I have a lot to say on the subject
I used to buy quite a bit from Best Buy when the other options were Circuit City and CompUSA. As the competition went belly up, Best Buy got worse. Everything from their Geek Squad garbage to their secret intranet site were just big turn offs.
I don’t care about supporting local brick and mortar stores. And Best Buy is not a local store anyhow. In 2011 when I purchased my last TV, the list price was $3600. A high end local A/V shop was selling it at list price, but included the 3D starter kit which was a $300 MSRP, Best Buy had it for $2800 no kit, but Tiger had it for $1800, free shipping, no tax. It was a special, plus a discount code. Bought the 3D starter kit on Amazon for half the retail rate. My TV came in a 47” and a 55” version and was slated one model line below Sony’s XBR series. Best Buy wanted $2300, for the 47” version. Amazing how I got the bigger TV for $500 less. Where would you get it from?
Anything that costs more than a few dollars I buy from highly reviewed Amazon Marketplace retailers who are based outside of New York State in order to circumvent paying taxes. I refuse to support this idiotic state whenever possible and contribute to the overinflated and undeserving salaries of the politicians of the second worst state in the Union. And I’m not 12 years old, I have no need for the ‘instant gratification’ of having something right now if it means costing me more. Best Buy offers really nothing that high end, unless you go to a Mag location, and those products are usually upper mid-range at best. I’d rather support some little internet business retailer guy on the opposite side of the country then support any Best Buy store locally.
A few years ago, while inbetween jobs I had the unfortunate experience of working at Best Buy. If you can believe it, it sucks to work there more for then it does to shop there. During orientation we watched videos with sock puppets and a 5 year old girl starting her own lemonade stand that focused on what Best Buy fears the most, ‘showroomers’. They are scared to death of showrooming and 3 of the 5 hour orientation was dedicated to the topic. The gist of it was, if people look at products in the store, then buy online, they lose out on the opportunity to attach Geek Squad services. Best Buy exists as a place to buy overpriced accessories and rip off extended tech support and service plans. The company does not understand that when someone walks in and says ‘I want a 64 gig black iPad’, that is what they want. They do not want to be asked questions on why they want said iPad so the sales goon can turn around and use that information against the customer to talk them buying junk they don’t want, need or can afford.
Best Buy is so out of touch it isn’t even funny. I haven’t bought a single thing there since I stopped working there. The week before I quit, I bought a few items with their paltry employee discount that I ended up returning since I found them cheaper on New Egg or Tiger. If I’m within walking distance of a non-mall (or standalone store or SAS), I will walk in there and then immediately out just to screw with their counters. I would assume this is standard with most retail giants, there are digital counters at the entrances of the stores and at the end of the day their computer system takes the number of times the counter has been tripped and divides it by how many transactions took place between all the POS terminals, and a master ‘sales close rate’ for each day is computed. That is one of the major numbers they focus on. They don’t care so much about mall locations since many people enter the mall via Best Buy. I worked at a mall location, and even as an employee it was highly frowned up to enter the store through the correct door because we would set off the counters. We had to Enter through the Exit sliding doors.
It’s amazing how people are easily duped based upon appearances. The idiots at the front in Geek Squad would tell customers one thing, they’d come in to Computers, I’d try to get a better grasp of the problem and offer a real solution, or real advice, but customers wouldn’t take my word because I was a ‘blue shirt’ not a ‘geek’.
The online price matching is a joke. The list of online retailers is specific and does not include associated marketplace retailers. Not once, not twice, but three times during my employment there I saw higher level managers make exceptions for their friends. And it was price matching any ole website. But countless others were turned down. The problem also comes into play with retailer specific models. I believe there was an Asus router that Best Buy sold exclusively where the model number was one digit off from everywhere else even though the router was the same. Best Buys online price matching is more of a gimmick by a dying company than anything else.
I could go on and on. When the day comes and Best Buy joins their late competitors in retail hell I will have a smile on my face. As a customer and as an employee I cannot say enough bad things about that entire outfit.
