I got a Platinum today, and the lady tried to sell me one of their extended service plans. She said that once the lithium battery in my GB "runs out" it can never be replaced. She also said that the GB came without any manufacturer's warrently. As soon as I opened up the instruction manual, I found out that both of those things were lies. Good thing I didn't blow those $10 on that lady.

Well, its true. Once the Lithium loses it charges, thats it. You will need to purchase a new SP. As of now, knowone sells those rechargable battery packs, so its not entirley false. Also, the warranty isn't really a warranty. Its guaranteed by Nintendo for a certain amolunt of days (Its either 30,60, or 90), after that, if it stops working, your screwed.

actually, if you go to http://store.nintendo.com/ you can already purchase spare batteries, headphone adapter, and other accessories.

The battery is only $15 + shipping on nintendo.com

& the warranty is 12 months per nintendo.com And besides that why does the fact that it is only a certain number of days (in this case 365) make it "not a warranty"?

From the Nintendo site:

http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/man...rrantyinfo.jsp

Warranty Coverage (United States and Canada)

Nintendo systems carry a twelve month warranty. Games and accessories sold separately carry a three month warranty. The warranty covers any manufacturing or workmanship defects and these will be repaired at no charge.

You really ought to know what you are talking about before posting misinformation.

When I bought my 2 platinum GBA SPs on Friday, Best Buy tried to sell me that $10 (each) extended warranty plan too, and I said no, but what they did anyway was they subtracted $10 from each and gave me the service plan anyway.

I guess that's the workaround of a desperate employee?

EDIT : Er, I meant they still charged me for the service plan ($10 each), but they subtracted $10 off of each of the GBA SP.

Basically the service plans were free.

Kick A$$ ... now that's a good deal

Wow! I never knew they sold Batterys for it, very cool.

who would buy one if they didn't have replacement batteries?

Considering Lithium-ion rechargable batteries last 2-3 years I could see most people upgrading their SP to the next version of Game Boy before needing a new battery, but still its nice the option is there. The bottom cover easily unscrews to replace the battery. $15 is a steal for a Li-ion battery.


BTW, an extended warranty plan on a Nintendo product can be a waste of money. They build quality stuff and every piece of Nintendo hardware I own still works. Some things are 10 years old. Insuring a $99 product for 10 or 20 percent of its cost is also a bit silly IMO.

darqleo, the lowering of price to include a coverage plan like that is called inboarding and is an illegal practice. The employee who did it would get fired instantly for that, and management would be in deep crap. I'd recommend going back and returning the plan since you have 30 days to do so. The plan isn't worth it for the most part. I used to work there and they are heavily pressured to sell them.

Right, he returns to give ther plan back and some poor jerk gets fired.

man ...would i LOVE to find you in the parking lot after youve just walked in there and gotten me fired with that silly stunt

why would he do something dumb like that? Basically he gets the plan for free, why would he go back and say, hey guys I don't want this free plan.

I'm not going to do that, that's messed up. I used to work retail and was put in a similar situation so I know how it feels to be under pressure to sell stupid stuff. When I worked for Sam Goody/Media Play in the early 90's, the employees were put under extreme pressure to sale stupid TDK blank tapes to everyone that walked into the store and management even had a tally sheet of who was selling the most, etc. It blows. The employee did what they had to do to survive and it didn't affect me so it's all good.

It sounds like he got both GBA:SPs for $90 each. If he returns the plans he can go to lunch a couple of times.

If the clerk gets fired it's his own fault. It's not silly to demand your money back for something you don't want and didn't ask for. If he said he was throwing them in for free and darqleo was fine with it then it's cool, but if darqleo didn't want it and they were tacked on anyway then darqleo has all the right to return them.

Again, for the record:

GBA SP $89.99
GBA SP $89.99
Service Plan $10
Service Plan $10

Still comes out to $99.99 a piece. No harm to me.

BTW, a spare battery would be great to charge and then keep around for 'emergencies.' The pack is small, and a Li cell will keep almost all of its charge for a cpouple of months or more, so it makes a great backup for travel, etc. And I'll bet someone will soon make a battery cover that doesn't require a screwdriver to open.

Since when can employees at best buy adjust prices?

I think any cashier that can get on the computer can do that. But, each transaction and price adjustment will be logged under the employee's login ID. Plus, by their practice they're supposed to document the reasons for the price adjustment. I'm sure management can get on someone that tries to do something fishy.

PAL

When I did my stint in retail, cashiers could do POS markdowns if it was less then like 30% of the price, anything other then that and we had to call a manager over. And yes it went into the registers log and we were supposed to write it down on our tally sheet.

Actually, what they are selling is called a product replacement plan, not a warranty. Yes, I used to work there too. These are actually a good deal. It's good for 2 years, so what you do is right before the 2 years is up, sabotage it in some undetectable way and call the 800 number in the PRP brochure. They will send you a postage paid box to send the product in. Then you will get $99 in store credit back. By then, GBA SPs will only be about 50 or 60 bucks, and you can do whatever you want with the rest. Sounds like a deal to me for $10.
PS Mods, I was kidding about sabotaging your GBA, heh. But seriously, all you have to say is the battery isn't holding a charge anymore and you get $100 free.

I like those replacements and I think they are worth every penny. Its a good deal for cordless phones too, since the most common problem on those is them losing the ability to charge, which seems a problem the GB sp MIGHT have sometime.

It does make sense that employees can change a price, since they can do price adjustments for price matching. Thats probably what that person logged it as.

Those hard sells about warranties from places like BB are so annoying. Its not like you dont realize that is their way of making some profit, its just that for large share of long time gamers/electronic geeks offer is so frivolous it be more fun just burn money. If they want me had out "profit money" to them going have be alot more creative. Get deals on anime art books based on item/game I'm buying, or music cds, figures, other creative and alot more worthwhile things.

Just have to correct this statement...

This is NOT an illegal practice.

Maybe by some weird chance it is in the state you are in, but at least I can say there is no federal law regarding this matter. In fact this is a practice that I used to employ to boost extended warranty sales.

As a former member of management, I was required to sell a certain volume of extended warranties, and if I were to take off the price of the warranty on the item, there was nothing illegal about it.

I back jrobinson. I worked at Officemax during college and when we'd get pressured to sell extended warranties by corporate, we'd just mark the item down by the price of the warranty and said the reason for the price reduction was a pricematch.