Thread: The death of retail (bestbuy)

I have a cousin in SLC who works for them, poor guy. He sells computers and posted a pic to his FB yesterday of all the monitors displaying the Blue Screen of Death. He's said before that the people who come there for a computer are very much like the video that came out a couple of years ago when the iPhone 4 came out, talking about how they needed the bigger geebees. "I don't care, I want the bigger geebees."
Someone help me out and post that video, as I can't search for it from work.

Oh yes, and he's also always broke as sh!t. They don't take care of their employees any better than they do their customers. There will always be sheeple though, BB is reserved for those who can't work a smartphone or an app that will help them shop more wisely. They must hate having money, IMO.

www.consumerist.com is always posting BB horror stories, the comments are always full of people lambasting people who continue to shop there.

I still like to see the product in my hands before buying them... but is all true! BB will be a small store in few years...

used to work for them for about 2 years on the sales floor, unfortunately I can't really argue with you guys, you are 120 percent correct, all we do is shove the Geek Squad black tie protection down your throats, and funny thing is we are trained that way. We don't have ELearnings really anymore to learn about products, typically you know what you know when you come in to fill out an app, there really isnt any other development after you are hired. Management is shitty, at least in my store. Only thing I got was a ridiculous discount and accommodations which now as a normal customer, I dont even buy from BB, because I'm disgusted to see the actual price we sell things for lol.

You guys may have missed this from the UK

Internet Retailing » Best Buy UK stores to close by end of 2011

Stores are now closed

I used to use it as an Amazon showroom, many years ago. Now, it's not even worth that.

You go to BB and see TVs that are configured completely wrong. The mid-line Panasonic is setup for optimum picture quality, but the high end Samsung is set for dynamic contrast to appeal to the gamerz crowd, but it looks terrible on most content. This is not a good indication of quality.

Go on Amazon and read the reviews. They generally reflect the quality better, because many are written by actual video professionals with proper calibration equipment. I realized that's much more valuable than trying to stare at two TVs under terrible fluorescent light and decide which is better, hoping they are both calibrated properly so that they're actually comparable.

Ditto for something like a camera or iPod. At BB I can feel it. Big deal. On Amazon I can hear from people who've owned it for 6 months.

Even if their prices were reasonable, their products are rotting from the inside out as i think the show explained..
Tv sales are low, music and movies are streamed online, smartphones are replacing cameras, tablets are replacing computers..

Best Buy will be closing 50 of its big box stores and laying off some 400 people
Best Buy To Shut 50 Stores In Streamlining Effort | TechCrunch

Ya I read that too. If bestbuy doesn't start matching amazon prices they will be out of business. When cnbc did that documentary the ceo didn't seem that concerned about it but maybe now he's starting to reconsider.

Originally Posted by Stance

They don't give a shit because they don't get paid on commission. They could sell one computer or ten and it wont make a difference on their paychecks.

... and being sold to constantly is any better? They are already hard enough to work with if you don't get the extended warranty - I couldn't imagine how it would be if every other word was a sales' pitch.

I did a consulting job several months back, Best Buy's business center bid it at $18,000 for out dated and incorrect equipment, like 42in 60hz LCD for $649.99 and Duo Core desktops for 549.99. Was able to knock it down to $8,000 with all equipment being either equal or better then Best Buy's offer, they suggested a DVD player for 199.99, when an LG wireless blu-ray was $69.99 on Amazon. If I was a stock investor, I most certainly would not be investing in Bestbuy for growth, maybe a stock option if I knew the market better.