer is one less available employee to help another customer. I'll admit that $30 is a little high,but some compensation is in order (even if it is for a simple process that doesn't consume a whole lot of time). And with the holidays drawing near, those employees will even be more busy.

Besides, as other arguments above pointed it, people not use to the technology are willing to pay for that extra sense of security that someone who knows what to do set things up for them. It's easy to bitch about it because we know what to do. People pay mechanics money to do simple car maintenance because they want that security that someone who knows what they're doing did it for them instead of them doing it on their own and accidentally fucking up their car (even if it is a simple process like changing oil).

If a consumer wants to spend extra money for the extra sense of security, then okay. And if a business wants to make money off people who don't know what to do, then don't bitch about it. It's quite common for businesses to sell their expertise to others who don't know what to do.

Some people can't program the time on their VCR, these people are spending the $30 on the Best-Buy deal but really they just need a tech savy friend. I've helped many friend with various items and I do it for the beer!

Also,
What firmware ae you guys installing that takes 1hr?

I just updated the "bedroom" PS3, it's Wi-Fi, was the 3D update and it took about 15 mins to DL and install.

This is really sad. You know what I notice about this site. When someone writes something, regardless of what it talks about, ppl hop on the bandwagon. When Dtoid shit on best buy, everybody shit all over Best Buy. Now this guy praises them and ppl defend best buy. Really? The charging of price for this isn't even the issue here for me. Best Buy does this to feed off of ppls stupidity and then cleans it up later. People wanna have peace of mind for their kids? Most kids are tech-saavy nowadays and its not as if sony or any other company can make setting account and updates any easier. If anything this should be like 10 even with an account setup. Does the best buy employee decide the name u have? Its the most easy thing EVER. Its no way in hell best buy could justify this shit unless a person simply didn't have internet.