I see your points.
Being a well-informed consumer, and a former Best Buy employee, I see many of your complaints are indeed well founded and very true. I also have found, that Circuit City, American TV, CompUSA, Office *, and others to be no different.
My only advice for people is to learn the right things to say to dissuade a "sales guy" from pushing PSPs onto people.
If they ask you if you want one, say "No thanks."
If they say you need one, simply respond "Thank you for your concern, but no thanks, unless you are willing to buy one for me." That'll get a response for sure!
If they call you a tard for picking one product over another, again "Thanks."
I have often seen customers get defensive, which will actually cause the sales person to keep trying for some reason.
The problem is that many consumers walk into a BB with no knowledge and expect to pay the lowest price possible for a product, and on top of that expect the sales people to be educated. Economics says this can't happen if you are paying your associates $7/hr because all the knowledgable people have better paying jobs. This is like asking a McDonalds cook to tell you how to make a good filet mignon. It all comes a price? Do you want cheaper stuff, or knowledgable sales people?
Aside...PSPs (Service Plans) are not bad investments on certain products. The keyword there is certain. Appliances and computers come to mind, even cell phones. Yeah, you paid $50 for your phone, but have you ever shopped for a new battery? They are pretty expensive. A PSP gives you a free one every year. I even washed (yeah, in a washing machine) my cell phone and they replaced it no questions asked (probably due to my good looks

). You can even get replacement laptop batteries once a year, so I think of certain PSPs as a good investment if you actually use the benefits of said plan.
The problem started when people actually started buying these for stupid products like phones and game controllers. So if I am a BB exec, I say "why not?". If our guys ask 100 people if they want one and 10 bite, I just sold 10 more than if my employees didn't ask at all. I think its sort of like rebates. Many companies offer huge rebates because they expect a certain percentage of those people to NOT even bother sending in the rebates.
Finally...anyone else remember when Circuit City used to be commissioned based? Talk about a headache!