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I said, "If you try to sell me one more damn thing, I will turn and walk out and you will lose a $1000 sale. Just take my money and let me go." He said he understood completely. He apologized profusely. Then he tried to sell me the extended warranty.

The last big ticket item I bought at Best Buy was a laptop that had been deeply discounted, back in early 2003.

They pushed the extended warranty way too hard, and were using deliberate delaying tactics to get me to buckle. It finally got to the point where I figured out that they were probably taking a loss on the thing without the warranty and were prepared to tick me off to the point of walking away from the purchase. I decided to hang in there, even after they started playing games with triggering a "decline" on my credit card. I loudly demanded to use their phone and called the CC company right there, verified that I hadn't come anywhere near maxing out the thing and LOUDLY conveyed that information to them.

It was at that point that they backed down and my card suddenly "worked" ... probably because they exhausted the options in their playbook/scripts (and places like that have such and demand their employees use them), I was eating up staff time and because other customers were noticing what was happening to me.

The thing to keep in mind with stores like that, as I said above, is that they have well-defined playbooks/scripts intended to push through successful upsells. To an extent I feel bad for the poor schmucks manning the registers who have to use the scripts, often at the risk of their jobs. Which was probably the situation in your case - the sales clerk HAD to push for the warranty under a well-established and proven philosophy that if you walk away from the purchase someone will come in the door shortly after you walk out that WILL go for the upsells.

The last big ticket item I bought at Best Buy was a laptop that had been deeply discounted, back in early 2003.

Back in the '90s. I bought a 486 laptop from them for $1,500. I was a contract programmer and need the machine for my work. Ten days later the screen died and I brought it back. They said there was a one-week return policy but couldn't show me where it was. They would repair it and promised it in a week. Three weeks later it wasn't repaired, so I bought another. In the meantime, I had paid $300 towards the old laptop.

After another week I get a postcard saying the repaired laptop is ready. I told them to keep it as I had to buy another to keep my contract - and I wanted my $300 back. Nothing.

In another month I started getting dunned by a collection agency for $1,800 due to "interest and other charges". Long story short, I ended up with a ding on my credit, even though they still had the original machine.

Haven't been in their stores since then. I'll dance a jig when they die.