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During the frenzy of holiday shopping, I went to Best Buy to do my part to help out the US Economy and Retail Sales for electronics. Browsing through the Best Buy Mobile section of the store I came across this sign. Best Buy is offering to pair your bluetooth headset to your new mobile phone (purchased through them), by using their Geek Squad service. Great. They are being helpful and provide value-added services.

But what I find amazing is the fact that they are assigning a $9.99 value. I would proposed that pairing a headset to a phone takes about 5 minutes. Based on that they are creating a service that costs $120/hour! I looked on the Geek Squad website and I could not find this service listed. It’s only available at the store at the time of purchase. They won’t go to your home or office and perform the service there. But the closest comparable is the Standard Wireless Networking Service (In Home/Office) for $119.99. So this seems to validate their cost model to charge.

In contrast, I asked Store Reps at AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon and they all said that when a customer buys a new phone or even upgrades a phone, they try and ask if they need a bluetooth headset and are willing to pair the devices at no extra cost.

But back to Best Buy. As a public company (NYSE: BBY), I tried to sift through some of the 10Qs to see if there was some mention about this, and not too much detail. Overall Revenue from Services line (Geek Squad) is about 6%. Is this a way to create artificial revenue? Maybe in a few months, I’ll go back to Best Buy and ask them if there has been significant uptake of this service or has it’s been largely ignored.

On the First of July, California law of requiring drivers to use a hands-free headset caused a lot of people to go out and buy a bluetooth headset for their mobile phone. Before the July 1st deadline, people were in a frenzy trying to decide which headset to buy. Most chose a bluetooth headset, after seeing various people they encounter appearing to speak to thin air, when it was really using a bluetooth headset on the non-visible ear.

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Thanks to my friends at Verizon (P and M), here are pictures LG Decoy. The device will retail at $349.99, but incentives, probably $299.99 or less. There is also a $50 rebate.

This is probably one of the first handsets that have included a bluetooth headset at no additional charge. Also, the microphone icon between the SEND and END button is not to tell you where the microphone is located, but for you to input speech commands to navigate menus with voice (I guess while driving). Also nice is the fact that the phone and bluetooth headset both have the same standard charger; although it would be nice to have a Y-splitter on the charger so that you could charge both at the same time!

Finally, the integrated bluetooth headset. I think it’s kind of a neat idea that you store the headset and handset together to prevent you from losing it. However, when I’m using the headset, will I always remember to carry the plastic cover to protect stuff from getting into that slot?

[click on the image to see more photos]