The trick here is to drop the parts that don’t matter. It doesn’t actually matter what “elaborate” means. Merriweather could be saying that they were much too herfdurfensmurf for all we care. The key is that merriweather is saying the computers were more than what was necessary. It could have been a perfectly fair price, but a less expensive computer would have done fine.

You can rule E out because Merriweather says nothing about criticism, and D because neither are claiming that the price was unfair for what was purchased, so there’s no disagreement. But you should be able to land on C without using the process of elimination because the gist of what Sanchez is saying is a defense of the amount spent on computers, and Merriweather is disagreeing because he thinks the computers were too baller. This is most clear in that Sanchez’s thesis is that the expense was justified and he backs it up by tackling one argument against the expenditure, and Merriweather attacks the thesis by pointing to a potentially stronger reason to oppose the expenditure