What is "Set up and go plus"? I went into a store and they charge $19.99 for that. I can install what I have on a new phone....why should I have to pay. They never asked either. Up above in VIDJUNKY's post ,he referred to charges that some do, and other times there is no charge. He didn't elaborate enough on which stores and exactly what they did.
Sorry for the late reply but pretty much as Jude526 has stated, retailers are usually just in it for the money, they don't really care about you beyond the chance that you'll buy from them again or refer a friend. It sounds like you purchased a new device and they transferred your information over to the new device and then charged you for the their time and very little effort. Meanwhile. 2 yrs ago when this post was relevant there weren't a lot of transfer tools on at the Play Store. Today there are literally dozens.
Some platforms make apps for their device, like HTC has its own transfer tool, but there are tools at work across platforms, like Sammy to Moto or Windows to Android, but here's the kicker, in most cases you don't need to do anything. If you follow these simple rules Google provides everything you need without any effort on your part at all after setup. Google+ offers to backup your photos and videos with mighty verver. I know on my device every time I use a different app to take a photo it's asking me if I want to begin backing up this new folder. It doesn't matter if you are actually a G+ user or not setup your G+ account and allow it to backup your photos. Then anywhere you login to Google you can view and manage your backed up photos.
Contacts are backed up in many ways. Many carriers have or offer their own backup for contacts, photos and videos to, if you want to use the carrier's offering. Personally I prefer Google for this as well, but there is a caveat to this and it can be simple or you can make it more complicated, really it's up to you and here is how you choose. When creating a contact be sure to create it as a Google contact. That's simple enough, right? Well here is where it can be more complicated, if you have more than one Gmail account on your device you may have to choose which Google account to save it under. On most devices if you make this choice once you're done and it becomes the default, but you can change it anytime you create a new contact. If you look in your phonebook right now you probably have multiple sources selected from which to draw contact information from. This is easily checked by opening your phonebook and clicking the tab in the upper left corner and looking at the checkboxes. The advantage to using Google is you can manage your contacts from anywhere. A PC, other devices (on or off of your carrier plan), laptop, or anywhere you can log into Google. Add, subtract, modify with one login.
Apps are saved in your account on the Play Store. Anytime you open the PS touch the menu shortcut to the left of the screen and choose to view your "My Apps" page and there you will find two tabs, Installed and All. The All tab has every app you've ever downloaded for any device you've ever owned. This is misleading however, because not all apps are compatible with all devices. So just because it shows up there doesn't mean it will work on your new device. That's a rabbit hole for a whole different time and issue. Anyway, Google is smart somehow it knows when you have a new device and if you just login on the new device it will often ask if you want to restore apps from your previous device just by opening the PS. If it doesn't you can go to your "My Apps" area and look through your All list and pick what you want from there. Google is usually pretty on with what will work and what it thinks will not on that list and may disable the installation of some apps or otherwise show you that the app shouldn't be installed.
That concludes the major things people want to transfer, the why and how of it all and at zero cost. However there may be other things you want. That letter from your SO that you downloaded from an email or the PDF that you saved that tells you how to work the mixer you got 3 yrs ago and lost the manual to, and let's not forget your sound collection. You can do this the old fashioned and simple way by downloading them to a PC or laptop via a tether, and placing them on your new device the same way, or you can use a cloud service. Google makes Drive. With Drive you can place items in the cloud and retrieve them at anytime, you can play music from drive, view photos, watch videos, read PDF files. You can simply install Drive and view and move any files you want to and from it, and just like with the other Google products it is free and accessible from anywhere you can login to Google. Drive is also a great sharing platform. Put a file on Drive and select to share a link to the file, or do a whole folder, or do any combination of files and folders. I won't go into all that you can do with Drive but needn't to say it is a useful tool.
Yet another thing people often want is their texts. Personally I think too many texts are saved when they are not needed, but to each their own. There are several apps on the PS that will backup and restore texts, but if you have a major carrier like Big Red. Often when going through the setup they will ask or offer to restore texts. I know that the last time I reset my device Verizon restored 90 days worth of texts and MMS. Which I then had to sift through and delete. Anyway, there are lots of apps exclusively for texts on the PS, many of them are free, and some have free trials, My Backup Pro was one that offered an outstanding free trial.
Once you setup the Google stuff it pretty much goes on autopilot. And of course a Corp. store may do all of this for you for nothing, and some retailers, like Best Buy will also, but that kiosk in the mall they are going to charge you, that mom and pop place that sells mostly prepaid devices, they are going to charge you. So like Jude526 said Corp. is often better.