Best Buy 'Deserves to Die' (Says Slate)

Newser ^ | 09/20/2013 | By Kevin Spak

[Responsibility2nd]

(Newser) – Best Buy is back from the brink. Profits are up, costs are down, and the share price has tripled since December. That's the good news. "The bad news," writes Matthew Yglesias at Slate, "is that the store is awful and deserves to die." Yglesias and a colleague visited stores in different cities (Washington, DC, and NYC, respectively), and concluded that "Best Buy still basically sucks." The selection isn't great, and almost everything costs more than it would on Amazon. But what about customer service? Could having human experts justify the markups?

Nope. If anything, Best Buy's reps seem out to scam customers. Throughout the store "salesman after salesman was trying to upsell people" on service plans and add-ons. One rep assured Yglesias that the "high-end" $59.99 HDMI cable was better than a "cheap" $19.99 one. Given that all HDMI cables are basically the same, "this is malpractice verging on fraud." So Yglesias is skeptical that the turnaround will stick. "Competing with online retail on the basis of hustling your customers isn't much of a value proposition." Read his column in full here.

[dennisw]

These Slate guys need to get a life. If Best Buy can make money who cares? It doesn’t bother me. I am rarely in there. My most recent items have been bought on eBay and online at other places.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

I used to like Circuit City - was willing to pay a little more to get good help and advice from knowledgeable sales staff. BB’s teenage lobotomies are no help - may as well go to WalMart or Target. Now that you can buy anything online it’s not such a big deal - research online, go to BB to measure and make sure everything will fit, then buy online. BB is only good for when you need something right away, like your wireless adapter just died and you don’t want to be off the internet for a few days.

[oh8eleven]

one cable is the same as another it either passes signal or it doesn’t
Not true at all. Ever wonder why a SONY TV (for example) costs way more than a store brand? Quality of components.

There is a difference.

[Neidermeyer]

Ever wonder why a SONY TV (for example) costs way more than a store brand? Quality of components.
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A TV is a collection of hundreds of components , all of which affect the picture/sound/reliability , a transistor for instance can have a 1%, 5% or 10% variance from the stated value, a capacitor can be cheaply made and fail quicker than a better made one, a circuit board can be poorly designed and require jumper cables to connect/fix circuit problems that should have been fixed by adding another layer to the board design or by re-arranging components, a cable is very simple ... I live near to the (now defunct) RECOTON tranship and repackaging warehouse , that company had built for it electronic doo-dads of every description , they were THE supplier to BEST BUY (note relevance) , they OWNED the name “Monster Cable” and at least a dozen other names you would recognize... I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that ALL their HDMI cables were IDENTICAL in quality when talking about actual performance... some sold (retail) for $5 , some sold for $60 ,, the more expensive the cable the better (softer/flexible) the insulation , the more “luxurious” the colors used (soft thick grey insulation instead of hard black thin insulation) , the BOXES had prettier graphics and printing in GOLD letters .. things like that ...

BUT THEY ALL WORKED THE SAME ..

GROW UP AND SMELL THE RETAIL TRICKERY.

I understand TRUE QUALITY, unlike you I’m not fooled by a fancy box or assume a higher price means a better product no matter what you might “learn” from that high school dropout “salesman” and stereo expert.. I actually know and understand what I am buying. I have Sony and Panasonic TV’s , drive a Benz and use the cheapest gasoline I can find because I KNOW that despite whatever name brand is on the pump it is all trucked out of the port of Tampa and pumped FROM THE SAME TANKS after the “special” detergent and additive packages are blended in.

[Neidermeyer]

I dare you , buy a blu-ray player and hook it up to a top rated TV with your $60 cables and with any of these and tell me there’s a visible difference..

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Under $2 each at MONOPRICE for color coded HDMI cables .. http://www.monoprice.com/Category?c_id=102&cp_id=10240

Under $1 for gold plated on eBay

[oh8eleven]

I understand TRUE QUALITY, unlike you
I've been a CQE since 1985. You haven't got a feckin' clue WTF you're babbling about.

[Neidermeyer]

feckin’
*************
If you were a quality control engineer you would KNOW that I am correct and you would not have obvious misspellings in your post.

We’re not discussing real quality differences , we’re discussing “How can we fool the consumer” differences .. This is about Big Box retail and 6000% markups.