Went to the local HH Gregg yesterday to purchase a new TV and got a Blu Ray player (Samsung BDC6500) while I was there. The TV was a pretty good deal (about $1039), it was a 40' LCD (Sharp Aquos LC-40LE810UN).
The Blu Ray player from Samsung is total garbage. It has all manner of network issues and is way overpriced for what it does. I was reading some reviews on Amazon today and saw many others with the same problems who wasted alot of time trying to work the issues out unsuccessfully. I bought this thing in order to provide the capability of playing disks; but mostly for the net access, so I could stream netflix and other such services over Wi-Fi.
I will be taking the Blu Ray player back at my next opportunity and opting instead for a PS3.
I also bought an HDMI cable for around $95 dollars (Acoustic Research PR185. I was looking around at other prices on the internet and saw the same exact cable for $50 dollars; that's definitely going back too. They can sell that one to some other sucker; I should have known better than to trust their prices on accessories.
I was grilled about 5 times on purchasing their "service plans." When the TV salesman heard me say that I didn't want the plan (which was 400 dollars for a 1000 dollar TV), I could see that he was frustrated when I indicated I wasn't interested; that tells you that they must have a big rake off of the service plans.
If that wasn't enough, the manager got out this sheet of paper and explained what I was "giving up" for 15 or so minutes. At one point I was being grilled by two salesmen and a manager about getting the stupid plan.
I certainly didn't figure there was a 40% chance of the TV failing within five years, so I went ahead and passed on that, for the 6th time.
I realized that if they want me to get the service plans that bad, it must be a major ripoff. Any time a salesman or manager is going to be bummed out that you don't get a "service plan, " you know they are making the real money there. I'm guessing that the markup on accessories and service plans is how they are able to offer some of the TV's for so cheap.
So a word of advice to future HH Gregg customers: have a good idea of what model you want before you go in and don't buy accessories on impulse. I did well on the first part; but now I'm going to have to go back and deal with them again because I failed miserably on the second part.
Hopefully they don't give me too much trouble for not wanting to be ripped off. I'll be polite and cordial and expect the same from them; nonetheless, I do expect to have pressure applied to me to keep the unwanted, overpriced, junk accessories.
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