Posted on 09/20/2013 8:29:59 AM PDT by 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.
Best Buy seems to have two problems when I ever enter their stores; too much service, or not enough. I should have an “Only Browsing” shirt on when I go into most stores because I am usually smothered by employees telling me how to ask questions. Leave me the hell alone! I’m 45 years old, I am not a corporate shopper, and know how to ask for help when I need it! I’m glad these people have jobs, but do they really need 50 employees with four customers in the store? They could be reading up on the industries they represent during slow times so that they might actually be able to answer the questions I might hit them with. /rant
I like H H Gregg. You can find salesman and can info. Also they don’t pressure you to buy unneeded stuff. They will mention the extended warranty, but if you so no, they let it go.
At Best buy, you got to say no at least 3 times, and finding a saleman, much less someone who knows anything is damn near impossible. Returns at Best Buy are a joke. I swear, it must be their official policy to screw their customers.
I won’t bother telling my long story of my first attempt to buy a computer from them, but it poisoned me forever on them.
What delivery charges? I got my 55 inch TV this year at Amazon. Not only was it delivered but they set it up and took away the box and dunnage.
“That’s why I love the Apple Store, take my Mac in, they repair it there, and I get it back in a matter of days.”
I was shocked - I mean, shocked - at how reasonable and competent the service department was there. It was $39.00 labor to replace the drive in a Mac. I wouldn’t do it for three times that much.
+1 on HH Gregg. I like them.
If you pay $19.99 you're still paying over twice the cost you can get on the internet/......
Leaving aside for the moment how good Best Buy is or isn’t - they have a cost structure that is unsustainable because of their tendency to have gigantic stores with huge amounts of floor space which cost money to lease and then the need for huge numbers of sales people to staff those stores. This cost structure is a millstone around their neck when they try to compete against the likes of Amazon. I agree that certain shoppers want that “high touch” experience but they will never succeed unless their stores become *much* smaller - which is not really in their DNA.
Maybe they could rent out half of each store for Obamacare “navigators” ?
Stranger things have happened lol.
I bought a wireless keyboard (typing on it now) a wireless mouse, a flash drive, and a medium bag of peanut M&Ms at Best Buy the other day, and the guy didn’t try to upsell me on anything. He didn’t even try to sell me an extended warranty on the M&Ms.
An HH Gregg popped up next door to Best Buy in Rockford. They carry some interesting high end appliances, but I found their IT section to have poor selection. This is a nice, straight up competition in the proper sense. I have not had the same problems with BB clerks as you, but I usually shoo them away. Best Buy at least honors rebates, something CompUSA rarely did.
If that is how you feel, I understand that. There are companies like Chevy that I want to see fail completely and utterly, but...the government has decided, instead of killing them as liberals want to do to companies they don’t like, they give MY money to for companies they DO like.
I say, let the market decide.
Trying to up-sell a customer is not new and certainly not a scam.
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It is when it is being sold on a lie ... the example given is a HDMI cable ... they pass a digital signal ,, one cable is the same as another it either passes signal or it doesn’t , the salesman is lying when they claim that the one that costs 3x more will improve the picture or sound.
At Best buy, you got to say no at least 3 times, and finding a saleman, much less someone who knows anything is damn near impossible.
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Their turnover is horrendous ,, need a job? go to a Best Buy ... just be prepared to be fired if you don’t sell enough extended warranties or overpriced cables no matter what your knowledge level is .. you’d do better there if you were a smiling imbecile who BELIEVED the lies you MUST TELL to keep your job.
If you spend more than 25 bucks at Amazon usually you get free shipping.
Further even with sales tax added in Amazon is cheaper 99 times out of 100. Plus if you use BING as a search engine you can get 5 Buck Amazon gift certificates just for doing searches.
If you pay $19.99 you’re still paying over twice the cost you can get on the internet/......
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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
I shop there. The two in the north end of Seattle have good sales folks. Good advice on printers. A year ago sold me one that was 50 bucks less than what I planned to buy because it suited me better. Told me a while ago I did not need a spendy usb headset, just needed a cheap converter for headsets I own.
I liked CompUSA. The carried the higher end laptops that I use for my work. Now I have to buy those online as BB does not have them.
I have some Apple items for entertainment, iPad, iPad mini and Airport extreme. Once I broke my iPad which had insurance through the Apple store. Broken screen and I had to pay 120 even with insurance. The mini I got at BB. The insurance there covers broken screens completely
I am sure that the stores vary by region, but the ones by me are good. I remember before having them and Computer USA I had to buy computers either online or Ballard Computer store. Had to check computer stores every time I was in another city to see what they were carrying. It was like an Easter Egg hunt for years.
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