"I've already bought this product, I want to do this, can I? If not what should I get instead?" questions

Question

We've had a few questions that follow this format:

I've bought this PRODUCT to solve MY PROBLEM. Can this PRODUCT actually do this? If so, how? If not, what do you recommend?

The most recent example is https://hardwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/1038/what-will-be-the-best-way-to-connect-two-external-monitors-with-macbook-pro-earl

How should we handle this type of question?

To me, I am reading the example question as a chameleon question. It's laying out it's entire premise as "How do I do this with what I have?". I'm arguing this is off topic and technical support. However, at the very end, in an almost throw-away attempt to bring it on topic:

Or if you have some other recommendation please advise.

This makes the question seem too broad. In either case, I've voted to close.

However, the question is, how do we want to handle "I've already bought, but this doesn't work" type questions?

Answer 1

Non-official hat is on.

I say we should close these as being either off-topic, or out of scope. A question in the format mentioned

I've bought this PRODUCT to solve MY PROBLEM. Can this PRODUCT actually do this? If so, how? If not, what do you recommend?

is actually written so that the primary question is "can it do this and how" - and that's a technical support request, which is off-topic.

They can usually be edited into scope by removing the TSR and making the primary question the recommendation, perhaps with a note saying "I have PRODUCT; tell me if that's the best solution." However, they are also fairly liable to being overly broad.

In short: nothing massively special. Close them if they're written for the support request primarily, edit them if you have time, or close them if they're way too broad. We may be able to reopen later on with some edits.