Slashdot Mirror
Best Buy: 20% Of Customers Are Wrong
Mr Show writes "Ars Technica has an article up discussing Best Buy's strategies to drive off the deal hunters. It's a good follow up to the Slashdot story from back in July, and offers some details on what they're actually trying to do."
Best Buy recently changed the terms of their "Reward Zone" package to make it harder to earn certificates, and one specific tactic they are using is deducting the value of rebates from what they count towards earning a certificate. So, picking up a "Free after rebate" deal is now worthless according to their program.
I would've expected it to be much higher. "What do you mean I can't play Playstation games on my Xbox?"
I'd guess that I look like a Barry to them, but next time I walk into best buy, I'm wearing a name tag "Buzz", just so they don't get it wrong. When I was working in the service industry, I used to tell my trainees "The Customer isn't always right, but it's not my job to tell them that."
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I love these huge companies that cant take it when the average joe bites back a little. We all hate mosquitos but we have to deal with them. If they are gonna keep this "hate" up then they will lose my money plain and simple, maybe we would be nicer if they weren't trying to shove a warranty down our throats on every little item we buy.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
What they are basically saying is that 20% of customers are wrong "for Best Buy." In essence, they are trying to rid themselves of intelligent shoppers who look around for the best deal and are usually more knowledgeable about what they buy and instead cater to the sheep and the unwashed masses that will buy anything regardless of features and price simply because a Best Buy salesman tells them too.
This is yet another attempt to dumb down consumers to make the more receptive to truly weak sales pitches. Best Buy won't be getting any more of my business if they value this philosophy.
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
The devils are its worst customers. They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts.
Kudos to the people who figured this out, but clearly it is costing Best Buy money. These are customers that should be weeded out. It's Best Buy's fault for allowing this scenario to happen.
Once someone discovers something that is "too good to be true" like the returning scenario, many people start doing it, and the company catches on. Since they're losing money, they stop it.
The other things in TFA, like profiling customers and selling them what their profile dictates is just common sales practice. Sure they might be forcing people to get things they might not want/need, but then again, when was the last time a sales person tried to sell you something you don't need (car options, clothes, dinner specials, etc). It's the nature of capitalism to increase the profits.
(i just made this at Ars.. but thought it would bring more light into the discussion here) i worked for best buy for just about a year and quit around the time they were doing this training. instead of just one generalized customer, they've created 5 categories that would best fit their target groups. not all stores have all these categories. some stores may be a Jill or Barry, while others may be more of a Buzz. let me explain. Barry - usual income is over $100,000 - wants a "my guy" type of environment (similar to having a specific mechanic you go to, they want to be the epicenter where "Barry"s go for high end products, installation, information, etc). - time = money, so having a specialized, well trained place (a Barry specific store) to go to grab everything from install to products will be worth the money. they could care less about spending time to bargain shop. - will pay extra to have product delivered, installed, set-up in house Jill - "soccer mom" - will want a "shopping friend" that will help her pick out all the products with her (a specific Best Buy employee will literally guide her through the store and shop with her) - a prime target for in-home installations Buzz - early adoptor - wants the latest and greatest and usually doesn't stop to think about the price - 18-30 age group, college students, disposable income Ray - wife, and 2 1/2 kids - must consult with wife before buying - tendency to look for bargains Best Buy for Business - small business owner - will have a specific employee assigned to him/her as a conduit for business transactions - target for Best Buy's Geek Squad (tech department; aside from regular computer problems general customers have, Geek Squad for business users will be more of an "on-call" IT department. small businesses don't need a full-time techie on their pay-roll. so Geek Squad can come in for a "small" fee per hour, or last i heard, Businesses can pre-pay for an alotted amount of time per month) working for Best Buy gives one a different perspective. as the management says, they must continue growing to avoid Circuit City scenarios, or Walmart/K-Mart power shifts. the main competition they see is Walmart, Dell, Amazon, Ebay, and a fifth that slips my mind. so in order to grow, they're trying ot learn more about their customers. they're catering to specific customer needs of the area. so your local store can be labeled one of the 5 possible categories or a mix of them. employees are trained to identify who best fits what mold so they can pass them off to someone who can better help with your needs. the cynic in me also thinks the best employee to grab every possible penny from the customer, but that's just, argueably, business. just to give everyone the heads up though about a simple fact. from last i heard from management, if you look at the top ten list of what makes Best Buy profit, #1 is home theatre (big screen TVs, etc). want to know #2-10 ? it's their PRP/PSP (product replacement plan and product service plans). that's the main reason they push customers so hard about them. also, people sometimes wonder how they measure performance. employees aren't measured by individual performence (and that means non-commision). the deparments must reach given daily monetary amounts and percentages for specific things and that's how management keeps track. they make sure each employee says they are no on comission. what they don't say though is, the sales managers that are hounding each employee about the performance of numbers is given a "bonus" for the sales/rank/etc every month. so in essence, *they* are getting the comission. that's enough rambling from an ex-employee. hope it gives people a clearer picture. and for those wondering, i was in the computer sales / tech departments.
hackers of the world unite!
"They can wreak enormous economic havoc," says Mr. Anderson.
I think this explains alot...
Looking at sites like CheapAssGamer.com you will see how people turn 10$ into over 200$ buying and selling using price diffrences from stores like Walmart, the notorious GameRush, GameStop, even Electroics Boutique.
One of the quotes I remember the most is "Any experienced CAG can turn credit into cash." Half of all the deals are ABOUT turning credit into MORE credit, while the rest serve the less hardcore and simpily offer cheap games.
Cutting out the hardcore abusers would save these companies tons of money in all kinds of fees, and I am sure they do not represent anywhere near 40%, but likely make up a large portion of those losses.
Best Buy's rebate scams are among the worst in the industry. I've been told that something would be free after rebate, only to find out the rebate expired a week before I purchased the item.
Sounds like a pretty bad marketing strategy to me. Any sentence with "customer" and "bad" within 10 words of each other will carry a very negative connotation. Best Buy needs to learn from these guys and realize that, although the customer isn't always right, you want people to think you uphold that belief.
There's tons of competition out there, and much of what's sold at Best Buy, especially electronics, is second-rate. Shop around, search the web, read what other people say about a product, and don't shop on impulse. Avoid regrettable purchases, save money without Best Buy's dubious rebates, and be happier with less under-used junk cluttering closets.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
I wonder to myself ... what customer gave feedback that they wanted to the program to be more difficult to earn rewards?
I'm sure everybody who reads Slashdot has been in the position of being asked by their non-geek friends and family about potential purchases... so the customers that Best Buy sees as losers may have a bunch of profitable customers behind them that they could very easily send to Circuit City instead. I wonder if Best Buy's models take that into account.
Well, since I can't edit posts on /., I meant to put that as "upstanding policy," but given the topic of the article, I really can't argue with what it turned out as.
As anyone who has worked retail can tell you, far more than 20% of customers are wrong.
AND NO THE ITEM ISN'T FREE JUST BECAUSE IT DIDN'T SCAN. YOU ARE NOT WITTY OR CLEVER.
...do we still hate Circuit City over the DIVX debacle, or can we forgive them now?
Just pay in cash. Then they can't track you and put your info into demographic databases. Those rebates are another matter, but for purchases, cash 'll do it.
Oh, and when you carry that cash, be extra cool and put the money in an aluminum briefcase that's handcuffed to your wrist.
[better formated for easier reading] (i just made this at Ars.. but thought it would bring more light into the discussion here)
i worked for best buy for just about a year and quit around the time they were doing this training. instead of just one generalized customer, they've created 5 categories that would best fit their target groups. not all stores have all these categories. some stores may be a Jill or Barry, while others may be more of a Buzz. let me explain.
Barry - usual income is over $100,000 - wants a "my guy" type of environment (similar to having a specific mechanic you go to, they want to be the epicenter where "Barry"s go for high end products, installation, information, etc). - time = money, so having a specialized, well trained place (a Barry specific store) to go to grab everything from install to products will be worth the money. they could care less about spending time to bargain shop. - will pay extra to have product delivered, installed, set-up in house
Jill - "soccer mom" - will want a "shopping friend" that will help her pick out all the products with her (a specific Best Buy employee will literally guide her through the store and shop with her) - a prime target for in-home installations
Buzz - early adoptor - wants the latest and greatest and usually doesn't stop to think about the price - 18-30 age group, college students, disposable income
Ray - wife, and 2 1/2 kids - must consult with wife before buying - tendency to look for bargains
Best Buy for Business - small business owner - will have a specific employee assigned to him/her as a conduit for business transactions - target for Best Buy's Geek Squad (tech department; aside from regular computer problems general customers have, Geek Squad for business users will be more of an "on-call" IT department. small businesses don't need a full-time techie on their pay-roll. so Geek Squad can come in for a "small" fee per hour, or last i heard, Businesses can pre-pay for an alotted amount of time per month)
working for Best Buy gives one a different perspective. as the management says, they must continue growing to avoid Circuit City scenarios, or Walmart/K-Mart power shifts. the main competition they see is Walmart, Dell, Amazon, Ebay, and a fifth that slips my mind. so in order to grow, they're trying ot learn more about their customers. they're catering to specific customer needs of the area. so your local store can be labeled one of the 5 possible categories or a mix of them. employees are trained to identify who best fits what mold so they can pass them off to someone who can better help with your needs. the cynic in me also thinks the best employee to grab every possible penny from the customer, but that's just, argueably, business.
just to give everyone the heads up though about a simple fact. from last i heard from management, if you look at the top ten list of what makes Best Buy profit, #1 is home theatre (big screen TVs, etc). want to know #2-10 ? it's their PRP/PSP (product replacement plan and product service plans). that's the main reason they push customers so hard about them.
also, people sometimes wonder how they measure performance. employees aren't measured by individual performence (and that means non-commision). the deparments must reach given daily monetary amounts and percentages for specific things and that's how management keeps track. they make sure each employee says they are no on comission. what they don't say though is, the sales managers that are hounding each employee about the performance of numbers is given a "bonus" for the sales/rank/etc every month. so in essence, *they* are getting the comission.
that's enough rambling from an ex-employee. hope it gives people a clearer picture. and for those wondering, i was in the computer sales / tech departments.
hackers of the world unite!
Read all about it!
Businesses are in it for a profit, eg: themselves. The customers *are* very important but are not the driving force behind why a business exists.
Just as customers do things to sweeten deals for themselves businesses will push back to limit customer bargains and increase profit.
Isn't this just common sense?
That article was pretty good, but you might want to think about getting our extended warranty plan for it. Everybody who reads that article gets it.
Well, there was one guy here who didn't get it, I heard something happened with his ears after he read the article and he was left helpless and with some HUGE bills. The bills were bigger than just getting the warranty and even more than a new article would have cost.
We were trained to recognize the people who would refuse extended warranties. They're like Barry's, but we call them Dingle Barry's since they're really like unwanted poop that clings to us. If you tell me one more time you're refusing the warranty, I'm going to get on my radio and "start combing out the 'barry's" so to speak.
Since the last time i checked the Journal required a subscription to read any it...
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Minding the Store
Analyzing Customers, Best Buy
Decides Not All Are Welcome
Retailer Aims to Outsmart
Dogged Bargain-Hunters,
And Coddle Big Spenders
Looking for 'Barrys' and 'Jills'
By GARY MCWILLIAMS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
November 8, 2004; Page A1
Brad Anderson, chief executive officer of Best Buy Co., is embracing a heretical notion for a retailer. He wants to separate the "angels" among his 1.5 million daily customers from the "devils."
Best Buy's angels are customers who boost profits at the consumer-electronics giant by snapping up high-definition televisions, portable electronics, and newly released DVDs without waiting for markdowns or rebates.
The devils are its worst customers. They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts. They load up on "loss leaders," severely discounted merchandise designed to boost store traffic, then flip the goods at a profit on eBay. They slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge. "They can wreak enormous economic havoc," says Mr. Anderson.
Best Buy estimates that as many as 100 million of its 500 million customer visits each year are undesirable. And the 54-year-old chief executive wants to be rid of these customers.
[Bradbury Anderson]
Mr. Anderson's new approach upends what has long been standard practice for mass merchants. Most chains use their marketing budgets chiefly to maximize customer traffic, in the belief that more visitors will lift revenue and profit. Shunning customers -- unprofitable or not -- is rare and risky.
Mr. Anderson says the new tack is based on a business-school theory that advocates rating customers according to profitability, then dumping the up to 20% that are unprofitable. The financial-services industry has used a variation of that approach for years, lavishing attention on its best customers and penalizing its unprofitable customers with fees for using ATMs or tellers or for obtaining bank records.
Best Buy seems an unlikely candidate for a radical makeover. With $24.5 billion in sales last year, the Richfield, Minn., company is the nation's top seller of consumer electronics. Its big, airy stores and wide inventory have helped it increase market share, even as rivals such as Circuit City Stores Inc. and Sears, Roebuck & Co., have struggled. In the 2004 fiscal year that ended in February, Best Buy reported net income of $570 million, up from $99 million during the year-earlier period marred by an unsuccessful acquisition, but still below the $705 million it earned in fiscal 2002.
But Mr. Anderson spies a hurricane on the horizon. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, and Dell Inc., the largest personal-computer maker, have moved rapidly into high-definition televisions and portable electronics, two of Best Buy's most profitable areas. Today, they rank respectively as the nation's second- and fourth-largest consumer-electronics sellers.
[Best Buy]
Mr. Anderson worries that his two rivals "are larger than us, have a lower [overhead], and are more profitable." In five years, he fears, Best Buy could wind up like Toys 'R' Us Inc., trapped in what consultants call the "unprofitable middle," unable to match Wal-Mart's sheer buying power, while low-cost online sellers like Dell pick off its most affluent customers. Toys 'R' Us recently announced it was considering exiting the toy business.
This year, Best Buy has rolled out its new angel-devil strategy in about 100 of its 670 stores. It is examining sales records and demographic data and sleuthing through computer databases to identify good and bad customers. To lure the high-spenders, it is stocking more merchandise and providing
I love best buy...but i really hate it just as much...the only thing i really like is their large selection of often overpriced dvd's
Any retailer with a brain, so to speak, has people working in loss prevention. And of course, they want to eliminate fraud. The first level of defence is, of course, with employees. Then, its with customer policy, and finally, with best buy, its with the actuall customer base.
This is probably a very intelligent scheme, and certainly the first of many from America's electonic retailers.
Best Buy doesn't want you shopping there, unless you buy compulsively and get the extended warranty just beause the salesman suggests you do so.
The thing that worries me the most about this policy is the concept of quickly "pigeonholing" customers and treating them a certain way depending on how you have categorized them.
As a young adult, I run into plenty of prejudice among employees and managers (though most of it is annoying rather than seriously detrimental). Would they look at me, and decide, "Here is a young person. He doesn't have a lot of money, so we're not going to waste time helping him find what he wants, since he probably couldn't afford it anyway."
What if they do the same thing based on ethnicity? or noticable disability? or a myriad of other potential factors that go into stereotyping?
All I can do is hope that the free market will sort things out, and prove to Best Buy that this policy is hurtful to customers.
Love the Third Amendment?
They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts.
I wouldn't even stretch to call people who would do this shoppers. Thats not looking for the best deal, thats borderline robbery. If you engage in that sort of activity, I'm sure you promising to never shop there again is exactly what they want. Win/win.
why not just adopt a Wal-Mart (shudder) strategy of flat pricing -- with reasonable prices? The sheer simplicity would drive business their way.
(Please note that this is IN NO WAY an endorsement of Wal-Mart; their evil is not the subject here)
Come on now. Many of us are IT people. Would we say that 20% of our users idiots? No, the number is probably much higher. We'd gladly get rid of them and take care of only reasonable people.
This is probably an 80 - 20 thing: 20% of the customers are causing 80% of the restocking and return headaches. These guys aren't shopping for toys, they're shopping to make a few bucks at our expense. If this kind of policy sends them to Radio Shack where they belong, them more power to Best Buy.
They said they are putting their employees through hours of training on how to interview us customers.
Shouldn't they be training them on the stuff they sell?
Everytime I go in there to buy a camera, I'm usually faced with a deer-in-headlights sales man who only know how to say, "I'm sure it's in the manual." And I end up helping the poor helpless chap next to me who thinks a 9 mega pixel still camera will produce wide screen movies!!
Get real Best Buy!
All I know is when I go into a best buy a least 4 different bicycle horns (the old school ones with the bulb) go off. I can't tell if that's good or bad...
Another trick Best Buy has is the extended warranty. It sounds like a great idea, and it is. Extended two year warranty, no questions asked, for a few extra dollars. However, you need the warranty receipt. Most people lose it after a few months, usually sooner, or totally forget about it. Two years is a long time. Only a small percentage of those who get the warranty actually cash it in so to speak. That's where a lot of their profits are coming from.
Man, when I worked in customer service it seemed much higher....
Best Buy still sucks though. It's important to be able to say "the customer is always right" and look like you believe it, admiting you are trying to "fire" customers is bad form.
(Note to the humor impared: don't mod me down!)
Laugh at stupidity: mod idiots +1 Funny.
Yeah, I think I'll get that 4 year warranty on my Halo 2 just incase... Best Buy is way too overpriced and they force their employees to harass customers with warranty schemes. Better off going to CompUSA, saving a few bucks and waiting 3 months for that mail-in rebate.
Ok so they hate me. Big fucking deal what are they going to do - refuse to sell me something? Act rude? Be hard to track down a sales rep? Not take my money? Do I care how they feel about me, the person?
Staples sends out online high-discount online coupons that they wouldn't know about unless they visit the bargain sites and have the sole purpose of blacklisting people. I think what it comes down to is if you know enough about a product, car, computer, whatever, you will be o.k. Shopping for a computer alone when you don't know anything about it is a bad idea like a teenage 16 year old going to the dealer to get something repaired.
Michael Dell started out assembling and selling PC clones in his college dorm room. It shows in the way his business is run: he knows that what people want is a great price on a great product. Dell's job is to be more efficient than the competition, not try to squeeze every penny out of the customer.
Dell's beginnings have led it to embrace change, I think, and that includes a huge shift from the old call-center-centric order process to being Internet-based. Best Buy hasn't gotten away from the brick-and-mortar paradigm, and so they're caught between Wal-Mart and Dell.
Despite all of that, I'm not a big Dell fan ("This is Srijivhara. May I be taking your name now?"). But if Best Buy doesn't refocus on pleasing the customer, Dell will eat their lunch, and then go looking for Wal-Mart's, too.
sigs, as if you care.
While I think the issue of Buying Items signing up for rebates then returning the product then receive the rebate money is wrong because that is steeling from the company. But for buying products at the deal and using the will not be undersold policy. If people can buy a product at a better price they will. It is the nature of capitalist economy. The fix is simple don't agree to sell your products under or at cost. The lower price you make the product more people will buy it. It doesn't matter how much you payed for it. Saying your customers are wrong because they are buying your products under cost is just stupid it is your fault, If people buy your product on sale then sell it on ebay for more then that is not the fault of the customer it is the nature of supply and demand. When you are selling the product below what the population is willing to pay for it (Leaving Money on the table) people will purchase and then resell it at a higher price. When the company I work for has an overstock of supplies that we cannot sell to our customer base. We often put it on ebay below cost so we can recoup some of our losses, we know that most of the time our competitors buy the product and sell it at full price. We don't blame the person for buying the product and selling it for more. It just happens we know we will get a loss and most of the time the customer will never come back. But it was part of the calculated loss. If Best Buy is trying to get customers by using lower prices but 20% of the customers are taking more of an advantage and not returning until they get the deals again. Perhaps you should reexamine your value add.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I worked for Best Buy for two years. One of those years, Xbox and GameCube came out.
Unless customers were willing to buy the replacement plan and a bunch of accessories, I was to pretend that the store was out of stock of the game systems.
This during the Christmas season. A stockroom filled to the brim with game systems and we weren't to sell unless our customers could afford a significant amount of stuff to go with them.
The sad thing was, there were times when all we were stocking was the consoles themselves -- the extra controllers, cables and other stuff was backordered.
This during the Christmas season.
Best Buy is a contemptible company, where customer service is concerned. I was forced to pretend we were out of stock on many things over the course of employment, when customers didn't want to buy the extras, but the most deplorable example of this has to be the console story.
The Ohio AG shouldn't be the only one investigating this company. Scores of employees, former and present, can attest to the near criminal rate of deception with regard to policies and service plans.
The next time I go into Best Buys (or Future Shop in Canada; they are the same company) I am going to try an act like a Barry or a Buzz and see what kind of interest I get.
/. has got to be a bad deal for them.
It seems that the publishing of this info is going to hurt Best Buy the most. If they were to target their *devil* customers and kept it on the lo-down, maybe nobody would have noticed. Having it on
Thanks for the idea about getting a rebate (although I still hate them) and then returning the product. That's a great plan. I'll be sure to try it out this weekend.
Good customers want good service and good merchandise, and good value for their money. They'll leave in a heartbeat, if they think they aren't getting all three.
Bad customers want all of the above, but they are incredibly price sensative, and they'll compromise service, quality, and perhaps value to get the lowest price. The one way to get rid of bad customers is to raise your prices. That won't drive off the good customers if you keep the value for money up where it belongs.
Why doesn't Best Buy try that? Probably because most of their customers are the bad kind.
See what I've been reading.
The only way Best Buy could ever make up for what they have done to me is a human sacrifice, and I don't mean one of the lowly door bouncers, I want someone big, like the entertainment center guy.
I went there when windows 2000 was new. There was software I wanted to buy, but on the back it said "windows 98". Since windows 2000 was new, I asked a guy if it would work. "sure, windows 2000 and 98 are compatible, it will work" said the sales associate. Well, I didn't think it would because I knew 2000 was based on NT and not 98, but I made the purchase based on what the sales associate said. When I tried to install the software, it did not work. I went to return it, and Best Buy would not take it back, and went as far as making innuendos that I was some software pirate. Well, Fuck you Bad Buy.
Then there is my update. I tell everyone about how Barf Buy sucks, but sometimes people have to figure it out. A friend went to buy a camcorder, and was looking for one that could transfer movies to his computer, which only had USB. He told this to the sales associate, who sold him a camcorder with firewire. When my friend went to return it, they charged him a 15% restocking fee.
Bitch Buy is horrible. They just want your money. They don't want to provide you with a product. They are modern day crooks.
And oh, from the article:
Store clerks receive hours of training in identifying desirable customers
I guess that means if you are black, stay out of best buy.
And before anyone yells troll, they screwed me out of my money. They are the ones who started the whole mail in rebates, which sometimes don't pay out, and they treat people like crap.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
That's odd. When I googled for dongs, I got this.
As long as any retailer makes buying appliances and electronics a negotiation, this is what they get. As long as they use service plans as a negotiation tool, this is what they get. As long as rebates exist as a tool for bringing in the masses, then this is what they get. As long as these stores advertise loss leaders in the Sunday paper, then this is what they get. Best Buy and stores like Best Buy have become the car dealers of the electronics world. They're own practices have brought this upon them, I have no sympathy.
80% of Best Buy employees are "wrong".
When looking for video cards, I went to a Best Buy and looked at prices simply because it was close to some good computer stores. There was a 9600XT there for the same price as a 9800Pro. When I asked why it cost so much, the salesperson said that it was because the card was "specifically tuned for Half-Life 2"
Hmmmm.
So basically, they want people who :
:
- Don't buy their "loss leaders", but stock up on their overpriced stuff.
- People who don't check other companies price, but get attracted by the "Best price policy"
- People who don't return their mail-in rebates.
Why don't you just ask me to give you my money?
On the Canadian side, FutureShop is exactly like that : Best price policy, overpriced stuff... and they "labeled" me a devil, for sure (a seller once "recognized" me : "Yes, I remember you...", first time I meet the guy). When price matching Camera-Canada for a new Canon G5, a seller even told me
-"I can't match that price, maybe remove 50$ off the total but that's it".
-"But your policy is to match the price, and remove 50% of the difference"
-"Yeah but I'll lose money that way!"
-"Well its not MY policy, isn't it?"
They promise you customer heaven, but slowly draggin you in hell. They're the devils, not us, the intelligent customers.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I fit the profile of a "bad" customer: I watch the rebates and advertised prices and make sure I'm not paying more than I have to. They probably want to be rid of me. But, when it comes to computer parts and systems, a lot of my friends who fit the "good" BB profile come to me for a recommendation. If BestBuy's been pushing me out, you can bet I'm not going to recommend going to them. End result: annoying me, the "bad" customer, causes "good" customers to end up somewhere else.
http://www.bestbuysux.org/ If best buy just lowered the prices they wouldn't have this problem. Best Buy forced me to quit, so I'm not a huge fan of them. They didn't like how I thought MSN was lame.
I probably dont look like any of the above. Especially given the sloppy look, long hair, etc. ;p ;)
:) At least until i asked for the $2400.00 printer once, that seemd to wake em from the next town....
Hippy Geek is probably not a covered catagory
Not gonna buy overpriced junk.
I dont have a family.
What i DO have is $1000.00 a month in disposable income
Someone else will help me spend it i am sure.
On the other hand, now that i think about it, I usually dont have little helpers following me around drooling
I just went shopping for a computer at BestBuy with my dad last night. He selected one (going against my advice that he avoid intel and buy amd), and sent the clerk to get the box. The clerk returns with the shopping cart, containing the computer, a UPS, and a copy of Norton Antivirus. Here is the actual conversation that followed:
Clerk: I just added these for you.
Dad: Why?
Clerk: This is a UPS. It will protect you against power surges and lightning. And this will protect you against all those viruses.
Dad: I already have a surge protector.
Clerk: Surge protectors are useless against power surges.
[A moment of silence, no doubt induced by the store's mind-numbing window dressing]
Me: Just the computer will be fine.
Clerk: Okay, but if lightning hits it tonight and you bring it back to us tomorrow, we won't take it.
Dad: That's fine. I'll buy another one.
We proceed to checkout, where we are told that not purchasing a service plan puts our souls in danger of perdition, etc. My father has agreed to let me build his next computer.
A beowulf cluster of free ipods!!!
Since walking into our new Fry's, I'm finding Best Buy less appealing. And Fry's seems very geek-friendly!
Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this, but its hard to say that this is good or bad definatively.
You could say that these super-smart shoppers are the modern day robin-hood's if you look at it one way. They are taking advantage of deceptive and sneaky marketing gimics so that the issuing companies bite the bullet of their tactics that prey on the weak minded. It is easy to deify these intelligent buyers by saying they are out-sheistering the sheisters.
On the other hand, you could say they are doing damage to the community as a whole. Lost income from these negative profit sales does not often fall on the share-holder, at least not in the long run. The average customer ultimately makes up the lost profits by paying a higher margin, compensating for their intellectual brethren. You can say this is a modern economic darwinism, but i would say that is kind of cold.
Of course the true testament would be to start a electronics store with absolutely no deceptive techniques and let the market decide a fair price for everything. Of course don't be dissapointed if you find that massive profits really do depend on taking the money of fools, and attacking those intelligent enough to protest.
People here still shop at Best Buy? Thier selection sucks, you have to pay sales tax, and there is like a 15% price hike on most stuff. You can find better deals online and find exactly what you want.
But I've never had a bad experience with Best Buy. Maybe it's because I'm a clean-cut older white male, but I've never had to pay any 15% restocking fee. In fact, the people at the returns desk are usually the nicest people in the store! I've always been treated decently when making returns.
And there was one time I called for a price on an Archos MP3 player, back when 20 gigs was new and exciting. I was quoted the wrong price on the phone. MUCH too cheap. I asked to confirm it and was told the same price. I got that person's name.
I went to the store to discover the price I was told was incorrect, of course. I went to the manager and told him about the phone conversation I had, told him her name, and how I drove all the way there because of the price, and he gave it to me for the quoted price!
And here's the funny part. Despite getting a great deal, I ended up returning it because the Archos (at the time) could not shuffle across folders. Which I think is a pretty big omission.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
If you've got one that is. Their weekly sales are bountiful and they've got a good selection. They do price matching even 30 days after purchase (to head off returns) and their rebates usually get dispatched fairly quickly. Just don't return anything (long, long process) or expect their actual electronic components aisles to be stocked.
Man, Dell makes a living off being that girl that drops by 5 minutes after your girlfriend dumps you. And you wake up the next morning with a headache, an empty wallet, and a big smile.
Seems more and more its not about the customer: " lets deny them legit 'savings' before and after the sale, and even refuse to allow them to return defective products if they do manage to buy something from us.." " and if they stop buing from us, then we will just sue them and get their money that way"
Anyone else think that commercialism has gotten a bit out of hand... and are going to use their pocket book to protest with?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Site's fine troll.
Lets ditch the slashdot user account who's karma drops below 20% because of trolling and disallow anonymous posting.
There's plenty of places to shop, and I know I, personally, go OUT OF MY WAY to shop elsewhere.
I hate Best Buy, for many reasons, and I will bend over backwards to buy stuff elsewhere, online, Circuit City, CompUSA, whatever.
So far I ain't spent a dollar in Best Buy in going on 2 years and I still manage to buy all those gadgets and geegaws that I want without a problem.
So.. who needs you Best Buy? Not me.
And I'm not a "demon customer" I go in KNOWING what I want, I hate mail in rebates and don't use them, I only return something if it just frankly. BREAKS or doesn't work at all. And I have as much disposable income as I need and no impulse item I truly want goes unpurchased.
I've spent well over $5K at circuit city, $3K at Compusa, and god I hate to add it up at Ebay in the last couple years (20K++ but I bought 2 cars and a motorcycle on there so that's not nearly just electronic gizmos).
If I never step foot into Best Buy again it'll be too soon.
I feel the same way about Wal Mart but I find myself spending money there regularly for everyday crap, toys, groceries, etc.
--- www.f-theocean.com
This is the biggest "scam" of all: selling "extended warranties". I nver buy them and use the rationale of self-insurance.
These "extended warranties" are an insurance policy. The buyer is buying insurance, not a warranty.
Question: why buy insurance if you can insure yourself. Think of it this way: most people could afford the loss that the insurance covers, so, if you really want to be anal about it, instead of buying the insurance, put the money into an account. Pretty soon, that account will have sufficient funds in it to cover any losses that you could possibly imagine an extended warranty covering. The difference is that it now YOUR MONEY, not the insurance companies'.
You will be in effect, your own insurance company.
There is a small, but finite chance that over the long term you will be worse off if you self insure, but I think most people would acknowledge that the risk is small in comparison to the gain.
Since, for many sales by Best Buy and others, there is no profit on the sale of the item itself and only the extended warranty provides all of the profit, that's why I will never be the sort of buyer Best Buy are looking for. Of course, I can always let a sales assistant THINK I'm going to buy the warranty, right up to the time comes to actually pay!
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
In fact, I live so close I can feel the ripples of hatred from the office buildings. Oh, that's just the INSANE AMOUNT OF TRAFFIC AT 5 P.M.
Seriously, I can't throw a ball in the air without 37 people from Best Buy telling me that I throw like a girl.
37!
Ever seen the headquarters? It's enormous.
My brother worked for Best Buy and said they were working on whole stores devoted to "Jill" and "Buzz" and whatever. Then I met an ex-marketing exec. at the Apple Store that confirmed that that was happening.
I got nothin'.
Theres no way in hell I'll ever walk around with a suitcase handcuffed to my hand.
Anybody in town could be like Boris the Blade (Boris The BulletDodger), cut my arm off, wrap it in newspaper and leave the scene with the item in his position.
What language is that? Finnish?
By the way, vi ne sukcesas gxin!!!
If you were really their friend you would never recommend buying a computer at best buy in the first place.
...when they stop being true
Electronic equipment usually fails in the first few days of use or else much later when it's lifetime is over. The extended warranty basically covers the period in between when the equiment is not expected to fail, therefore it's a waste of money (besides most people forgetting the receipt, not caring to use it, etc.).
Don't act shocked by Best Buy's policies. They've deliberately made an effort to make their pricing confusing in order to cull an extra few dollars out of the "unwashed masses" that come through their doors. You are exactly right that they (BB) are attempting to rid themselves of the smart consumers. Their policy seems to be more about differential pricing and impulse purchases than about offering a fair deal to everyone. That's just the way they operate, they've picked their target/strategy and they'll try to milk it for everything they can take. Get over it, spread the word, and shop somewhere else! I'm not saying that you (writer) have any problem with it, I've just seen some of the other "OUTRAGED" responses and feel they're misguided.
We all know that rebates will most likely NOT get sent in, extra money for them... Most people will buy the service policy AND throw the unit away when it breaks 6mos. later. Don't fall for these stunts... That's the best way to transmit the message to the Best Buy management. Punish them on the bottom line. That's all they've thought of, so it must be important to them. Show them that you are watching too. Say "NO" to the service plan, no matter how many times they ask, then walk out without purchasing anything when they try again (for the 4th time).
Secondly, there must be a supplier SOMEWHERE that treats the customer like they're smart and offers a fair deal without the tricks. Seems like that merchant should be looked to as the "place where cool & tech. savy people" shop. That would help boost their sales as almost EVERYONE would want to be flattered by being thought of as "hip" and "tech. savy" just for shopping there. You get the idea, it spirals up... Help those places to succeed!
Changing this works a little like the election strategy, when you get another customer to switch, you actually hurt Best Buy TWICE! Once when they lose the customer, and again when they vote with their dollars for the competition, making them relativly weaker in the marketspace.
Anyone reading this, start the change by putting down some places where you've felt like you got an AWESOME deal without any tricks, from a sales guy that you trusted and who didn't try to sell you with a bunch of technobabble (that you know is false). The list of Cool places to shop starts here --> (you reply)
Is not that Best Buy have not good offers anymore (***walmart***cough***kicking butt****cough) is the employment practices and systemic racism, mostly in Canada. Also is good to mention that the ghost of the fraudulent extended warranties is coming back to them with a vengance. What goes around comes around.
More about racism in canada go to canadaimmigrants.com
Customer: Hi, I'd like to buy this TV.
Salesguy: I won't sell it to you.
Customer: What? Why not? Isn't it the TV you advertised in this morning's paper as being on sale?
Salesguy: Yes, you see, that TV there is just a ploy to get you into the store. I'm not allowed to sell it to you, I'm supposed to convince you that this TV is just a "basic" model and this other TV we have here for $300 is much better.
Customer: I guess I'll just need to take my business elsewhere, then,
Salesguy: Good idea!
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
'Problem' customer: "Oh yeah! Well I'm gonna make your life miserable Best Buy! You say you don't want us 'problem' customers, huh? Fine! I'm gonna suck up your abuse and shop here EXCLUSIVELY!!"
Best Buy Guy (Sounding like Mr. Burns): "Excellent"
For four years ending in early 2000, I owned a computer store.
The name of the store was "Computers Cheap!" which was a great draw for audience. We were the only guys in town who'd sell a used computer with warrantee.
But, with a name like "Computers Cheap!" you can be sure that we got plenty of people we called "bug people". Named after the nerdy entymologists on "Silence of the Lambs", they were people who had lots of time, and very little money. They were VERY good at wasting time and demanding refunds on used, "AS-IS" hardware that turned out not to work.
We built our own customer-filter - the $1 box. A box set in the corner, with a bright orange sign that said something like: "Wow! $1.00, no warrantee". It was filled with MFM hard drives, ancient motherboards, ISA video cards (when AGP had long since come out) and stuff that was generally worthless.
It was out of the way enough that you had to get down on your knees to get to it. It was also nearly 100% effective at identifying the "bug people".
It was incredible... over months and years we found that it was simply never wrong.
If you were caught kneeling in front of that box, you were immediately put on my "ignore" list. I'd be nice, but wouldn't give anything but a monosyllabic response from anyone.
On a side note, that $1 box came in real handy selling OEM copies of Windows legally. See, the contract requires that it be sold with a hard drive or motherboard. No mention of new/used, nor was there any requirement for a warrantee. So, we sold lots of copies of Windows with a used motherboard for $1....
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The main point of any discussion is that it's your money. If you don't like their practices, vote with your money and go somewhere else.
That said, something similar was posted on Fark a couple of hours ago, so I've already read it (given, at work.) Looks like it was a different article on the same topic.
From what I can tell, they're pissed off at people buying items, getting the rebates, then returning the items, and more. Basically, they're mad that people are turning a profit on stuff bought from a Best Buy store.
I've heard complaints and gripes about Best Buy all over. However, you get horror stories from every store, regardless of big name or how crappy it is.
Perhaps I'm biased, but I've never had a bad experience at a Best Buy. The one near where I live has gotten good recommendations from people, while the one near my college tries to skate around the extended warenties at all costs, among other things. But that's what I've heard from others, never experienced myself.
I worked at a Best Buy (the one near my home) for about three months (occasional/seasonal, in Computers.) I felt I was lucky in the fact the people I worked with actually knew a good amount about Computers, whereas other places have had general sales people. The atmosphere I worked in was nice one, everyone was helpful, and I can't remember having a bad day (not even Black Friday, but I was just a gopher then.)
Was I told to push the replacement plans/extended warrantees as often as possible? Try and get people to buy accessories? Try and sell services with computers? Yes on all accounts. But you know what, it's a business, they turn a profit with that, and they need the profit to counter the low profit they make off, say, video game consoles.
If you have that much of a beef with Best Buy, stop whining and just got shop NewEgg. I'll be browsing around Best Buy, using the sales and rebates as I like, and still getting a good experience. If I ever get a bad experience from a Best Buy, I'll just stop going to that one, but not the entire chain.
I don't shop at Best Buy anymore. I've attempted to shop there in the past, but each time (ironically, to buy big ticket computer and home theater equipment), they attempted to bait and switch me into something other than what I specifically came to the store to purchase. In a couple of cases, they begrudgingly agreed to sell me what they were advertising and then basically shooed me out the door when I said I wasn't interested in their "extended warranty" on the items (a laptop in one case and a $5000 plasma display in another case). So I bought the equipment elsewhere.
And then there's the shady business about offering equipment at price X. When you go to the store, you find out that it's actually price X + $200. You need to fill out an onerous rebate form and then wait a couple months for your "rebate" check. I've never actually received one of these checks even though I've applied for a few. This type of nonsense ought to be illegal.
Bottom line: don't shop at Best Buy. You get better deals on the internet. In terms of brick and mortar stores, I've gotten MUCH better sales service at PC Richard and J&R Music World (in NY).
Cheers,
After writing my previous response, I realize that the Simpsons sum it up nicely:
... [taps once more]
Back at Moe's Tavern, Moe begins to put the crayon in Homer's nose.
Moe: All right, tell me when I hit the sweet spot.
Homer: Deeper, you pusillanimous pilsner pusher!
Moe: All right, all right. [with a small hammer and chisel,
taps the crayon further up Homer's nose]
Homer: De-fense! [woof-woof] De-fense! [woof-woof]
Moe: Eh, that's pretty dumb. But, uh
Homer: Extended warranty? How can I lose?
Moe: Perfect.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Considering the tactics I'm planning on employing this season, I'll prolly fall into the 20%... (buy/rebuy)
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
"They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts."
Go ahead. Try this. Apply for the rebate (by submitting the UPC symbol) and then return the product. You can't.
Crap detector going off big time.
Well, its now clear, I will never buy something at best buy again.
Any company that simply says that our lower sales "are the customers fault" deserve to get blasted in the marketplace.
Sure, they do not specifically blame customers, but they are implying that these so called evil customers are resulting in less profits, and they would rather not have them shop at best buy. The next logical conclusion is to blame the actual customers for the sales, when the truth is that you sell inferior technology at an elevated price.
Best Buy may just be another greedy and evil corporation, but in the end their success comes down to the principal of economics. If they sell things for cheap enough with good service, they will stick around. But if they plan on offering deals they do not honor, no one will want to shop there anymore.
I had a long talk with a Sears manager once about flat prices. Apparently Sears tried flat pricing, and they started losing a lot of money, enough to cancel the program and return to tradtitonal Sales fairly quickly. The Sears customer base may have had different expectations than Walmart, but generally people are willing to pay more for certain items if they think they have opportunities to find really good bargains. Its sort of a gamblers' mentality-
and make the sales price what it should be without the rebate.
When I worked at Produce at A&P in highschool I actually tolerated the work there more than my job as a sysadmin(of course the pay there sucked). When the customers were not asking questions everything was so carefree, free of stress, relaxed. But when the customers ask questions and make requests it just causes nothing but problems for workers. Honestly I did not even know where the cereal isle or anything was by number, if the customers asked for cereal, I would just make up any isle number to bullshit them away.
I understand where they are coming from when they say Best Buy worries about the "Devil shoppers" who who buy the stuff on sale and return it and all that...but that can't be more than a fraction of a percent of their buyers.
All they have to do to stop these types of shoppers from returning items and then rebuying them is simple...whenever they take in something on return, they either store it in the back for a week or two, or else ship it to a neighboring store to sell. If the item doesn't show up on the shelves right away, or at random times, people will not be able to count on rebuying it.
And if they want to cut the rebates out of their marketing, then they should be ready to lose most of my business. That's one of the biggest reasons I go there is the deals they have every week. I usually buy something, and often it isn't what is on sale, but the whole reason I go in the first place is the deals.
One thing I can say is that at least at Best Buy when they advertise a deal, they actually have it in stock most of the time. At Circuit City they like to pull the bait and switch and only carry one or two of the sale items and then try to get you to buy something else instead.
My 2 cents.
I agree... those damn anonymous trolls... they make me sick, the bastards!
Shit, I'm lucky if I can even find an employee to help me!
If Circuit City doesn't jump on this, they're nuts...
"Our competitors think that 20% of you are no good for business, and the other 80% of you are stupid. Shop at Circuit City today and get yada yada yada...
Circuit City, we're with you, ALL OF YOU!"
Yes, a fine troll indeed. But not our best. We are saving those for the weekend.
umm, that is EXACTLY what i'm hoping for! I know more then 99% of the drones at best buy when I am shopping for a particular item. (if the geek in me doesn't already know more, I've done plenty of homework before going into the store to buy anyway...)
I've heard the best buy drones sell WAY too many computers that will 'speed up the internet', never mind the fact the user plans on having only dialup, that 3.0 ghz p4 is certainly going to cook through that 56k dialup!
I think I was what they would have called a "good customer".
I spent a lot of money there. I never talked to salesmen. I only returned one thing (exchanged, actually, because the first one was DOA). I didn't pay much attention to sales or rebates. Actually, I avoid rebates.
But, their customer-unfriendly policies drove me away. They want to treat their customers badly, they won't have any. Pity, I liked their selection and they are the only comparable store in 20 miles.
Note to Best Buy: If you drive away all your customers, you won't make any money.
A new one just opened up in my area, so I thought I'd go check it out. Besides, it was time for a new sound card anyway. I was totally amazed at the number of sales/security people that were in the store. I swear it was almost one sales guy for every customer, and there were a lot of customers there. I was asked ten times by different sales people if I needed help (and twice by the same guy) as I looked around the store. They totally swarmed, it was intense. I made it worse by making eye contact too much as I tried to dodge them. There were also these guys in shirts and ties with walki-talkies all over giving everyone the stare down. It made me, an honest customer, feel like a criminal. Then when you do get to the register to pay you are pitched for a best buy card. No thanks. Well, which one of these magazines do you want to subscribe to? None, thanks, can I pay and leave now? I'll think twice before going back there. Way too much pressure. (Although, Radio Shack is even worse. Commissioned employees trying to sell you batteries. Shudder...)
I am a suburban mother stuck in a high income man's body that's an early adopter. What does that make me? It's so confusing...
Have to go drop off the kids on my way to my Wall Street job in my brand new hovercar.
Later.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
"I'm sorry sir, you can't order the all you can eat unless you weigh less than 175 pounds"
Did anybody or any percentage of the people who held a valid recipt get the product??? I was not one of them, just wondering.
Linux Works
As a young-looking person, I always get shafted at the local store, car dealership, etc. In general, they figure that if I don't look like I have the money, their best bet is to shuffle me along.
I remember going to a car dealership, windowshopping for a Toyota for my girlfriend. They proceeded to ignore me and my girlfriend.
When we wanted to go on a test drive, the salesman said that he didn't have the time, but I could take a car for 20 minutes if I left him my car keys. Just to be an asshole, I told him that I didn't want to leave my Porsche keys with him.
Learning that I drove a Porsche, he suddenly had more than hour to spend with us.
Sadly, if I drove a different car, we likely would have never had any dealer assistance.
What Best Buy and other corporations haven't figured out is that we, the buying public, don't have any sympathy for them. They've set the rules, and we will take them for everything we can get.
It would be different if it was a single owner. When I buy from a family-owned business down the street, I'm not going to cheat him; I will even pay more than the going rate, because I like the person and I like how the business is run. But when I buy from a corporation, the gloves are off. If they offer a half-price deal and forget to specify a limit -- fill the shopping cart! About 5 years ago, I figured out that they are trying to TAKE EVERY PENNY THEY CAN GET FROM ME, so I don't feel the slightest pang of conscience when doing the same back.
I'm not talking about stealing. I'm only saying that, when dealing with Circuit City or Best Buy or Dell or WalMart or Safeway or ToysRUs or Home Depot or anyone else, the megastores have lost all pretense of actually caring about their customers. It isn't even slightly dishonest to gouge them if they let you do it -- because they're gouging you with every means at their disposal. Try it -- you'll find you enjoy the challenge of sticking it to them!
(And yes, I'm sure I'm the devil incarnate for some stores I shop in.)
How do you raise prices over insane? The linked article named Best Buy as one of the wost buys out there. They cited a typical example of a nice camera Best Buy was selling for 850 that could be had for $650 on line and wondered what kind of "service" they were getting for the extra $250. Oh yeah, that's right, you start charging your suckers 15% restocking fees and adopt other methods from businesses that have very thin profit margins.
In my experience, you can get rid of good customers with a quick glance, but the bad customers you can't drive away with an axe.
Where did you work retail, Taco Hell?
Why doesn't Best Buy try that? Probably because most of their customers are the bad kind.
No, it must have been McDonald's or some other place that might have a "bad customer". No customer is bad, ever. They might not have time to look things up, that's your job. Some might not have manners, oh well. One or two might go out of their way to make you miserable because they have no life, but that's retail and you put up with it. If you are good, you can deal with it all without making a scene and driving off people who just want an honest deal.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Best buy is possibly the worst thing to happen to retail in years. Their continued success is proof that human beings are idiots when offered easy credit and 6 mos same as cash. Here is Best Buy's track record to date:
*The FIRST store chain to move loss prevention to the exit door and rummage through their customer's stuff.
* Innovative retroactive interest programs that were so ahead of their time that courts thought they were "unconciable" (I think that means that no one else is doing it, so we have to wait a few years for the market to catch up with us)
* Computer service terms that would be an insult to even the worst run bureau of motor vehicles branch office.
* Leading the retail industry charge to underpay, undertrain and screw over EVERY EMPLOYEE IN THE STORE.
* Eatablishing a clear leadership position in selective screw over technology that limits paying customers from exchanging merchandise.
* Innovating new ways to offer a discount that is never paid by leaning on rebate programs run by fly by night fullfillment houses designed to decline payment regularly.
* Leapfrogging the retail world and creating a new way to ensure customer satisfaction by allowing consultants (we can't call them salespeople because they are underpaid and undertrained) to call customers "dude", "man" and "hey you".
Why the hell anyone would shop at Best Buy is beyond me - their prices are rarely the best, their service is always near the worst and to boot - you get treated like a criminal. Best Buy is the worst excuse for a bad retail store since Montgomery Ward closed the door... There are a few maxims in retail that have been built up over the years:
* Always treat your customers right.
* Satisfaction Guaranteed... or your money back.
* NEVER give up a lifetime customer over today's transaction.
* If you don't take care of your customer, someone else will.
It doesn't take long to go out of business, and I for one will be paying cash at the Best Bye-Bye liquidation sale when their actions catch up with them.
-- $G
public relations and marketing departments everywhere.
What better reinforcement for consumer confidence?
Of course it's not true. Customers don't know SHIT most of the time
"Big mistake. Big. Huge! I have to go shopping now!"
best buy sucks. its like going to wallmart
i'd rather pay a few more bucks for convience over sitting in lines & noise
As a former best buy employee I can't say this surprises me much. They've been doing this for years already, but now have just made it public. I worked in Home Office and we were often told that while everone got helped the better dressed people got helped first. And as far as teenagers goes, they didn't get helped at all unless they were looking at laptops. The not accepting ads from the internet I never really had a problem with that. We tried that for a while, and you would be surprised by the number of people that came in with fake adds they had made in photoshop or something. You'd see a $300 printer going for $79 or something like that. If it was a ligit add my store honored it. Well atleast while I was there they did. There are many many reasons to hate Best Buy (or future shop in canada since BB owns it), they do have long training sessions for the sales people on how to talk you out of not getting the X-tended warrenty, or that extra printer cable. Usually a few hours before the store opens on a saturday. They have whole plans ready to go incase you decide not to buy the service plan. And if you EVER get passed onto someone else after saying no or are asked again call the head company and tell them what a horrible sales person you had. It's written VERY clear in the rule book that once the service plan is turned down you are not to ask again, and it's a very big no no to pass a sale onto some that has a better chance of getting the service plan.
Why doesn't Best Buy just come out and say they want customers with more cash than common sense? That would be less insulting to the customers they say they want to keep.
Barry: A guy who's willing to blow a wad of cash to prove he has more.
Jill: A mom who's willing to buy and pay anything to be the "coolest" mom or to show off to her friends.
Buzzes: Guy & gals who think they're Slashdot when they're really Fark.
(ouch, that hurt a bit, but I won't cry)/just copied this from my Fark comments about the same article a few minutes ago :)
I knew this would make them come out of the woodwork.....that certain demographic of people who somehow think that the only fair price, is the
There's more to shopping then just price folks, and that attitude is exactly what led us to the situation we find outselves into today. There used to be a large number, of helpfull, friendly, local audio / tv / computer stores....but over time people passed them up to go to a larger box store...then an even larger box store and now these.
What motivation does a business have to provide good service when they know their "clients" would abandon them in a heartbeat just to save a few pennies on the dollar? Then..
Hmm...hadn't meant to turn this into a rant...but I guess it just kinda headed that way.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Is that like a warranty guarantee?
I continue to spend my dollars at Best Buy. As long as they keep giving rebates and offering the stuff they do, I'll shop there, and abuse the system whenever possible. I shop with my ipod on, ignoring the blue shirts. I skip on the extended warranties. I read about my purchases in advance. (they lied to me about inventory on a HDTV I wanted when I came in looking for a specific model.) I recheck what they tell me against their visible inventory. I'll steal their (ONLY) commission sales. When they have someone making a big ticket purchase that's obviously wrong for them, I'll correct ANY employee I hear lying to them or misleading them. I've gotten 3 BB customers to skip extended warranties from this. BB can't do a thing. Now, I don't return merchandise when I don't have to, and now seeing a permanent 15% restock fee, I'll make sure my dollar is NEVER wasted there. Thank you Best Buy. I accept your challenge.
I went in to Best Buy to purchase a VCR (of all antiquated things...) and the price was roughly $50. I started looking for a cheapo RCA A/V cable to connect it to my TV card and I stop at an entire isle of gold platted A/V cables.
$30 for a 12 foot A/V cable??? I had to search through an obscure rack in the store that had items without price tags to find a cheaper one that ended up being $15.
When you consider that they were even selling a DVD player for $50 it's obvious that they are actually making all their profits off of people buying accessories and other extras.
I'm reminded of this
I bought an extended warranty from BB (Listen before judge). I covers battery's on Laptops. It was a "3 year exended warranty" but what they don't tell you is that they cannot repair an item that is still covered by the manufacter. My Laptop (a Sony) needed a small repair and they said I had to send it to Sony. I demanded they take it since the warranty was for 3 years or extend my warranty period by a year. They said they could do neither so I demanded a refund for 1/3 of the warranty purchase price. They had no leg to stand on so I got 100 and some dollars in store credit and used it to buy a printer with a good rebate. With 2 weeks left to go in the warranty I took my laptop in and demaded a new battery since it would no longer charge to 100 percent and would no longer last the advertised amount. They replaced it... So I managed to get my money's worth....
I used to like Best Buy. I live in Minneapolis, near the BB HQ. BB is a local success story, which over the last 10 years has evolved into something different than it once was.
I even applied at a BB store once, only to be shuffled from one "manager" to another after I took a piss test. They were (and should have continued to be) excited about me applying at first because I was a (smart?) college student and willing to work hard and learn a lot. Maybe they don't hire smokers, but they sure seemed to have their heads up their asses. They never called me, it was me following up with them, after they were "sure" I would work out. I've seen better organized mobs.
I used to know someone who worked at their corporate office. He knew some about thier accounting, and was surprised that they made money given how poorly managed the business was.
And after finding out just how bad BB's markups are (especially on cables), I rarely shop there any more. (My friend also got the BB employee discount, where you get to buy for cost +5% or something, excluding CDs.). As observed elsewhere, anyone on the sales floor is a moron.
I DO SHOP HERE:
MicroCenter - I was just there yesterday, and this sales guy ASKED ME if I was finding everything. Shocking. And he even gave me advice to go to Home Despot to find wheels to attach to my case, as they didn't realy have what I wanted. Another time, I was grilling this sales guy on their PowerSpec PCs. He knew (or found out) everything I asked. The mobos are FIC, etc.
CompUSA - Haven't been there in a while, but they're OK. Somewhat knowledgable.
Circuit City - They sell Onkyo, which happens to be my (current) brand of stereo equipment. I may move up to Rotel, which may cause me never to go to CC again.
Online - Pricewatch, fatwallet, amazon
What... still pissed that he got the first post of the article with a well thought out comment, robbing you of the ability to get a "frist post" or some other shit?
BR Fuck it... I'm gonna take troll tactics back to them and start modding up anything that LostCluster says that is remotely coherent. Ciao.
First, know who your best customers are, and cater to them. Next, know who your chiselers are, and try to dissuade them. That is simply good business.
Why have such a pledge if you don't intend to honor it? Because it allows you to rig the game so that you, in effect, collude with your competitors and all the players on the selling side can make more money!
It's all economics. Game theory, to be precise.
In a game where price is the only determining factor between two goods, and you have at least one competitor, you are forced to sell your good at rock-bottom prices, or they'll go to another store. Thus, the Nash equilibrium of this game is that you all have to sell the item for no profit (assuming you all get it for the same price--otherwise, you just undercut the next lowest bid by one cent or the least you can & steal all their customers).
Now then, when you introduce this pledge, it turns out that all the people selling the product can, in effect, collude and sell it for a higher price! Sadly, I forget all the details of how it works out in recalculating the Nash equilibrium, and my game theory textbook is probably propping something up just now (sorry, I took that class quite a while ago now--the textbook on it is nowhere to be found). However, I can tell you for sure that this was one of their examples on how "hyper-competetive" seeming strategies can actually be anti-competetive in effect.
The good news? They're not the only ones who can change the rules, as we saw from some of the ways people got back at them. In fact, the article mentioned one person doing this to buy things at a loss from them just because they wanted to hurt the store (this in the Wall Street Journal article I saw in a comment here).
It's funny, too, because one of the other quotes was from them worrying that culturally, they might be seen as consumer-hostile. A worry it would seem is well-founded, given how many people seem to hate that store.
If they want to ban customers then let them, it won't stop the other 80% from shopping there! If consumers are ever going to get rights they need to become a union - a company doesn't care if a small disorganised group of people takes their business somewhere else, but they do care if a massive organised mass of customers all stick together and absolutely refuse to shop somewhere, but that doesn't happen because people don't care, they just want some cheap stuff. I noticed this the other day, I was shopping with the lady :P who won't go to M&S because they support Israeli occupation (ok lets not start a flame) so we're in a shop and im looking at something overpriced that looks like it was sewn together by an 8 year old and i see the label 'Made in Guatemala' I look at some top next to it 'Made in Cambodia' and another 'Made in China' - To put a long story short, every single clothes shop in Oxford Street is full of the most expensive cheap-labour produce in the country and she didn't care, people can be fickle - they will try and boycott something, but if there's a deal in it, all too often they will give up. Im just as bad, I hate MS, but I sure as hell ain't gonna piss about trying to get things running in Linux. I hate Starbucks, but when there's nowhere else to go i'll pay for a cup of bad coffee what i usually pay for a big bag of nice beans, and have somewhere dirty to sit, and even though it pains me to give money to O2 and Tiscali, I still do, because I am a consumer whore and you all are too! So, what we should do, instead of boycotting companies, is to tell their competitors exactly how bad they are (if you can give them something they could pass on to the press that would be great) and how much you want them to come and open up their shop instead and how many of your friends would dump Best Buy in a second if someone else made decent deals.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I'd like to see a map of the distribution of "wrong customers" across the country.
--
make install -not war
The easy price matching fix is to sell a product that only YOU sell!
"Oh, this is a Panasonic XT-39493-BB. That ad is for a Panasonic XT39493-CC. See, the power button is round on that model, it's different, and price matching rules don't apply to different models".
This is, of course, bullshit. The large merchants make special deals with manufacturers to control the market. Therefore, the price matching deals only apply to a certain class of product sold at the stores.
I work in a small independant bookstore. You wouldnt think those would get alot of "bad" customers, but they do--people who think we can magically order out of stock books just for them, let them take a book home and return it in two days---in a bag thats obviously been taken out of the garbage, with bent spine and obviously read already.
Typically we just let these customers get disgruntled and leave. if they attempt to monopolize our time we basically brush them off. Same thing at my internet job---there was a sizable percentage of the customer base who expected to be the center of the universe when they broke something, and that just isn't possible . I did my best to fix whatever it was, but if it got to the point i couldnt take other tech tickets they got left hanging, and if they cancelled the account, my boss said that was just how it was.
I can understand best buy's situation. I know for a fact people attempt to abuse returns by "renting" equipment as well as attempting to return the wrong item inside original packaging. Nor should they be expected to price match a shady website's price on blank CDs though that ought to be part of the price matching policy. Not only is it unprofitable but also unfair to other customers to allow a single picky whiny bastard to monopolize an associate's time arguing about something either.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Just give them 867-5309 & a local area code ;]
Or pick a more... interesting... one, like (301) 688-1947.
Hi Echelon!
Has anyone noticed alot of stores like Bestbuy and Walmart, etc. have started to hire people with a job simply to greet people when they walk in and when they exit the store? This serves no purpose, if they want to be more profitable the first thing Best Buy should do is ax this position. When I walk into a store, it is usually not to socialize with store employees I never met before. These greaters are a losing game for me. When I walk in, if they say "Hi, welcome to Bestbuy" by decency protocols I am obligated to say "Hi" back, which is annoying; since I am not so decent many times I just ignore them.
Another facet about Bestbuy that irks me is pushy salesmen. I like stores like Costco and BJ's Wholesale(too bad these stores do not have much electronics) where there are no workers to ask me if I need help, they are more like warehouses with displayed items and cashiers. I do not want to be talked into buying anything. For people with more money than they know what to do with maybe they need people to recommend them things to buy, but then again if you do not a product exists, you can likely live without(consumer culture at work). Too bad the greeters do not say "Thank you for leaving Bestbuy" after exiting this maze of verbal trenchwarfare.
I went to Best Buy today to maybe get a Tivo. A salesmen asked me if I needed some help, and I asked him how the Tivo connects to the internet. He said I would need a phone line.
I read that I would need a phone line for at least the inital setup, but also read that I could use a broadband connection to connect it afterwards. I asked him if I would need to buy a seperate card or modem or nic card to connect to my internet connection and he said he didn't know! So I said thanks and left. NO SALE FOR YOU!
How the hell are you supposed to sell stuff, if you don't even know how it works? Instead of trying to scheeme the public with fancy half-ass rebates, they should focus on simply knowing what the hell they are selling.
So, according to the article, it would be fun to go into the store, tell them you really want to please your family on the next movie night, but you want to show off your brand new gadget to all your friends - Oh, and that your a transvestite homemaker looking for a replacement woofer for your 85 maserati and hoped to pick one up while you were there getting a ribbon for your daisy wheel printer. Let them profile that one.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
So pretty much they see all us girls in there as "Jills?" I rember one time going in there with my mom and I was looking for a Le Tigre (obsucure angery girl band) CD and the guy was like "Oh, you're looking for Avril Lavigne right?" Because I'm an 18 year old girl that must be all I listen too. My mom was looking for BB King and the same guy was like "looking for Nickelback right?" Shes a 40 something mother, she must like crappy top 40 music.
-- Nic
A few years ago I bought a computer from you, I bought the extended warranty and everything. When my modem died, you took my computer, you insisted on the whole thing and kept it for three weeks. When it came back, it had a new modem in it but it was a cheap piece of generic crap. The modem that died was a good for the time US Robotics 56K modem. The one I got back never connected above 42K although it said it was a 56K modem. I complained and was told in essence "tough."
One bad experience isn't enough to send me away from you. You actually have good sales, and a decent inventory. Still it left a bad taste in my mouth. Then I bought a printer and brought it home. It was new but was missing the cartridges and the little tab that held the carts was broken. I brought it back and it was replaced but I saw the looks you guys gave me and they weren't nice. I wasn't my fault, I swear it.
About a year and a half ago, my daughter and I made a deal. If she came up with half the money, I'd throw in the other half and buy her a pre-pay cell phone. She wanted one from Virgin that she saw at your store. The big day came and I went in to buy it even though she was a bit short of her half. The phone came with a $25.00 Best Buy gift card. I filled out the paperwork and followed the instructions to the letter and mailed it in - figuring I could use that to make up the money she was short - but we never saw the card. So you scammed us. I feel pretty ripped off.
I was in your store a while ago - for the first time since you ripped me off. I wanted to buy a stylus for my Palm. Your clerk told me you don't have them in the stores, that I have to buy them online. I bought a pack of them at an office supply store.
I can take a hint. You don't want me as a customer. That is pretty obvious. So, you don't have to worry about me. There are plenty of places that treat me right. I'll shop them. Forget about Best Buy. You don't give a shit about me so you can keep your precious products, I'll gladly buy them somewhere else. Someplace that isn't crooked.
Retail goes through waves of changes. The first generation of retail stores were the K-Marts and the Sears's. They enjoyed success for quite a while, but were eventually replaced by retailers who saw where technology was going, and marketed towards this. These companies were the Best Buy's and the Circuit City's.
We are currently at the beginning of the next wave of change. Slick marketing isn't going to cut it anymore. Customers are looking for one thing: low prices. And what is the only method you can really use to get lower prices in the retail industry? That's right, higher volume. Welcome to Walmart. The next 5 years will hold one of two outcomes for Circuit City: they will go out of business (unlikely), or they will get bought out (likely). Next will be Best Buy. I'm looking at about 10 years from now. Best Buy is the biggest electronics retailer in the world, next comes Walmart, and then (way behind), Circuit City, which is why Circuit City will be first to go. Don't worry though, Best Buy is losing ground every month to Walmart. By 2015, there will be no Best Buy or Circuit City. Only Walmart (and local retailers, who cater to the high end consumer that actually puts quality over cost).
But for those of you that hate Walmart, don't worry, their future is bleak as well. They will be a victim of their own success. At some point, they will not be able to push any more volume, limited by the amount of physical space they have. Enter the winner: The Internet.
Internet sales have grown exponentially for the last 10 years, and they show no signs of slowing. Eventually, I think we'll find something like "learning centers". Right now, stores are basically walk-through warehouses. Best Buy, Circuit City, Walmart....it's just a big warehouse that you walk through. I think eventually, the model will move to small, impressive displays of technology, where you will order what you want, and it will be shipped to your door, or alternatively, to the store for pickup. This minimizes physical location costs to stores, while still giving customers the "hands-on" interaction that they have come to expect (and is the only real reason brick and mortar stores still out-pace Internet vendors).
So if you want to be the next big thing, be the first-arrival on this sales model.
"A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter--and getting smarter faster than most companies."
From the Cluetrain Manifesto: http://www.cluetrain.com/
Everything I post is inciteful
How do you like "Everything I post is insightful."?
It would lend more toward credibility.
I do not blame the greeters. It is company policy that is wrong. These people should be utilized by Walmart and Bestbuy to contribute productively to the store. These huge corporations seem to think they are putting a personal face in their souless coporate mass chainstore akin to a local store by pulling such shannigans. Nothing is farther from the truth, I know of no local family owned store that has the resources to waste on hiring greeters.
When you work, when you have nothing to do at work, your perception is that time drags compared when to when you have something to do. I can easily imagine that greeters when they work 4 hours, feel like they are working for twice as much. Also many greeters I have noticed do not greet as much as sit there(I do not blame them I would even more apathetic than them) do not greet customers all the time and I did not blame them.
"Extended warranty, how can I lose?!" is my mantra in these places. In fact, a place that offers EW's is good evidence that you should not buy anything there that you would need to return. EW's are 90% free cash for the store, especially with electronics, which usually survive a year if they survive a month.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Ahhh... National City. I have a VISA card through them, and I guess they haven't made enough money off of me (I pay in full every month), so they just sent me a letter announcing that my bill will be due at a different and unpredictable time each month. Any doubt that this is intended to boost their late charge revenue?
And I am a "Ray" since I have 2 kids and have had to become a bargain shopper because kids are expensive.
Did anyone else who read the article think it extravagent that the CEO has an apartment in Trump Tower? Especially since they're based in the Minneapolis area?
It has always been one rule for the consumers and another for business.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Actually....I wouldn't mind the policy as it may help drive prices down for the avg Joe. unfortunately, as Best Buys costumer service is the equal of the DMV, I can't really shed a tear. Just need NewEgg to open a brick & mortar now...
Ray - extremely whipped. Will constantly whine and say stuff like, "I don't know...I'll have to check with my wife first." Strategy: egg him on and incite him to buy by making remarks such as, "Yeah, I'm sure you should consult the one wearing the pants in the family" or make whipping noises such as *cough* "whipped" and "Shwooshping"
Not 100% (I did exchange a number of emails over the course of a day), but the NewEgg support staff does appear to have a number of understanding people on their end of the mail server. I kinda got the impression that they bent the return policy to expedite a defective camera RMA to me.
/.).
It even arrived a couple days before my big trip. Thanks NewEgg guy. You know who you are (even if you don't read
Staffers use quick interviews to pigeonhole shoppers.
Shoppers with large families are steered toward larger appliances and time-saving products.
The company hopes to lure the Barrys and Jills by helping them save time with services like a "personal shopper"...
The goal is to steer them into a back room that showcases $12,000 high-definition home-theater systems.
That sounds worse than any commission sales environment when, ironically, they're not. I could be in the minority here but I can't think of a single person I know that would like any of those ideas at all.
I don't think I could ever shop there again. I don't want to be hounded and pestered by every sales person in the store and pressured to buy something I couldn't afford, don't like, or don't even want. I can hear the counter-arguments now - "If you don't want it, don't buy it" That's not my point - I don't want to be bothered in the first place. That's my point. I'm not a fan of retail *sales* people, I've always been more of the opinion that a retail sales person should be more of a consultant type than a used car salesman type.
Nobody wants to be "sold" - people like to "figure it out" for themselves. Secondhand Lions is the only story I can think of where someone just sat around waiting to be "sold". Seriously - the last time you went to Best Buy or a store like it, why did you go? If you went to purchase a television, did you just go on a whim and say to yourself "I'm gonna go to Best Buy, look around at what they've got in the $XXXX range. Maybe talk to an associate and see what the differences are. Maybe pick up Rocky III while I'm there 'cause Clubber Lang predicts 'Pain'." or did you say "I'm gonna go to Best Buy, look around, and wait for the sales person to tell me just what to buy. Hopefully he'll suggest Rocky III." or best yet "I'm gonna go to Best Buy for the Rocky III DVD 'cause Clubber Lang pities me, and see if the sales person will upsell me to a $12000 home theatre."?
I'll be takin' these Rocky's and whatever tv ya got. (gratuitous Rasing Arizona mis-quote for the film-challenged)
I've met Mike Keskey and Brad Anderson and I've spoken with them several times (I used to be in middle management for Best Buy) - Mike is a down-to-earth guy and I have to say, I think he's dead on when he told Brad Anderson "You've lost touch with what's happening in your business."
For some people, this may be the best idea since 6 beers at the same time but I think it's slow suicide. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.
Best of luck to them.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
How could I have forgotten to mention Bestbuy's overly aggressive Extended Warranty pimping. I do not deal with their salesmen much, since I always tell them I do not need help. When I need them like when I bought a television I walked up to a worker and told him what TV I wanted to buy, I do not need them telling me what to buy. Nevertheless he tried to sell me a warranty. I do not remember what went down at the register since my brother handled that. Once I bought 3 Xbox controllers at Best Buy. While paying they had a bagger in addition to the cashier(another corporate waste this is not a supermarket where some people have shopping carts full of over 30 items, one person can staff a register perfectly well) whose job it was to ask if I wanted an extended warranty(like a controller needs one). I said no, but he just would not let up and asked if I was sure and informed that if a controller broke I could have gotten it replaced or something like that. It is probably store policy to aggressively pimp extended warranties. If I used a salesmen for "help" no doubt that would have entailed another bout of declining a extended warranty.
I worked for them for a year, and developed a gastric ulcer.
I totally agree!
When we compete and BB wins, it's good business.
When we compete and customer win, customer's cheating.
BB: "It's not fair."
Customer: "Cry me a * river."
Customer: [ALT]F2 mozilla [ENTER] ^T www.streeptrices.com [ENTER]
BB: "Hey--what happened to my customer base?"
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
A fool and his money are soon parted. ;)
:P
I pay 1/4th that for a MORTGAGE, and I'm about your age.
BTW, did I mention that I was married. Or that my wife helped me wake up this morning?
I remember I bought a PC for my kid. It had loads of rebates attached but when I got all the paperwork home I found they neglected to give me one rebate form. Went back to store and got told a line of shit how the monintor with the rebate was sold out and they replaced it with another that had no rebate. They didn't mention this at the time of the sale or ask anything. Look me dead in the eye like I'm going to stand there and take.
So I told them here is how you fix this. You get a manager out here with check writing authority and write me a check for the rebate amount. No store credit no gift card, a check. If you can't do that find someone who can and if that's not possible then give me a phone book, I need to call the State Attorney General's Office, and the State Bureau of Investigation, Fraud Division, thanks.
They write a check, send me on my way and if they give me the bird massively hard on my way out, I couldn't fucking care less.
Guitar Center, which is the music equivalent to Best Buy, and the world's only large MI retail chains, aims to identify "problem" customers, difference is that GC actually uses the terms "evangelist" and "terrorist". They'll go as far as to print "No returns, this sale final" on the receipt, but managers will always turn around and do the sale.
Profit comes from 1) high end guitars and, literally, 2-10), as you described, service plans (Guitar Center Performance Guarantee - not worth the paper it's printed on). Cables are way behind that, profitable, but not as profitable as the above, where a 50-60% profit margin is the norm. Service plans are usually pure profit for the salesperson, who is pressured into reaching a certain number (in my store it was 50 service plans per person per month, in a department where three quarters or the items sold didn't qualify for the plans).
When you have salespeople on commissions who are pressured to a) reach a certain sales figure before they qualify for commissions, and b) reach a certain number of service plan sales a month or they're fired, service suffers. Especially in an environment where the "My guy" sales person attitude is discouraged.
This is the same store that's in hot water with the Ohio Attorney General.
Caveat Emptor.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
When I heard that name I couldn't shake the image of Hugo Weaving's, (Agent Smith in the Matrix), voice saying that to Neo all the time.
:->
In fact every time I see Hugo, like in the Lord of the Rings, I still hear him saying that...
"Mr. Anderson!"
Anyway, I'm glad to see that Best Buy is finally being recognized more for their money grabbing. Being an independent computer consultant, I'm tired of the Compaq/HP pushers filling the market with crap.
Further, the Geek Squad is now eating into my profits from service.
Irregardless, I for one welcome our new overlords. I've simply switched purchasing from OEM vendors to purchasing from Best Buy, Staples, Future Shop and so forth when rebates and discounts make it profitable.
What I dislike the most is that it's such a GAME.
Here is how you play and what you get:
1. Comb the flyers weekly, (both online and mailbox versions).
CircuitCity.com
FutureShop.ca
Staples.ca
BestBuy.ca
BestBuy.com
LondonDrugs.ca
OfficeDepot.com
RadioShack.com
(Please add more, I'm sure there are many)
2. Compare prices from Ebay, factoring in landed costs like shipping and duty.
3. Compare reviews and comments on items you are thinking of buying.
Tomshardware.com
Zdnet.com
4. Try to take advantage of 150% buyer protection by pitting store against store.
5. Now go and purchase what you can at the lowest possible price.
6. You will now get sales pitches, reams of paper receipts and mumbling twitchy eyed sales people running about checking the validity of your homework.
7. Don't forget to use any Airmiles, Reward Cards etc. to get even more discounts.
8. Before you leave the store, make sure you have everything you'll need to make a proper rebate.
9. Immediately test the product(s) you buy.
10. Do any returns ASAP.
11. If you do a return, make sure you go back to see if it's on the bargain table
12. Immediately fill out and make copies of your rebates, receipts and UPC codes.
13. Check everything for accuracy and dates.
14. Call help lines if you are missing any critical items or are unsure of anything in the rebate process before hand.
15. Immediately mail in rebates and keep postal receipts for your records.
16. Goto 1.
What you get is a product for a price you should have gotten right from the #$%king beginning.
Welcome to the rat race of buying and selling.
There are no winners, just lots of wasted time making paper for bureaucrats, lawyers and accountants.
Maybe we are just living in The Matrix.
The article mentions a 15% restocking fee. On their website they claim it only applies to items which are missing packing material, etc., and camcorders, digital cameras, computers and radar detectors.
Are certain stores applying it to everything? Lord knows the only reason I buy from them in person is so I can return something easily if it burns out when I plug it in. If they start a 15% fee on eveything, I'll save the upfront costs and deal with mail-order returns.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Areacode-someexcnage-1337 ;-) ok stupid
they would publish sales in the paper or on-line, but of course have about one item in-stock, offer rain checks, which might or might not get honored down the road, etc.
They want the "bait", and as much of the "switch" as they can get away with.
If there is no money in being a big-box retailer, then hurry up and go out of business. Don't stoop to stilly pricing games, pissing off your customers, etc.
Besides, if you get those "20% bad customers" to not shop at your store, who becomes the riff-raff then?
If you've ever sent in one of their rebates, they take forever to get back (I've waited over 6 months for some of them, and didn't even receive a couple I sent in).
They sit on the money and make interest off of it, then after a period of time, they send it back to you. This is illegal, but they do it anyway. I know someone that used to work for a rebate company that dealt with rebates for several large retailers, and it's a law they are all aware of, yet ignore. No one does anything about it.
I always say NO to the service plan crap. On a couple of different occasions, the sales guy told me to just zap the product with high voltage and destroy it before the service plan was up, and I'd get a newer better one for nothing since they likely wouldn't have the older model when the plan ran out. Sales reps are rude as hell, and they don't know shit for the most part. Possibly Best Buy makes them have a target percentage of customers buy the service plan, or they get canned (Circuit City does this, my friend is a manager there and fires people all the time for it).
I just buy online. Best Buy's prices aren't that great, sales reps are rude, and they obviously don't want my business. Plus, they routinely fuck people for $25 or more for a stupid USB cable. Those cables were like $2 everywhere when they first came out, and they still are online. Best buy requested all of the printer manufacturers to not include a cable with the printer so they could make their 1000% or more margin on the cable.
Posting anon because I do have an association to the company...
"thats borderline robbery."
It is, but what do you call it when certain stores do the whole rebate thing and then routinely send me a postcard saying "You didn't send in the right thing" or worse, refuse to respond.
I *know* they're doing this as a scam, but I can't prove it. They usually wait until after the deadline and give me no recourse. Simply a "sorry".
So while I wouldn't do this kind of trick, I am sympathetic to people who scam stores this way because the mail-in rebates are a scam all by themselves.
Mail-in rebates are just a form of first degree price discrimination, like coupons or loyalty discounts. The way it works is this:
I am a poor young professional in my mid-20s. I buy an MP3 player (say) for $299 with a $30 mail-in rebate. Now, $30 is big money for me, so I am sure to send it my rebate form! Let's say my demographic accounts for half of sales.
Bob is a rich attorney. He buys the same MP3 player, but does not send in the rebate form because he values the time required to do it at more than $30. Let's say Bob accounts for half of sales.
Thus, I pay $269 for my MP3 player and Bob pays $299. Since we're both half of the total purchasers, BB's expected value price for each MP3 player sold is $284. But I pay less than Bob does because I have a different valuation of my time than Bob has on his.
Bob is willing to pay $299 for the gizmo, and I'm willing to pay $269. Mail-in rebates allow stores to effectively create different prices for different consumers. Bob *could* send the form in if he wished, but he does not because he doesn't think $30 is worth it. I do.
End result: I get an MP3 player at the price I will pay, Bob gets one at the price he will pay, and Best Buy sells two MP3 players at the highest prices they can charge Bob and me.
So in the end, everyone walks away happier because of mail-in rebates. Without mail-in rebates, BB would have to charge $284 for every MP3 player, making me and the other tightwads like me (like you, probably) better off.
Best Buy has learned that some people are cheap, and not worth it to them as customers. This is their right, they are in business to make money. I see no problems with this. It is the same as if you have some items you want to sell, you want as much as you can get, you're not giving your stuff away, you're selling it because you want money. No problems. Cheap people are cheap in many ways, they seem to think they should get something at $1 over cost for some reason. Would you put up with people like this at your garage sale? If you are a freelance contractor, don't you want as much as you can get for your services? Don't you hate cheap employers who will not pay you enough to make working for them worth your while? Best Buy is no different. It's a business that exists to make money.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'll feel sympathy for Best Buy having to deal with bargain hunters when it stops pushing local stores out of business and fucking up street traffic wherever it parks its fat ass. Aside from the sale items, I can get everything cheaper online, and from a local store called Central Computer, which is able to survive against the SF BB by sheer volume of potential customers.
If your revenue's greatest strength is the ignorance of your customers, your days are numbered.
I will do no business with a box store that treats people in an invidious manner and honks about it in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Bye bye, Best Buy.
I know it is easy to get pissed off at Best Buy (believe me I know) but get pissed at the managers, GMs and corporate, not the lowely workers. I work in the front lines and we have trackers (little scorecards) on how many magazines and PRPs/PSPs we have sold. The managers are always on us about how many magazines (Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated Trials) and PRPs/PSPs we have sold because we get rated within the company for them. When someone comes up with an item that has a PRP, I tell them straight if it is worth it or not. Take it from me DO NOT get a PSP unless your REALLY need it and the magazines are just an automatic renewal scam. The employees at service centers are idiots and rarely fix things right (if at all). The PRPs are actually a good value (on more valuable items, not a $20 phone) because we just give you a new one. So whenever you come to Best Buy do not take your anger out on the people working the registers, we are forced to ask the many questions we ask and offer what we offer because it is our job and that is what Best Buy makes us do.
please delete this.
Just want to find out where comments go when I hit the reply button.
For some reason they go under someone elses comments.
I'm not hitting "Reply to this", so it should just start a new thread but is not.
A friend of mine and I tried a trick in a store many years ago. It may even have been a Best Buy store (I don't recall). Anyway, between us, we grabbed a bunch of our cash to the tune of about $3000 and went to the store. My friend, who is black (I'm not), put on some ratty old clothes, and carried all the cash. We went into the store separate, and never conversed. I got approached several times to be assisted, and talked about buying some big stuff. But I followed not too far from my friend, who approached the same products I did, but no sales people ever approached him. One did watch him at times. We both picked up an item we really wanted, and went to checkout about the same time. He went first so I'd be in line to watch. He bought a printer cable and pack of blank floppies and the total rang up around $45. He pulled out the whole wad of $3000, with the hundreds on the outside, and proceeded to pay with a $100 bill. The checkout clerk's jaw dropped. But she did try to sell him some more stuff, like gift cards. I bet she thought he was a drug dealer or something (he was an associate professor of chemistry, so I suppose he could make drugs if he needed them). When I made my purchase, I dug through my pockets for tiny bits of change to barely make the price. She didn't try to sell me anything else. The whole thing was more a racial bigotry test, but there certainly could be some perceived economic effects, too.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I can't say I agree with the parent poster... First of all, Best Buy is concerned about people buying new products and then returning them on purpose, just so they can buy them again later off the rebate tables??
I'm sorry, but that's a load of B.S. I never knew *anyone* who would purposely do this - because quite frankly, it's a huge waste of time (and time = money, don't forget). You have no guarantee the item you return will ever make it to a sale table, for one thing. Many times, manufacturers will accept opened merchandise returned by stores directly to them. But even if it did, you don't know exactly WHEN it will be put back out there, and unless you hound the store looking for the item's appearance, someone else may buy it first. Then you completely wasted all of your time and effort. To top it off, merchandise that's not missing anything and is simply an "open box" deal isn't discounted too heavily. Especially at stores like Best Buy, you're often lucky to get more than maybe 10% off for that. Even for 20% off, the savings is probably not worth all this time and trouble.
As for buying a product "at rebate" and returning it to keep the price difference, I'm not sure I get that one at all? If you mean buying it to get a mail-in rebate and then returning it - that's why they always make you cut up the boxes to get the rebates. Stores can easily see when a UPC code is cut out and know what you're trying to do. When was this ever really an issue? Furthermore, if it is because they're allowing returns where a customer claims the "original box got wet and is ruined" or whatever - so what? The best solution to that is to quit doing all the mail-in rebates paid for by Best Buy Corporation themselves, and only do manufacturer rebates. Just give people the better price up-front and quit the game playing, and you'll avoid this potential loss. (But they don't, because they stand to gain more than they lose from folks who don't bother to do the work of mailing in for the rebates, or lose their receipts and can't do it, etc. etc.)
don't buy from "Best Buy"...
Any troller of Fatwallet or Slickdeals knows this type of behavior. Office Depot is just as bad about this type of thing. Internet shoppers or deal hunters are scum that are to be avoided at all costs and they make this clear to you. My favorite ploy was when item I paid for online to be picked up in the store was backordered because the order confirmation had the word 'backorder' printed on it in a legend describing your transaction detail. Explaining to the person that the 0 under Backordered meant the item was not backorderd took 15 minutes. When picking up a cheap monitor I ordered using an online coupon, the manager was kind enough to complete my transaction and let me know he didn't have to honor the price I had already paid, but he would anyway. Me letting him know I would consider this fraud and would contact my CC company for buyer protection hurried the process along, but he let me know even though they appreciate Internet Shoppers, I shouldn't order from them anymore (how he'll remember is beyond me, but if I can get an extra 50 dollars off something by buying a 49 cent box of paperclips, I probably won't pass it up)
It's just a small piece in the larger puzzle where being educated about ANYTHING is a detriment to you being able to function in modern American society.
I clicked on your "ipod" link, but changed the referrer ID. No joke.
/. for an ipod.
Just pay $250 and buy one dude. Its pathetic that you're begging on
If you don't like Best Buy, you should try Fry's. Compared to Fry's, Best Buy treats you like royalty! You may even find an English or Spanish-speaking salesperson at Best Buy (I'll take either one).
I hate mail in rebates. It's just a way of giving the government more money. Let's say you buy something for $100 on "sale" for $75. Only trick is you've got to pay tax on $100 in order to buy it, for $75!?!
In Canada that's 15%. So instead of paying $11.25 in tax you are paying $15. So your sale prices of $75 is actually $78.75. I know it's only three dollars, but dammit I'm cheap!^H^H^H^H^H^it's the principle of the thing!
Not only that, in order to get the mail in rebate it costs you postage. There's another 50 cents. And my time. (That's gotta be worth at least $20 per hour flippen burgers, so it takes me 5 minutes to fill in the stuff. 5 minutes to find a stamp. 15 minutes to walk down to the mailbox, 15 minutes to walk back.)
Hey this rebate is COSTING ME MONEY!
Hey Best Buy/Future Shop! Why not just put it on sale if you want to put it on sale. Why give your consumers more problems. One of the reasons I perfer to buy from the small independants. (No I'm not a devil customer. I'm not a customer at all!)
I've alway respected Ars reportage, but the lack of attribution is unacceptable. Sent email to Caesar.
Besides, the WSJ article is a lot longer and more interesting.
You can't take the sky from me!
I am the customer who wanted to take a chance on you, but will never set foot in your store due to your plain fucking sneakiness. I absolutely DESPISE shallow-minded hard-sell crap, and now you want to "interview" me so I can be "pigeonholed"? You want me to buy at your price, but instead, I'll just buy whatever Wal-Mart or one of your other price competitors have.
Sorry, forgot the link:
7 086,00.html?mod=home_page_one_us
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB10998699493176
You can't take the sky from me!
Fry's + online deals == little need for Best Buy 95% of the time (if not more :)
Every mail in rebate I have ever applied for has required a UPC code off the box and more. Now, without a UPS code, no store will take stuff back. SO, Bestbuy is Simply Lying to make their case. This, Sir, in my book is much worse than shopping for discounts, which is quite legal in this country.
Liars make up 99% of american business. the otehr 1% periodically goes bankrupt.
The best way to have the salespeople make the lies convincing is to have them believe the lies themselves. It is cheaper to employ someone like that than employ a master salesman who could lie with a straight face since they usually work for larger commissions such as Real Estate.
When I bought a TV at Best Buy, the salesperson tried to sell me a Monster Surge Protector for like $70 or so. When I declined, he fed me this line of B.S. as to why I should buy it. I still declined.
THEN he tried to sell me the extended warranty. I declined again. He countered back by saying it was highly likely my TV would break within a year (it has been over two years now, past when the Best Buy warranty would have expired, and the TV still works just fine).
The thing is that he sounded genuine. I knew the words coming out of his mouth were pure BS, but I think he was trained to believe what he was saying was truth.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
How can you buy something and return it, with the UPC cut out of it, and essentially make ~$40 on the sale, then buy it back?
Whenever I had to return a rebated item, I got an exchange, not a refund.
Can anyone that works there explain this to me?
I've made a PDA purchase and a digital camera purchase at Future Shop over the last 1.5 years. Both times I've turned down the extended warranty, only to have an associate call on the manager who then tried to convince me to purchase the warranty.
After refusing the warranty in front of the manager, my purchase is processed but my name isn't logged into the computer and I'm warned by the employee that I *MUST* have my receipt in order to repair/exchange the item.
Any thoughts on why this is? The only theory I have going is that the employee would rather lose out on the commission and help their extended warranty % stats than log a sale that didn't have an extended warranty.
Look punk I was paid $7.00 an hour, received no training, etc., I was only 17. My mom did most my grocery shopping so I never even walked through the aisles of the store to buy things; outside of my section I had no idea where items where located. Since the produce section was near the entrance alot of wise-asses would ask me where things like bread were. What ever happened to looking, I swear, people are so lazy they seemed to expect me to shop for them. It is not like those were people who could not find things, they have signs at the tops of the aisles and bread is easy to find in supermarkerts. Also sometimes I had to handle the Floral section, I knew dick about flowers. I was not trained for my section in produce, the floral section was even worse, sometimes customers would say they wanted a certain flower and of course I could not even identify it! Do you know what an Agapanthus looks like?
What do you self righteous bastards expect. If you notice most supermarket chains pay people under 10 an hour, needless to say this ensures most of the workers are still in high school or college and will have no job loyalty. You have to work for 4 years at A&P at most positions(non-manager) to make $9.95 an hour. The turn-over rate is horrible at the A&P I worked, I worked there for a year, but outside of managers, most never work there that long, I was above the curve in the duration of my stay at that company. I hope you were joking with your comment about "how many customers did not come back thanks to me". These teenagers who are making near minumium wage, receiving no training do not know how to handle customer requests properly. Honestly no one does, it is the artistry of bullshitting, to deal with certain customers asinine questions.
I hate being wrong!
"Especially when they are discussing that people are re-selling the items on e-bay. That is capitalism at it's finest. The market is being highly efficient there, they just need to realize that communication and on-line auctioning have forced retailers to be more price competitive."
They are (ask a Walmart wage slave), and the trickle-down effect to suppliers (etc, etc) is why your job is going overseas.
But at least you'll be enjoying your cheap MP3 player from the comfort of your cardboard box.
Two things.
First: anyone who's read Malcolm Gladwell's _Tipping Point_ is familiar with what he refers to as human networking hubs. These people process and relay information to their friends and family and are often responsible for purchasing decisions not only for themselves but upwards 10-20 families.
I would venture to say that most of the people BB is actively trying to alienate are those type of people. Yes, those people will go to great lengths to manipulate rebates and pricematches and loss leaders to walk away from the store having spent as little money as possible. But these human deal hubs don't just pass on information about what BB would consider rip-off deals, they also pass on information about other products in the store.
I think what BB is really experiencing is what Wired covered in their last issue: brands mean piss in the information age. How much are these human hubs, these financial "tipping points" financially responsible for is hard to gauge, but I imagine BB will soon find out.
Secondly, what BB is experiencing is merely karmic retribution. What are rebates but a similar way to manipulate customers into paying more? It is boldly advertising one price and requiring a substantial amount of work to obtain. That rebates have pretty much maintained legality is beyond me. BB could stop offering rebates. They could stop pricematching. They could simply offer a product at a fair price and that be the end of it. But they don't, because these systems inherently take advantage of the consumer. Wal-mart, for all their sprawling corporate evil, are rarely on the deals sites because the price they advertise is the price you pay. So what's up BB's ass?
Well, the internet has empowered individuals to turn the tables on corporations like BB and take advantage of these manipulative systems on wide enough scale that it obviously causes BB execs to lose sleep and break par on the golf course.
I am a FWer, and I have walked out of BB with some pretty good deals. But I've used BB to buy dvds on opening day, I've bought several hundreds of dollars worth of electronics without finnegaling, and I've refrerred people to BB many times over. In fact, I planned to go buy Halo 2 from them tomorrow. Now, I'll be going somewhere else. I'll be visiting BB again, but when I do it will cost BB, and it will be paid for with untrackable cash.
Way to go, Brad. Enjoy your golf.
although I'm probably on their list of devil customers.
I've bought a lot of PC stuff there: UPS, hard drives, DVD ROMs, DVD R/W. Plus a lot of smaller stuff like CD media. Even bought my first copy of Red Hat there. And yes, I bought a lot of that stuff because of the rebates.
But a lot of the big items were returned or exchanged because they didn't work properly on my systems (sometimes under Linux, sometimes under Windows). And I never got a hassle from them about the return nor was I ever hit with a restocking fee.
And yes, I always received the rebate check for those rebated items I kept.
Of course, you are supposed to declare that purchase on you state tax return, but there is about as much chance of that as there is... well never mind.
Kerry voters can always voluntarily add extra to their tax bill, to help pay their fair share.
I went to Best Buy a while back to buy a memory card for my Playstation2. The sticker onthe shelf said $19.99. I got to the cashier and it rang up $24.99. I took the guy back and showed him the sticker on the shelf, with the same UPC code on the sticker as was on the package. He talked to the guy in the games department, removed the $19.99 sticker from the shelf, and told me the thing cost $24.99.
The lady at the customer service desk a few minutes later told me upon my asking that Best Buy's policy is to honor the sticker price on the shelf for those that saw that price, and only those coming after the sticker is changed are subject to the "correted" price sticker. But that cashier, he was adament that the thing would not be sold to me for the $19.99 advertized to me on the shelf.
Lucky me I get pissd off when someone is screwing with my wallet... The nice lady at the customer service desk gave me the sticker price I saw. I don't know what happened to the retard at the cash register, hopefully he got fired, but I doubt it.
I decided to post on this thread instead of moderate...I actually had a good experience with buying a computer from Best Buy
Since Laptops can be hit and miss with Linux compatibility, I actually got the manager at Best Buy to write me a guarantee that if Linux would not install correctly (and simply) I could return the laptop with no restocking fee.
What's funny though...is the tech people there didn't think Linux would work on the laptop because all of the drivers on it were for Windows. I had to remind them that the drivers would be erased and replaced with Linux drivers. It also killed their plan to sell me anti-virus software, MS Office, and other extras.
Mod points are pointless when you browse at -1.
Or maybe even some place like Smart & Final (a store that caters to small businesses and small resturants) or maybe a place like Costco. I bet you'll be able to buy 80 pounds of butter for a lower price than the sale price at the supermarket. Supermarkets are basically just large convenience stores.
My other first post is car post.
If you want to read about Best Buy and how it's run internally, please visit Best Buy Sux.
Worth the time to read.
Guys, I feel really sorry for Best Buy after reading this article. In fact, I'm ashamed of myself for buying those 25DVD-Rs for only 10 bucks...
I feel the sudden urge to go visit them and stock up on USB cables, spools of Cat-5 and monster cables!!
::cough::200% markup::cough::
In 1981 the company I was working for sent me to Boca Raton, Florida, to the big new IBM facility there that was manufacturing the as-yet-unannounced IBM Personal Computer. I was sent for both sales and service training, and it was a very interesting two weeks. One of the most important points that was driven home to me was, "Never prequalify your customer". In other words, the guy in the T-shirt and worn jeans may very well pull out his Visa and buy a computer on the spot, and the guy in the Armani suit may be a cheap bastard who wants you to spoon-feed him product info while he goes and buys it somewhere else. This from IBM, no less. Best Buy appears to be implementing a customer profiling system that goes directly against that premise. I guess that if you want service at a Best Buy nowadays you'd best put on a suit and tie and look like you have money.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I work at a large electronics retailer by the name of "Fry's". Best Buy is our direct competitor. Some of our differences are
*We have a no-rebate policy. Frys, the company, offers no rebates. All rebates are handled through the manufacturer. We do "instant rebates" instead.
*Our return policy is more lax. We offer 30-day return on most items, no restocking fees or open box fees.
*Nearly everything in our daily ad is a loss leader. Desktop systems only have about 5% profit, so when you see a desktop for $199, it's at nearly 25% below cost.
This is coming from a sales perspective. You definately see all types of shoppers in here. We have people that come in and buy what's in the ad, and only what's in the ad. They will circle multiple items and buy only those items to sell on ebay or give to friends or whatever. They come in two or three times a week.
Everytime they walk out the door, we lose money. But it's a necessary evil. Customers have come to expect low prices. The internet is forcing all retailer to lower prices. If some small shop out of Iowa and run a website with no overhead, he will charge bare minimum for his products, and the big chains have to compete.
Categorizing is nothing new. It's called "qualifying". If a customer comes in asking for the cheapest system we have, you show him the celerons and walk away. It's the sad truth, but if you work in a commissioned sales environment, the customer determines how much money you make. You would give a higher level of support to a person buying a 2 grand laptop than a $300 computer, then asks for a discount for buying 2.
Also, with the rebate thing, our store simply deducts the amount of the rebate from the credit if the item's returned. Does BB not do that?
For more information on how Best Buy is run internally, please visit this site. We had a discussion of how Reward Zone is a scam on the message board.
Yes, I know. Troll. But it's got to be said. This fucking community is always talking about big, evil companies, then I've read more information about Best Buy's marketing practices by people who obviously use them more than frequently. You are all corporate whores.
I don't respond to AC's.
"Using every loophole available isn't abuse. Its business. Do you think Best Buy's accountants look at some obscure tax regulation and say "well, this would save us alot of money, but it really wasn't meant to be used this way"?"
The home business deduction for what's really your hobby. The deduction for your vacation to Bermuda (you did attend that seminar, didn't you?)
"I don't think people [The individual] owe corparations any more moral consideration than corporations typically excersize towards people [The government]." [Emphasis mine]
Well aside from the fact you're talking about two different "people". There's the little touch of irony to your post, when considering both the "individual" and corporations don't like government. As you rush to the defense of government. "Oh lookie, corporations being inconsiderate towards government. Let's rush to their defense, and be inconsiderate to corporations."
and if they screw me over, I can choose to shop anywhere I want. Thats why I no longer shop at circuit city. Bunch of lazy idiots in there, I swear to god.
Around a year ago, my wife and I were shopping for an HDTV ready wide screen TV. We had narrowed the choice to several models, including the 42" Hitatchi. The TV was advertised in several venues in our city including a shop named "TV City" (or something like that).
We did NOT want to purchase the unit over the Internet -- prefering to deal with a local vendor (just in case it wasn't suitable, or it had problems, whatever).
We went to see the retailer, and were told "Yes, we confirm the price". Also, we were NOT allowed to "test-drive" the TV (the manager refused to make the remote available, or feed any signal to the TV). We informed the manager that we would walk... still no satisfaction, and out the door we went.
To Future Shop (owned by Best Buy). They had the same TV, and honored the price. We used part of the difference to purchase the "Extended Warantee", including in-home alignment (coming up soon). One of the few times we have purchased such a programme, because it is generally not worth it, but we have small kids -- damage could easily happen.
The sales 'droid left us alone, making the shopping experience reasonably pleasurable.
So, good price, good service.
And, we are happy with the TV (although my wife now thinks we should have gone for a larger one).
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
If theres one company that I hate worse than Best Buy, it has to be Fry's Electronics. So, I devised a way to screw them both. Here's how:
1) Find loss leader in Fry's Electronics flier (typically a new release marquee video game)
2) Purchase Fry's loss leader at Best Buy. Use Best Buy's price-matching policy.
This way, I screw two companies with one purchase. Fry's misses the opportunity to sell me more items, and Best Buy takes the loss. Of course, this all ends when I get labeled a "frequent returner", but that's when I'll just start paying with cash and picking ever more clever monikers when filling out the price-match form ("Here's your 'Pikmin 2', Dr. Oppenheimer")
Most of us already know that the PSP/PRP program Best Buy's core business relies on is a big scam/waste of money/etc. I'm not sure if many people here know however that as per federal law extended warranties are returnable at any within the coverage time for a pro-rated refund. If your friends/loved ones/etc. bought a PSP it is not too late for them to return it. Even if returned within six months you will end up getting the majority of your money back. Some other dirty secrets about the PSP/PRP that few employees even know about: 1) The PSP/PRP can is only valid when the product is used in a non-commercial enviroment. You sold all those business users a useless plan! 2) On monitors and laptops, the "pixel damage"/"pixelation" coverage matches the warranty's coverage. Despite what your peers tell you, there is no benefit over the manu. warranty in these cases. 3) On laptops, most manu. cover the battery. L-ion batteries typical life is 4 years, NOT two years. "PSP = free battery"-line is @#%$. 4) The Samsung series of monitors all have a 3-year manu. warranty. There is absolutely no advantage what-so-ever for getting a PSP on these monitors. As such, it sickens me how hard other salespeople try for the PSP on these monitors, or even why Corp has this monitor as PSP-applicable. 5) Parts that are used to repair electronics under the PSP are refurbished...another way to say used. 6) Best Buy is authorized to repair most PSP-applicable stuff when it is under manu. warrenty. I've seen the "you have to ship it out to the manu. to get it fixed, both ways!" to promote the PSP. 7) The PSP is structured in such a way that it covers you at just the time you would be least likely to use it. For instance, laptops are most likely to fail within the first year and then after the fifth year after purchasing. The PSP covers you in year 2 and 3, the years you're LEAST likely to use it. There are plenty of other things I didn't cover, but you get the idea.
Most of us already know that the PSP/PRP program Best Buy's core business relies on is a big scam/waste of money/etc. I'm not sure if many people here know however that as per federal law extended warranties are returnable at any within the coverage time for a pro-rated refund. If your friends/loved ones/etc. bought a PSP it is not too late for them to return it. Even if returned within six months you will end up getting the majority of your money back.
Some other dirty secrets about the PSP/PRP that few employees even know about:
1) The PSP/PRP can is only valid when the product is used in a non-commercial enviroment. You sold all those business users a useless plan!
2) On monitors and laptops, the "pixel damage"/"pixelation" coverage matches the warranty's coverage. Despite what your peers tell you, there is no benefit over the manu. warranty in these cases.
3) On laptops, most manu. cover the battery. L-ion batteries typical life is 4 years, NOT two years. "PSP = free battery"-line is @#%$.
4) The Samsung series of monitors all have a 3-year manu. warranty. There is absolutely no advantage what-so-ever for getting a PSP on these monitors. As such, it sickens me how hard other salespeople try for the PSP on these monitors, or even why Corp has this monitor as PSP-applicable.
5) Parts that are used to repair electronics under the PSP are refurbished...another way to say used.
6) Best Buy is authorized to repair most PSP-applicable stuff when it is under manu. warrenty. I've seen the "you have to ship it out to the manu. to get it fixed, both ways!" to promote the PSP.
7) The PSP is structured in such a way that it covers you at just the time you would be least likely to use it. For instance, laptops are most likely to fail within the first year and then after the fifth year after purchasing. The PSP covers you in year 2 and 3, the years you're LEAST likely to use it.
There are plenty of other things I didn't cover, but you get the idea.
...same difference. (at least that's my take on it)
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." -- Dr. Buckaroo Bonzai, PhD
Future Shop is actually owned by Best Buy.
How did you get written up:
Did a customer actually complain about not being greeted?(I can not imagine such people exist, who would waste a small part of their life to complain over such petty things, over being "snubbed" for not being greeted.)
Or, did your management write you up after noticing?
Also what is the penalty for not greeting? I have trouble understanding the whole greeting phenomeon of department stores, I wonder what punishment they dole out for not greeting.
1) I buy my CDs at Best Buy. $9.99 is imposible to beat. (yes, i have mainstream taste).
2) Unconscionable means "holy crap that is f'ing evil! You shouldn't be allowed to get away with that!" e.g., knocking over a grandmother on her blindside, coming around to the front to help her up and lifting her wallet out of her purse as you do it is unconscionable.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
seriously all you news reading nerds, get a clue. If you don't like the way you are treated... just leave. Tell all you know and never go back.
Best Buy in Omaha had to pay some dude 25,000 after kicking him out of the store for writing prices on a piece of paper. If they are really so bad then they will go out of business.
Actually, there's no saving to be had. I live in Canada and dairy items are "protected" goods; dairy farmers have quotas and guaranteed prices whatnot. In fact, grocery stores here apparently sell butter and milk at their cost price. Buying directly from a dairy gains me nothing price-wise. I've checked into that before.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
This is slightly off topic but a testament to the quality of service best buy offers (and a tip how to beat them at their own game). I was at a best buy looking for blank minidiscs I needed to use that day. The store was crowded and no employee seemed interested in helping me locate them even after I tried flagging some down. Then, after picking up the most expensive digital camera I could find and literally after about two seconds of pushing the buttons and fumbling around with it, an employee was sidled up right next to me. Asking how they could help me, I then asked where their minidiscs were. After a puzzled look, they finally walked me to the obscure section of the store where they were located.
This is just profit from the consumer's angle, the amount saved over suggested retail or the prevailing price. I say go for it!
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
doh. sorry.
My other first post is car post.
...you can always go to Fry's. They treat 100% of their customers like crap.
...you can bet I'm not going to recommend going to them.
I've seen this argument come up a few times. Best Buy probably reasons that if 5% of the people they demarket are referrers, that is acceptable collateral for unloading the other 95% bad customers. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that I can see how it might make good business sense... depending on how the numbers work out in the end. Actually, I expect this trend will continue until it overshoots some kind of customer backlash equilibrium or until these companies run afowl consumer rights laws in a major $$ way.
It is their problem, because he won't shop there again. And 200 people who read what he said will think twice, too.
What is your estimate of how much money this one Slashdot story lost Best Buy? Mine is $2,000,000.
You hit the nail right on the head. I picked up on this a while ago and love it!
This is how it started for me:
Safeway ran a sale a while back on whole chickens. Now I have a big family, so this is worth doing because you get a lot from one chicken. Went to the store and literally filled a shopping cart full of them. Nothing posted anywhere said anything about limits. When I got to the checkout they said that was too many. (They had a ton of them and only a 2 day sale.) They had lots of new items in the store that day, along with the usual food demo people showing off expensive items.
Clearly they were thinking most people would grab a couple chickens along with a number of other items to balance out the sale. Clearly they were wrong. I've got a big freezer. BTW, if you have a family, this is probably one of the very best investments you can make. The food savings made possible pay for it in just a few months. By the time you don't need it anymore, you will literally save thousands.
I asked how many was too many and the checker actually said they flag high percentage savings. Anything over about 30 percent savings needed to have an override by the manager, unless the dollar amount of the total purchase was less than about $100.00 or so, in which case they could "just let it go through". As if that's a favor to me! Anyway, I found out they also flag specific savings, meat being one of them. My cart was only meat and the chicken was about 60 percent discounted. Total red flag, no doubt about it.
Manager came over and said their policy was about 10 items at that discount rate. (After looking at what I wanted to purchase) I needed to go put the rest back and only buy 10. When I asked them to show me where they had that published, they said it was in their corporate operations manual and that it was not for consumers (read cash cows) to see. When I asked why they just did not specify the limit, he told me that depends on inventory at hand. WTF?!? Obviously they had plenty of chicken, so something else was at work here; namely, I was getting too good of a deal. Time to just get this thing done and go home.
I told them I was going to have to make lots of small purchases then. They got petty and said I would have to go through the line for each bundle of chicken. Busy day, pretty long lines, with mine getting pretty long in particular. The lady behind was pissed! (She did have two chickens that I could see along with a couple hundered dollars in non-sale items.)
Lined up the kids, handed them some cash, and began to pile all the chicken into little 10 unit piles. Might as well play ball right?
The look on the managers face was priceless! He actually said it was unfair to put him in a position to have to tell the kids no! I said simply, "then I suggest you don't."
After about 10 seconds, I heard a murmured "fuck it", followed by a hasty conversation with the checker. Soon we were on our way with the chicken, all in one transaction. I have a receipt with a 60 percent savings totalling over $100.00. The computer would not allow his override, another person had to come over and use theirs.
That happened right after they started their club card thing. Since then, I have been through the same deal many times with no regrets. We actually have two cards. Whenever I use that card, it gets flagged all the time, but the other one doesn't. I just know there it's stamped "non-preferred customer". The name on that card does not get any offers in the mail either.
Another pet peeve: Stores that fuck with the per-unit pricing to make more expensive items harder to distinguish. They will use some odd unit to make the mental math difficult combined with "sales" on the expensive ones that actually still cost more!
Sorry for the rant, but I'm with you all the way. All things being equal, they are quite happy to take your money. Seems fair enough to grab some of theirs as well.
Blogging because I can...
There's nothing in the privacy laws that prohibits collecting information. You probably can't require the information, and you certainly can not collect the information for one reason (e.g. extended warranties) and use it for another, like selling it to someone or otherwise mishandling it so that other firms get a hold of it.
I think Radioshack stopped asking because too many people got annoyed by it. I don't think they did anything useful with the information anyway. E.g. some co's send special deals to good customers. They were so pushy with it, they probably couldn't use the data anyways - garbage in, garbage out!
Re GP:
The salesman still gets his commission. They don't need to get your name, they just need the salesman's ID on the transaction.
OT: I recently went to buy an all-in-one printer at Futureshop. I pointed at a specific multifunction printer and told the salesman that "I'll take one". The salesman THEN begins a salesmans pitch, "this is an excellent model, it's like three devices in one..." Sometimes, I wonder what having an average IQ really means.
I have a friend who got screwed by a company that refused to replace a defective high power transmitting tube. From that day, whenever he was EVER buying a tube, he would call the Sales Manager up from that company to tell him how their shit attitude had cost them yet ANOTHER sale! A bunch of us signed on with him too. After a year or two, (and several hundred tube sales lost; these suckers cost thousands by the way) the Manager said: ENOUGH! What can I do to re-gain your trust? That company now provides the best service of all tube companies. The moral of the story? Don't just hit 'em in the pocketbook - TELL THEM you are!
no text. i pity the fool
Subsidising consoles is how it's done. The money is made off of the game license fees, not the consoles. Most new consoles are a $100+ hit for each one sold, they make it up on games. As time goes on they level off, and sometimes even make a little money, but price is a big selling point of consoles so they try to keep the price down as much as they can.
To be fair--and give credit where it is due--I'm pretty sure Wal-mart is actually the leader in this area.
BTW, I never received a $50 rebate from Best Buy; they don't get any business from me anymore. (I moved out of state; it wasn't worth the hassle of going after them. Bastards.)
~Idarubicin
I go in to pick up GTA:SA, get the game, and get one of their 'Gamer Giftcards' (a coupon on the back of the case gives you 5 dollars off a game price $20 dollars or more). You go up to the register and make a pile for the gift card, and then leave the out of reach of the clerk. You buy the gift card using your Best Buy CC, putting fifty bucks on the card. This gives you $100 dollars towards the new minimum. You then take the gift card and the aforementioned coupon from the gift card case and proceed to check out with the game. The coupon from the back of the gift card takes care of tax (effectively) and you use your reward zone card with the gift card to buy the game, giving you $150 towards the new minimum and earning you $5 in Best Buy bucks for a $50 dollar purchase. The decent clerks just get pissed about having to do two transactions and send you on your way, but the extra time this takes is more than made up for by the joy in watching someone who takes clerkin' at Best Buy way too seriously scan your cards over and over again trying to figure out a way to prevent you from doing this. I love leaving their checkout and looking back at the line that has formed behind me while I give them the old lady with a coupon act. Just out of spite, any purchase over 20 bucks now results in a gift card purchase first.
Sweet Jesus! To live in your American capitalism you have to be some sort of a genius even to buy a simple game! Here in Soviet Russia I just (1) go to the store and (2) buy the damn thing, by which I mean a simple exchange of cash and things I buy, with no further consequences and no strings attached. In Soviet Russia YOU own things you buy!!!
Actually, I remember when here in Russia we also had to use coupons to buy anything, but I was sure that in free market capitalist America it is not the case and the customer is the one who has the power.
shopping carts cost $100???
Better than Flickr - Manage, Share, Archive
It's that extended warntees rarely, if ever, get used. Most electronics fails quite quickly, or after many years of use. I've had monitors fail on me after a few days (or right out of the box) and after 8+ years, but basically never in the 2-4 year window.
So, in nearly all cases, they just take the extra money and run. If the device fails right away, normal warentee, they give you a new one and the manufacturer compensates them. If it doesn't, it usually lasts and they never hear from you again about it.
Extended warentees/service contracts really only make sense in a few cases:
1) If the thing is so critical you can't be without it. About the only thing that falls in this range are servers. That's the reason to pay IBM a bigass fee to maintain a mainframe that will be quickly outclassed be comoddity technology: It does something that you just can't be without.
2) If doing without it would be difficult, and it would be a financial hardship or impossibility to replace. A Bussiness laptop would qualify. If it breaks, you need a new one and to not have it is a problem, but if your bussiness is small, you can't necessiarly afford to drop $2k-$3k for a new laptop.
3) If you would have dificulty getting the device fixed and you want assurance someone will do it for you. Home computers would qualify here. If you are computer unsavvy and you want someone backing it up, it can be worth it. I have my parents do that. Generally, Dell gets the money and doesn't have to do anything for it, but if something does break when I'm not available to help (and it's happened) they get it fixed. That's worth it to them.
However in general, they are a ripoff since you'll never use them. Your bigscreen TV is likely to die within it's first couple months, or not for several years. Getting a 3 year warentee doesn't get you anything except a lighter wallet.
1. Remove groceries from cart.
2. Lift cart over your head, wheels up & walk across painted line/transmitting antenna.
3. Place groceries back into cart.
But is it good business? They're looking at 20% of their customer base being "bad". Assuming 5% of those are "referrers" like me, that's 1% of their customer base. Except that, suppose I'm referring 10 people to them. Not just any 10 people, but usually 10 "good" customers by their profile. If I calculate that right, chasing away that 1% that contains me costs them another 10% of their customer base and 12.5% of their "good" customers. Those don't sound like winning numbers to me.
As you said, the market will decide in the end. I figure it'll take a few years but BB'll eventually end up going out of business, still wondering what happened to all their customers.
"The thing that worries me the most about this policy is the concept of quickly "pigeonholing" customers and treating them a certain way depending on how you have categorized them."
You mean like how we pigeonhole people whom we're trying to "sell" Linux to?
You buy the new Toshiba Qosmio laptop with the 17 inch display, built in video capture card and instant on DVD and CD utilities, currently 3000 at bestbuy. you don't buy the service plan, instead putting that 300 in a savings account at 5% interest. 1.5 years later, the loose heatsink you didn't know about finally slips that extra quarter of an inch off the processor, causing the laptop to slowly over heat and burn up the motherboard over the next six months. the laptop, at two years old, is now dead AND well out of warranty. how much has that 300 grown? enough to buy you a new 3000 dollar laptop? i don't think so. same senario, this time with the service plan. you walk into bestbuy, the techs check it out, you're matched up with a Sales Clerk who helps you pick out a NEW 3000 DOLLAR LAPTOP. I've been that clerk before. if it's a product we don't carry anymore and it's bad enough that it can't be fixed, you get a new computer. period.
Rise up in the cafeteria and STAB them with your plastic forks!
Leave out the "ratty old clothes" next time and see what effect that has.
Free Hans!
This article is so blatantly uninformed as to actual information that it's easy to see why the trolls attack Best Buy so badly. You have to realize a few major things here, and doing so will help you understand that things aren't quite as Demon/Angel as the article makes them out to be. First off, this "profiling" BB is being accused of, is crap. They're tailoring stores and associates to the area around them, not to specific customers. In Atlanta, we have a number of stores, one of which is being converted to the 'Barry' type listed in the article. Specifically, it's being converted because the store itself is situated in a high-income area, and the store itself has shown a history of large dollar value transactions. Now, when you come in the door at a BB, you don't go through a profiling process to see whether we should try and sell you products or not. When I work the sales floor, I'm as willing to spend time explaining a technology the customer has no interest in buying that day, as I am spending time selling a product to a customer willing to buy. I'm going to ask you questions, yes, but it's more for me to figure out what you're looking for than it is for me to 'pigeonhole' you so neatly that I can disregard your personality. That's not what we're trained to do by any means. I might use these questions to recommend additional products above and beyond what you expected to look at, but that's part of my job, and you don't have to buy anything you don't want. I've had more than one annoying customer who *refused* to buy a printer cable for their new printer, only to get home and realize it was totally non-functional without that cable. Having asked them ahead of time, I knew they did not have the proper cable to hook the unit up, and did my best to explain this to them.
Now, please understand that BB is a profit-based corporation. We prefer to make money on transactions, and that is one of the major goals of the store in the first place. Show me a major retail store who's primary goal isn't profit, and I'll show you a store going out of business. Having said that, profit is not the ONLY goal to which associates are looking toward. Customer satisfaction plays a (generally) equal role to profit, and it is the employee's job to balance that equation out. Now, when a choice comes forward between two equal options, obviously we're going to recommend the one which produces greater profit for the company, but if they're really equal in the first place, then the choice doesn't matter, does it? I see a lot of posts talking about how employees lie or cheat customers for store profit and advancement. This is NOT an accepted practice, nor is it indicative of BB specifically since all companies can suffer from this issue. At the same time, working in Customer Service and Geek Squad divisions has given me what is probably the best view on Customer Satisfaction issues, which is basically BB taking a loss of profit to solve a problem for a customer. I've authorized a brand new laptop for a customer who had theirs sent off to a vendor who 'lost' it in paperwork for three months (average repair time: 5 weeks), and then taken the heinous margin hit of having to sell a laptop as Used, and Missing Parts. We do what we can for customers, if we can, and if it's not such a horrible loss to the store that it would be an issue to accomplish.
The customer is not always right, better than 75% of the time they're completely wrong or totally uninformed. There are dozens of posts here saying that the user hates employees at retail stores because they don't know enough. I can sympathize, but you have to realize that the average customer knows a tenth of what the employee knows, who might know a tenth of what YOU know. So in reality, the majority of customers will look at an employee as a knowledgable person, because for the customer's needs, they are!
More than half the posts in this thread are rebate-bitching related. Get over it already, folks. Rebates are instituted by the manufacturer more often than anything else,
They spend that $500 once, then recycle it into endless free components.
That's why they're despised and blacklisted.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Speaking of driving customers away, Radio Shack used to ask every customer for their address before completing a sale. I always refused, but a couple of times the clerk actually refused to sell me the item if I didn't give my address. They were the only source in a small town, so I made one up.
But even now, almost 20 years later, I will still avoid them at all costs when I need a component/cable.
They don't let you return stuff with the UPC code removed. Which is one of the problems I have with rebates, as they want you to send them within two weeks of purchase, which blocks any recourse you should have if the item breaks within the 30 days you could otherwise return it.
They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts.
;( and turn your demands down ! You always resemble our son of a beach to us(TM) !
How dare they ! Listen up you evil terrorist hoarders, you shouldn't take advantage of our offers ! You should just say "no thanks, I'd rather pay full price for the good you just offered at half price ! If you really want I'll pay double for half more" and feel good and proud cause you don't know, but you just helped the national economy by being a massive loser.
They load up on "loss leaders," severely discounted merchandise designed to boost store traffic, then flip the goods at a profit on eBay.
How DARE you make a profit ? These products are supposed to show that we can afford to lose some money and help you, that's how compassionate we are with scum like you ! Ohhh, but noooo you don't want to return us the favor by paying more for paper and ink cartridge of that $30 printer you just bought ! How dare you make a connection between printer ink and paper prices, that's how selfish and untrustfull you really are !
They slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge.
That's only because we're soooo deeply compassionate we just can't say NO to you
"They can wreak enormous economic havoc," says Mr. Anderson.
And spread diseases, cholera, terrorism and all other 69 unspeakable sins ! Told you the evils and the porno are on the internets !
I know one of these people and she really abuses costco, returning DVDs after watching them, even returns TVs every six months using similar approaches. She's a true devil customer and she's not helping anyone in their purchasing decisions! She's also not sophisticated on computer hardware.
No, your just a dick, and your anecdote is a troll. What dairy section does not have cheese, your friend was no better than me, his concern was just to get rid of the customers asking questions. At the store I worked Produce was near the front so people who were wise asses would ask where items were without even looking out of their laziness.
Why was I overpaid? Because I was bad with customer service? You get what you pay for sometimes. You pay low wages, you get high schoolers doing the turntable with the job of the month and no motivation, there is no future with such jobs.
No one was good with customer service, beside managers, at least I spoke English, many workers did not even have a knowledge of English that worked at the Bakery, Produce, and the Deli, you cannot be discerning when you pay low wages it seems. Rarely customers would ask things like "Do you know when will be comeing in?" As if we had meetings were the workers were briefed by the Produce Manager of the timetable deliveries of the stock.
Well, he does link to the Wall street journal article on that page, so if he's tring to rip it off he's doing a very bad job of hiding it.
You are probably one of those dicks who would just ask three different workers where something is as oppossed to looking, as if that would take less time than actually shopping yourself like an adult. Bread is not hard to find in a supermarket and to ask for bread is to admit: "Hi, I am a lazy yuppie who needs my hand holded while crossing, I know bread is easy to find in a supermarket it takes up lots of shelf space at most markets and it says at the top of the isles where everything is, but regardless I am too important to be bothered looking. Thank you."
Get lost you over-important bitch.
You should be researching or looking into what you buy, thus more knowledgeable about what you are going to buy. The salesperson is just interested in selling high margin items, or pimping whatever is store policy to pimp at the moment, making a commission, etc.
Do you honestly expect a sales associate at a department store to care more about how you look than you do, or a Best Buy worker to care more about your next TV than you? Do not be crazy! No one cares about your own interests more than you, certainly not someone with a conflict of interest in trying to earn the biggest commission off you.
Costco's CEO was on TV awhile ago explaining his company's success, and also explaining how he only makes about $300K a year, compared to other Fortune 500 companies whose CEOs are making tens of millions a year, he is one of the lowest paid CEOs, and he's proud of it. For years the board has been voting million dollar bonuses to him, and he turns them down year after year, because he believes the real employees deserve the raises and the customers deserve good prices.
That's the kind of place I want to shop. Fuck Best Buy, fuck Wal-Mart, and fuck Sam's.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
If you frequent any kind of hardware forums, you'll see that it still happens all the time. In fact, it happens worse than that.
At least the DCs in your example returned a working card, which could then be resold. Though, yes, they had incurred other costs to the company.
The ones I'm running into are the kind that will _break_ a card or a CPU, for example via extreme overclocking and overvolting (i.e., thermally fry it) and then RMA it and ask for a replacement.
Or install some ludicrious cooler on it, mechanically break the card in the process (e.g., crunching the siliconm but damaging the PCB also isn't impossible for the determined overclocker.) Then put the stock cooler back on and RMA it. On account that it's nigh impossible to prove what's really been done to it.
I've seen into advice which even was as cynical as to state "yeah, AMD will know that you thermally fried the chip, but they send you one replacement anyway. So go ahead and raise the voltage as high as the motherboard lets you. It's safe. You'll get a replacement chip from AMD."
Which, sorry, is as dishonest as it gets. It's actually planning to mis-use and probably break a product, then shaft the company to pay for their hobby.
What can I say? I'm thoroughly disgusted.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I guess you got lucky you were able to get a manager that was that gutsy, considering Linux doesn't discretely work or not work on a given laptop (unless it kernel panics on the installer for example). I wonder what his decision would be if Linux installed and generally worked well, but without sound and a natural way to get wireless working (without a weird Windows NDIS wrapper or something).
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
I love it when someone tries to sell me the extended warranty by claiming that the product often breaks. I normally tell them that, if it does, I'll take them to small claims court to recover repair costs under the Sale of Goods Act.
This states that goods must be "of suitable quality and fit for the purpose for which it was sold". Essentially, if I spend GBP500 on a TV which breaks after 14 months, it is not of suitable quality and the retailer (not the manufacturer) is obliged to repair/replace it.
Predictive text is shiv!
Why stop there? I'll be buying that $10,000 home entertainment system, thank you very much! If they're on commission, I might be able to squeeze 2 or 3 different saleswomen at the same time!
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
One of the co-managers kind of liked me because I listened to Van Halen, Pantera, Metallica, just like him. He told me one day how much the store pulled in pure profit. It was something over $90,000. 30 days a month, 365 days a year, that is alot of profit.
Managers had to get a certain amount of sales for their section. Which of course was stupid. If people nearby do not feel like buying as much milk because of Mad Cow, I would not want to work in diary with the diary manager riding on me. Supermarket stockers should not be salesmen.
1a. Do a wheelie
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Costco always had guys standing at the exit with a hole puncher to check the receipt against your cart contents since the 80s (back when they were Price Club). Surely they were first in this area, even if they didn't flat out rummage through your crap.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Don't you love it when the store's staff undermines the quality of their own merchandise? Makes you feel real confident about browsing their goods.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
This is SO not my problem. The GP is right: they advertise my cable line as 600kbps, 24h/d and I *will* use 600kbps, 20h/d to my fullest capacity. When you buy something, you are entitled to that you bought. If the seller is advertising a service he cannot provide its NOT MY PROBLEM.
Obviously (I was ISP manager for 4 years) they can project average-use all they want, but they must take the heavy- (nicked devil- by BBY) users seriously. There is another point: heavy-users are normally opinion-formers... for each one of those you lose, you will lose other prospective users. I, for instance, know that if I dis-recommend an ISP in my town, 20 to 40 people will not sign up to it or even will get out of it. So, my ISP better treat me well. They don't allow incoming connections to 25, 80 and others, and it's all right -- it's in the contract I signed initially. But... if they start capping me below what I am entitled (600kbps), then they will take heavy damage.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
"Grocery stores usually operate on razor thin margins, too--their profit is maybe one or two percent of sales. "
That's the scam they pull.
Grocery stores are set up with a master distribution system that is one paper company with each store being another paper company.
The distribution center sells at what amounts to a premium to the grocery store and makes the profit. The stores themselves sell at a slight margin (as you mention) and then either break-even or lose money.
Why? Because there are tax benefits to being set up this way. Its a way to increase profits.
This is not illegal or immoral, but please... save the sympathy for the homeless.
I'll go one better on this one. I went to OfficeMax to pick up a USB 2.0 hub that was on sale with a rebate as well making it free. We have two within 5 miles of where I live. At the first one I simply asked if they had them. The manager told me they had only 4 stocked and they sold right away that morning. I went to the other one, but since everyone was busy I went straight to the aisle, saw what I wanted, and went to checkout.
When the cashier rung it up, it didn't come up on sale. I mentioned this and showed him the ad and he looked at the box, the register, and ad, scanning the three and says, "They're two different SKUs."
I say, "But it's the same thing."
"There must be something different."
"What could it be? It's the hub, the power supply, an A-B USB cable, and the owner's manual."
"Let me see if there are any approved substitutions."
He grabs a bundle of papers, locks his register and starts walking to the merchandise aisles. I follow as he's flipping to the right page. He figures out there are two other appreved items (It's still 62.5% off without the rebate) but neither is in the store.
We walk back to the register and he fumbles around (He obviously doesn't want a void on his record). Meanwhile, we have gotten the assistant manager's attention. As he's telling me that he can't change the price himself manually, she comes up behind him and asks, "What's the problem?"
We each fill her in on our relevant part of the story so far and she grabs her own copy of the ad, the package and turns the register display. She scans each twice and says........"The SKU's different." Repeat the conversation above, except that the cashier interupts, telling her we've already looked for the subs and they're out. Still, she has to look for herself. She comes back 5 minutes later and says, "I'm sorry, but I can't sell that to you for that price. I don't know what's different, but to our computer, they are two different items. Do you still want it?"
"For forty dollars, regular price?"
"Yes."
"No."
"OK. Sorry then. You know what you could do is see if it's available online."
"I could, but I was going to buy it with a gift card. You can't buy online with a gift card."
"You can check if it's available online, then call the 800 number and order from there. They'll just take the number off the card. It's the same warehouse."
"I'll do that. It's weird that they won't take the gift card online if it's just the number."
"I know."
So at home I check the web site and lo and behold there it is. The same picture as in the ad and the SKU matches the ad and the rebate form. Fantasic. It's in stock....but not on sale. grrrr.
I check out the manufacturer's web site to see if they have more than one USB 2.0 hub. They don't and no SKU listed. The picture is the same as in the ad.
Since I was going to call anyways, I ring up the 800 number. The guy answers, I tell him what I want and he gives me the regular price. I give him the short version of the story thus far explaining that the ad says it's on sale.
"What ad?"
"The one in the circular in the Sunday paper."
He says, "The newspaper ads are regional. We get this all the time. Would you still like to get that?"
"For forty dollars, regular price? Plus Shipping and Handling?"
"Yes."
"No."
grrrr.
I decide to wait until Thursday when the stores get their shipments and go back to the second store.
Walking in, I spot the manager. I ask her if they got their shipment. They did. Did they get any USB 2.0 hubs in. The papers she's holding is the invoice as it turns out. She flips through it, and says no. She guesses what I'm after and says that she set up the sale on Saturday night and they didn't have any in stock then in any case. She calls the other store for me to see if they g
In the last month I did some work on my PC and since there was a Best Buy near my job I went there about 3 times looking for what I thought would be some boiler plate items.
All three times they didn't have any of them.
Of the parts they did have they had only one choice in brands.
The stuff mentioned in the article I am not sure how I feel about, but I know I will not be shopping at Best Buy again.
It has literally been a waste of my time to go there.
It seems like their merchandise is more befitting of a circuit city.
I'm looking for a computer/computer accessories/parts emporium.
Thankfully I live within a medium drive of microcenter
I found the nicknames that Best Buy staff gives to customers quite degrading.
Anyone for coming up with nicknames for Best Buy and the type of staff they have there?
- the showroom guy who couldn't answer a tech question to save his life or answers them obviously wrong?
- the cashier who can barely speak English?
- the 300 low IQ twit who acts as their walmart greeter?
- the IT fuckup who can't get a real job?
Not a good idea... example:
I was shopping for a new car 3 years ago. Wearing jeans, T-shirt and dirty trainers I went into a Vauxhall (UK) dealer and asked to test drive a Coupe Special edition at around £16,000. I got a grunt from the Senior Sales Manager and on pressing the issue he then waved me outside saying "Take a look at one in the lot, there's a yellow one out there somewhere".
I left, walked down the road to Audi where I walked in and was offered a cup of tea. A nice young lady talked to me for 10 minutes about my options, arranged a test drive the next day (which I took the car out ALONE...!) and when I got back from that I signed on the dotted line to order a car for £2,000 more than I would have paid to Vauxhall.
Vauxhall lost alot of business due to their "senior" salesman dismissing me. In addition, as I was signing on the dotted line another gentleman next to me was busy putting down £45,000 for a rather gorgeous Sports Saloon - he was also wearing ripped jeans and trainers.
They're much bigger than you. Therefore, on average, what's good for them is good for both of you, and therefore good for you as well.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Are Best Buy a bit like PC World? Not exactly on topic, but just curious.
Sam's Club (the Wal-Mart equivalent of Costco) had a "check the receipt against the contents of the cart" policy years before I'd ever heard of Best Buy
... and be pursued into the parking lot by some 18 year old wanna be rent-a-cop: "Sir... sir... (pant) I can't let you go without checking your bag. (pant)" To which I give 'em my best shit-eatin grin and say you and what army are going to make me?
Sams may have put a cart checker at the door, but Best Buy moved the entire loss prevention office to the front door... video monitors and all. One thing that is fun is to just walk by the loss prevention guy
-- $G
BB needs a new strategy that I guarantee WILL work with their valued customers, ie 18-34 old male tech-no-geeks.
Just hire ravishing sales girls with skimpy outfits who bend over a lot as they demonstrate the latest Plasma screen.
Works at Hooters, why not here ??
To be fair--and give credit where it is due--I'm pretty sure Wal-mart is actually the leader in this area.
Wal-Mart offers a decent long term employment program and affordable health insurance. Best Buy likes to brag about "no commission sales reps". That is so they can pay $7-$9 per hour for what Circuit City, Sears, Frye's Lowes, (hell even guitar center and sam ash pay their moonlighting musicians more) and others pay an average of $14-$!8/hr for including commission. If you work at Best Buy as a blue-shirt for more than six months you are a complete and total idiot because you could be working for the cell phone shop in the mall making the same hourly plus $15 per activation... actually be trained and put up with less crap from management.
Recommendation for any Blueshirt... take a stack of resumes and go talk to the stores surrounding best buy. The 50% raise will offset the loss of the 10% employee discount.
-- $G
"Walking up to any manager, however, quickly reveals that common sense prevails."
At the bestbuy where I live, they are *all* managers. Ask one pimply faced kid to see a manager, and s/he will get another pimply faced kid. Once, I did this about 8 times, and got one kid after another. Asking to speak to somebody's direct supervisor gets the same results.
I was at a kinko's yesterday, and I overheard one employee instructing another: ". . . if the ask for a manager, just tell them you are the manager."
I earn a reasonable amount of money, more than enough to not have to worry about clipping coupons, but on the other hand I dislike paying more than I have to on things.
That said, I am very often willing to pay a premium for convenience. So, I go to two kinds of shops, depending on mood, time available, need, etc.:
(1) the deep discount rock bottom type place; I expect no service or knowledgeable staff, I don't intend to return the product (as I know I'll probably get screwed); this applies for most PC-related stuff I buy.
(2) is the type of place I go to to buy suits, furniture, and consumer goods about which I know a reasonable amount, but where it's not just a quick in-out-finish. I want to be greeted with a smile, served coffee, and not given any bullshit, then thanked and shown the door.
I will not tolerate any crossing over--i.e. deep-discount places that try to actively fuck me over or act arrogant and above its station--there are plenty of others down the road. Nor will I suffer an expensive shop that's snooty and does not pay attention to me as a customer.
If I, at any point, get the feeling that I may be treated with suspicion, arrogance, or any other nasties like this, I just go elsewhere. If it's really bad, I let the manager know it and walk out. It costs me nothing but a tiny bit of time.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
I hear you can get an operation for that.
that that is is that that is not is not
"with reasonable prices?"
Walmart has fairly high prices. People must live in caves where they think everything costs $100. Every time I go in Walmart, I always think "This stuff is too expensive".
Seriously.
It just won't work. I've played the rebate game many dozens of times, maybe over one hundred times.
You have to cut off the UPC, making it impossible to return. No, Virgina, they *won't* accept a photocopy of the UPC - at least, you would be a fool to count on it. It's enough of a fight to actually get your rebate when you do everything right.
BestBuy is full of cr@p. Many times I've witnessed customers being charged a restocking fee for merchandise that is defective due to design - i.e. a computer peripheral that is supposed to work with Win2K, but won't. Bestbuy simply wants to scam customers, bestbuy gets all pissy when they can't get away with it.
...is giving "rebates" in the form of gift cards, that can only be redeemed at Best Buy.
I posted a short note on this subject a while back. Stopping the theft of shopping carts can be mighty short-sighted. Sometimes, instead, it pays to trust your customers.
Jill,
I like your taste in music, I like how you write and I like your attitude.
You sound really really hot. I'm not hitting on you, because that's kind of creepy. But man, you would be a perfect girl to date.
And a mom who is 40 (which is a hot age for women) and she listens to cool music?
Man, if this wasn't the internet, you and I would already be having dinner and talking. I mean, really talking.
And sure, I'm thinking creepy things right now, but I wouldn't say them to you until the 3rd date.
DCs cost money by doing things like this. And stopping them would save the company money. And this leaves only the one question that actually matters to anyone, will we (the good, saintly, customers) actually see any of this money?
:)
Probably not.
Employees would see some in terms of bonuses or more jobs. Or investors would see it in terms of increased profits. As someone who works for a living and also invests money in companies, I like seeing bonuses, more jobs and higher profits. Reducing those things so people can do things like
* buy clothes then return them
* buy chips then fry them before returning for new ones
* continually buy and return items within the 30 day refund policy just to have the 'latest' without paying any more
is not something I support.
For the record, I do return things at best buy, usually about 20% of the things I purchase. About 80% of those returns are to buy the next version up because I bought too cheap the first time. Examples:
* just bought a phone with a speaker, but realized it wasn't a 'speakerphone' for example, for I returned it for a more expensive phone
* bought a laptop last year, but the video card was mislabelled. took it back and bought one $100 more.
Do I make returns? Sometimes. Am I a devil customer out to abuse the system? I don't consider myself in that category. I hope retailers don't either.
creation science book
If that's too much typing for you,yields: http://anandtech.com/ and http://howardchui.com/
Here's the key - find a store offering a rebate. Go to the competition, show them the ad. Since they don't have that offer, they'll sell you the item for the end price due to their same-price guarantee. And you don't have to fill out forms or anything.
Of course, this probably would make me a "devil customer".
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
You also assume that stores won't try to differentiate somewhat and compete on things other than pure price. Your example would be better for a gas station. And it works for things like Books, DVDs, etc because you are getting the same thing at amazon.com as best buy or musicland (hard to "differentiate"). When it comes to some things though, like any kind of display or maybe a sound system, stores certainly can provide more differing levels of service than for something like a book or DVD.
What you are saying certainly isn't wrong, but it IS a little more complicated of course :D
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
This is yet another example of a big retailer trying to satisfy the corporate goal of more, more, more. I work for a supplier to retailers such as Target, Dillards, Ace Hardware, WalMart, and many others. Our product does well, but we are required by some that if the consumer returns the product, we must take it back and give the retailer all of their money back.
Bed Bath Beyond is the biggest culprit of this. So they give us a forecast of what they want for Christmas and if they are wrong, they make us take back all of our product that did not sell. Last year we had to cut an employee because Bed Bath over estimated their sales. Just because they did not want to look bad on Wall Street.
This year we are not selling to Bed Bath. We are one of the few vendors that have refused to sell to Bed Bath Beyond...according to them. This will hurt you in the long run because of higher prices and if you work for one of the vendors to a big retailer, you are living by their marketing scheme. If it is bad, watch out for your job.
Article seems to imply Best Buy has service staff that interact with the shoping customers. This is confusing to me, because I have never seen them.
I live in a giant bucket.
Take your Knoppix (or whichever distro your prefer) LiveCD and boot the display laptop in the store. Should be a pretty good test of hardware compatability prior to acutally purchasing the machine.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
... The article talks about salespeople talking to customers. I have never had that happen, even when my wife and I were closely inspecting refrigerators, clearly with the intention of buying one. Maybe the author was writing about a different chain.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
Circuit City. 'Nuff said.
I had a horrible experience in purchasing a PC. I told the "tech" what I wanted for a PC (smallest one they had). He turned around and walked away when I asked him to remove the screensaver password so I could try it out. I promptly walked out.
I was well into my retail career (which thankfully ended) right about the time Best Buy starting making serious inroads to the dominant consumer electronics player at the time - Circuit City.
Circuit City used to be a value-add kind of place. Generally nice stuff, very well trained and informative salespeople - definately not in the category of your local specialty A/V or computer builder store, but for the early 90's they were reasonably high-end. Then Best Buy happened. Best Buy was all about cost. They launched a full-scale attack on Circuit City on price alone. The invented the idea of the bloody loss leader war. They even ran ads against the concept of commissioned salespeople. In the end, people like price. BB gained market share and CC lost it.
I think it's immensely hilarious that Best Buy is now stewing in its low price retailer hell while simultaneously trying to compete against Wal Mart and Dell. They've figured out that they can't be a bottom-feeder in that marketplace, and have begun to learn that while you can take your store down the scale of value-add vs. price-at-all-costs, you can't go back up. That's why the serious names in electronics are so protective of their name brands and enforce minimum advertised pricing so ardently. Most people who are going to buy home theater equipment from a place that has viewing rooms know better than to try to do it at a place like Best Buy. And so it goes.
My advice to Best Buy? I recommend you follow your established market and continue to service them in the way they've come to expect. In other words, apply for a job at your local Wal-Mart.
Outsourced programmers who have exhauste their unemployment benefits gravitate to tech sales jobs just to keep their finger in the pie. Many of them haven't learned how to be good sales people yet.
I refuse to buy anything from Best Buy. I went into a store in Florida with about $800 in my pocket. $cash$. I was buying a stereo and equipment for my truck. They refused to sell me anything unless I provided them with my home address and telephone number,, I left all the stuff @ the counter,and walked out. About 10 minutes later I went back in to speak to the store manager. He told me it was his right to refuse me, for any reason. I told him to F8%k off. I got home and called there 800 number and spoke to someone in there policy dept. BTW the person answering the phone there assures me that they have a law degree. :) right! They basically told me the same thing, that they could refuse me for any reason. I've will NEVER give them, or any BEST BUY another dime.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
1. Find the lowest price for the part you want. There are machines on the Internet that will help you do that.
2. Go to an online auctioneer.
3. Enter your maximum bid for the part: Lowest price in store minus shipping costs given by the person selling.
4. Wait until the auction is finished.
5. If you didn't win, repeat steps 3 and 4. Otherwise:
6. Savings!
Obviously you need patience, because you're going to lose a couple of auctions, but the amount I've saved this way is pretty spectacular. There are some things that I wouldn't get used, of couse, like hard disks or monitors, but everything else: Cut out the middlemen, screw the store before they can screw you.
I did a google search to find out how much shopping carts cost. All I got was software for web sites.
Oh well.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
If you don't like the price, then steal it! Years ago during my mispent youth I had a foolproof method for walking out the door with Best Buy merchandise! My friend and I pulled this off at least twice.
;{
When you first walk in the door there is a greeter. If you have a return they will give you their daily color coded return sticker. I just happened to have a Commodore64 computer game box (I think it was Batman or Robocop). Get the sticker and then walk over to the discount-out of box items. Place the sticket on, let's say a computer. Then walk to the return counter, before you get to the counter walk out the door. Luckily when I did this the front door people changed shifts so I just walked out with a new computer. They changed the layout of the stores, so this does not work as well as it did in the past. The put the customer service counter close to the enterence.
-Un
Yopu for you?
Apparently you don't know what you are talking about. It is very common these days for products to have multiple rebates (ex: buy a spool of CDRs for $20 and send in for two $5 rebates). I'm sure you are aware that most products only have one UPC on the box, so how do you think they honor both rebates? Simple: they accept photocopies!
As the companies that do this most often perform the analysis during a boom period they aren't looking out far enough to see the impact of their actions. Their "optimization" of current practices may create their next bust period where they'll do anything to get sales.
I know that I detest the place, but I still have use for it. I do my research somewhere else, then only go there if the deal is right. Occasionally they have the best deal on something, and if it's a big ticket item you can get a few reward certificates for it. To those who applaud their current policy change I would just like to point out that it would be much easier for the company to get their internal policies in line to prevent returns of already purchased items. An example of this would be mandating the original UPC be sent in so that returns of the merchandise are impossible. They could do more to prevent this without alienating "customers" and risking the potentially huge PR hit.
Although their present business practices already show they aren't really that savvy though, eh?
[insert sig file here]
Look for any labels on the side of the cart first; if it says cart is not to be removed from parking lot, you've just circumvented the technology (Even worse, you've published it on the EVIL INTERNET). I wonder which is worse- the penalty for stealing a shopping cart, or the penalty for "hacking" the cart's technology, allowing you to steal it? A+ Certified and Potty-Trained; equally proud of both.
One thing that will drive me out of a store and make me think twice before coming back is salespeople that ask 'May I help you with something?' If it happens multiple times ( as it often does when there are many sales people on the floor ) I am gone.
If I am standing in front of a $2000.00 TV, I am probably reading about it's features. Perhaps I don't know much about HDTVs, and am in the process of learning about them from the Product Data Sheets. I REALLY don't want to talk to a sales person, or be asked embarassing questions about what I am looking for until I've satisfied myself that I can make an intelligent purchasing decision. I REALLY don't want to hear a sales pitch. It will go in one ear and out the other since I can't really trust anything someone with a vested interest in selling me something says without independent verification.
If I have a question about a big ticket item, or would like to purchase one, I'll walk over and ask the salesperson for help. Till then, I am just browsing, and don't want to be bothered.
Shopping carts are no where near cheap. The friggin things are ridiculously expensive...that why you usually dont see new carts every time one is destroyed...
"Helping to keep you two steps ahead of the Thought Police!"
Think about it: If I sell gizmo B at $2000.00 with a $1000.00 rebate, the customer pays sales tax on $2000.00 . If I sold gizmo B for $1000.00 and no rebate, then the state ( at 5% sales tax ) loses out on 50 bucks.
I remember, when I bought my first ever DVD player last month from Best Buy. It cost $35.00. They tried to sell me a $50.00 'service plan' to go with it. Ha!
I went there a few weeks ago for the first time in years. I always get my stuff online (newegg usually) unless I really have to have it in my hand to get a feel for it. But I still don't buy it from Best Buy.
I went in there because I received a $10 gift card, a reward for working extra hard at work. (Oh joy, that SO makes up for not giving me a raise this year) I was in there for about 20 minutes, and I had to leave without buying anything. The store was uber-annoying! My wife had to scream to get my attention because it was so loud, even though she was only 5 feet away. It wasn't some dufus cranking the stereo either, it was the store music. I looked for a multi-format memory card reader - didn't have any. I looked for cheap CDRs that didn't require a rebate - none. I went to the movie section, but by that time I had had enough. My wife already became so annoyed with the store that she went to wait in the car. I just had to get out of there. The atmosphere was absolutely annoying. I used to shop there pretty much exclusively for tech stuff 10 years ago, but no more. The internet drew my business, and Best Buy did nothing but encourage me to shop elsewhere.
So now I have a $10 gift card that I probably won't spend. Hmm, sounds like a regift to me.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Here is where I see this going. With collusion among retailers, and the ever ongoing consolidation, soon you will be profiled by every store you go in to. There will be 'saver cards," "saver clubs," "extra special saver coupons," etc. all tied to your profile. By the year 2020 expect to hear, "I'm sorry sir, your IQ is too high. We'd rather not do business with you since you could unfairly take advantage of our sales. Thank you, have a good day."
The only way Best Buy can prevent me from using them is to hide their merchandise. It's a useful store for checking out merchandise before purchasing cheaper on-line. (I don't bother trying to get them to match prices).
Link
:)
Many other retailers as well.
Stock up on the loss-leaders
I must be very good, today.
1. Go check my posts, I am 34, married and father of a 5yo.
2. My nick is an abbreviation of my real name.
3. If some firm wants to advertise something, the advertised thing should be enforceable.
4. If an advertised business model does not work for you, don't advertise it.
5. Down here (Brasil) a 600k line is not cheap, so if I pay for it, I want it.
6. Shut the fsck up or post as a real person.
7. To the moderator (assuming it's not the same AC posting): Why is saying "I want to receive what I pay for" flamebait??
Gee.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Well, what happened when you returned it?
It's nice that you received a scrap of paper with some handwriting on it, but those aren't any good if nobody will honour them. I have had salespeople promise me the moon and stars in the past, but that doesn't mean I will ever get them.
This is not Best Buy related, but pigeonholing related and had to do with a car purchase. I had just been in a large car accident and my face was a mess from the airbag and not being able to shave for 3 days because of the bruising. Well, I went to a BMW dealership to buy a car, since my old one was totalled. I was surprised that I received excellent sales support, as I had walked in with an old t-shirt and shorts (& again the appearance of my face). I honestly expected to be pigeonholed into a "he can't afford this" category.
Some salesdroids just want to help and make a good match: product-customer.
Just like some people on this board have noted: they don't dress to look like they can afford anything, they just dress for comfort. A good droid doesn't prejudge, because (especially here in TX) you generally can't judge the size of a persons wallet by their appearance.
A link is hardly attribution.
How many people wvwn know how to decode it. For that matter, how many readers will even know that it *is* a link, much less follow it?
You can't take the sky from me!
Don't call yourself "Best Buy".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I have never had a good experience there but I have had many bad ones. Two examples:
1. I bought Earthbound for SNES there and on the way out -- after I left the store -- a store employee INSISTED on looking at my bag. I told him no way, it was my property now. He flashed a "badge" taped to a piece of cardboard and threatened to have me arrested. I called him on it and then another employee came up and asked a little more nicely so I gave in and showed them what I had in my bag: the Earthbound game I had paid for. I didn't go back for a long time after this rude treatment, and when I did:
2. I bought a new keyboard and mouse and paid with my credit card. The signature was smudged so the girl asked for my license. I showed it to her and she bent it and broke off a corner! I asked her what that was all about and she said "oh don't be a bitch."
That was the last dime Best Buy will ever get from me. You can get better deals elsewhere without waiting in long lines or seeking out a rare employee for help. Forget Best Buy, ANYWHERE else is better. I have no idea how they stay in business when you can get the same exact product for the same price or less almost anywhere else, without the terrible customer service.
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
When consumers have to spend all their shopping effort wading through layers of obfusticating rebates and sales, and deals to find out the true price of an item and to comparison shop, a few who are willing to expend the effort to understand pricing systems well enough to game them punish the worst offenders for the rest of us.
A cable company that sells X GB transfer per month for 30 bucks per month will lose customers to a company that offers 'Unlimited GB' transfer per month for the same $30.00. But the company offering 'Unlimited' transfer will get the bandwidth hogs as customers. Soon that company may find that it can not offer 'Unlimited Bandwidth Usage' for $30.00 per month and raise it's rates to $40.00 per month. Those customers that formerly underutilized their bandwidth will then move to the cable company that offers X GB for $30.00 in order to save $10 bucks a month. The 'bandwidth hogs' end up being customers of the more expensive provider with the less restrictive TOS.
Lazy shoppers will always exist. Those who don't mail in their rebates, and who allow themselves to be nickled and dimed out of the best deal by not taking the time to comparison shop will always make some price obfustication worth the retailer's time. But when the obfustication rises to the level where the retailer themselves can't understand their own pricing scheme well enough to prevent it from being gamed, then the obfustication has become too much.
System gamers, thank you for being such *good shoppers*.
Having A&P and Piggly Wiggly.....
"Piggly Wiggly"?
PIGGLY WIGGLY?!
What sort of a name is that, and who they hell did they have in the focus group that inspired it? Crack addicts? Escaped inmates from the local mental asylum? Four-year-old children?
Crack-addicted four-year-olds from the local asylum?
but I always wanted a job I could just dick around with and drop after a few days, just to screw with corporate America. Not quit my current job or anything, just take a few days off to fuck around. You know that commercial with the guy who makes that huge sub at Subway, then takes a huge bite out of it right in front of the people who he was making it for (who then scream out in mortal terror)? Yeah. Always wanted to do that.
Now I'm thinking maybe I should go apply at Best Buy.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
I agree with much of what you say. (Although you do have a tendency to speak of the purchasing market as though it were a monolithic entity. e.g. "People don't value quality and service any more." The market place is composed of many different kinds of clients; some more concerned about price than service, and vice versa par example.)
However, I must take issue with the statement, "A company exists to maximize profits for its shareholders and employees." The first semester of my college course in Business Administration defined the purpose somewhat differently.
"The function of a business is to serve the needs and/or wants of a market segment at a price that market is willing to pay."
The difference is a critical one. Your definition speaks to the reasons that cause shareholders and employees to commit to the company. I believe that you have fallen prey to a common fallacy caused by conflating the reasons that people have for their allegiance to the coporation with the reason for the company's existence.
It is an important distinction. Your definition *can* (Please note the use of the word "can" instead of "will".) lead a company into rapacious behaviour. If a company becomes greedy with its customers, it creates an opening for the competition. As you have noticed, some chunks of the market are price oriented.
The definition espoused by my college, on the other hand, keeps you focused on the client. Serve the client in a way s/he is satisified, you keep the customers you have, and probably gain more. Thus leading to increased profitability.
It is the failure to understand the difference that leads to such idiotic laws suc
I cannot stand when I'm asked for my phone number or offerred a magazine subscription while checking out. Hey! I'm buying something already, how much more are you trying to suck outta me!
If people nearby do not feel like buying as much milk because of Mad Cow, I would not want to work in diary with the diary manager riding on me.
Worst. Promotion. Ever.
My experience is the same. I ONLY buy DVDs from Best Buy where they can't fsck it up too bad.
My last real purchase there went something like this:
Purchase high end Sony SVHS VCR. Take unit home and insert Blockbuster rental tape. Unit refuses to track. Adjustments are futile. Remove tape and insert in crappy $50 VCR. Tape plays fine. Box up whole thing and return.
I spent 45 minutes in line at the return desk. When I explained to the idiot in charge my complaint. She insisted I would have to step aside so their "tech" people could check it out. I spent another 15 minutes arguing that I would not step aside and that I wanted my money back for a unit that was not yet 24 hours old. Finally when she agreed to refund my money, I drove over to Circuit city where I purchased a Toshiba unit that I still use today. That was the last time I spent money on electronics at Best Buy.
Good service is everything, at least when I vote (buy things) with my wallet. I avoid large stores and discounters like a plague because I do not get the kind of service I want. Period. Call me a fucking snob or whatever you want, but I do not want to spend my whole afternoon shopping for TV and talking to some retard who barely knows the product. I shopped at Wal-Mart only a few times and then I simply got fed up with their service. The same thing, sadly, applied to BestBuy and other retailers. With that in mind, I completely switched to shopping online. I still buy some items (suites, sport coats, shirts, shoes) at stores because I need to try them on, but when it comes to electronics Dr. Internet is my friend. Everything is shipped to my office, no pickups needed. Then I win because of the low opportunity cost: I can do all my shopping within several minutes and enjoy weekends and nights doing something else.
You comment on grammar instead of any points, as if people on a website posting messages should be concerned with grammar, is it being evaluated?(Only when dicks are present.) I did not know I was being graded bitch, but this site is frequented by anal grammarian aspirants, 3o 3v3ry0ne's g8@mmar mwtthrs. Typical pedant slashbot; someone who says something of no substance with perfect grammar is still saying nothing. There is being fluent in American an' there is having perfect American grammar and spelling which is hard and takes concious proofreading since American is a bastard language with no standard spelling or other rules due to heavy influence of foreign languages.
Why are you even responding after saying something as stupid as you had a friend who worked in a dairy section and told customers there was no cheese, as a counter-example. Or why are you responding after being self righteous enough to expect workers at turnstyle jobs to care for the spin they are on. Further like other slashdot self important fellows, you have a website(about nothing like so many other Slashdot members). Even this website about nothing but a single quote is not up. I hope someone declares a fatwa to rid the earth of self absorbed scumdogs like you.
What good is reputation if you don't spend it? If a company has too good a reputation, it is a sign that it needs to convert that into capital and grow, by bilking customers that 'trust' in the reputation that has been built up, until the excessive reputation is well spent away.
PS: I never tried the 1-800-626-7588 number - not sure if it works... But most anything you make up will work, and you can test the 1-800 ones w/o getting charged. They just ask for a credit card number.
It makes for a nice little life lesson too. The older ones are annoyed because, at that age they don't want to rock the boat. The younger ones just think it's cool to get to buy stuff.
God I hate retail, mostly because I refuse to take shit. Maybe I'll add some having kids at the retail/fast food store tales to my journal...
Blogging because I can...
Ones I won't buy from: the old fly-by-night camera style shops mostly in New York. Hate to admit a bias (but only from past experience), but it a business is in New York City, I don't buy from them. Especially anything to do with electronics.
May I help you? Means: Buy something or get out, I don't have time to keep spying on you. When I was a clerk, my supervisor frequently sent me out to 'helpfully harrass' any juveniles out to the curb. If there were any juveniles in the store that I was not harassing, I was told to pay more attention to the customers to prevent shoplifting.
Or maybe he knows that they're clueless so they'll go to Worst Buy for support instead of badgering him.
I don't see why the cops need your registration anyway when your registration number is BOLTED TO YOU CAR in the form of your license plates. Pretty dumb. It's just a way for them to get you to open your glove compartment and look for weed.
Is not an extended warantee ;-p IABBE (I am a best buy employee). Now this plan increases in price as the price of the product goes up. Once I can afford a laptop, I will definitly buy this plan because I found a loophole in their scheme. It does cover a yearly battery replacement in addition to power surges, so sit back and collect batteries for 3 years while at 2 years and 11 months you take a voltmeter and fry your shit, at which point it will be replaced due to power surges being covered. Bam for a price of around 300$s you have an upgraded laptop and just get another plan for 300$s. 300$ every three years for an upgraded laptop sounds very nice. You just need to drop the initial 1500$ on the actual laptop though.
For a long time I used Best Buy for commodity electronics and video games. I now only use them as a last resort. Several incidents stick out:
First, heading in with a friend to busy Game Cubes. How hard could it be? Go it, get box, pay, leave. However, the Game Cubes weren't kept on the floor. So the floorweasel has to get it for us. But not before she tries to pressure sell us the extended warrantee. The only down side of her plan is that we knew what she was talking about better than she did. "You guys looks like serious gamers." Well, duh. "And you know how frequently they break down." Umm, yes. Practically never. "So clearly you'll want an extended warrantee." No, not really. I've got four consoles and piles of other consumer electronics at home, all of it happily humming along. Statistically the warrantee is idiotic. I've even had an expensive stereo receiver fail, but including that in my figures I saved money replacing it myself instead of having an warrantee on all of my electronics. Please, just go get my Game Cube.
Second, and much worse. A friend's cellphone was flaking out. She had purchased it at Best Buy and paid for the extended warrantee. Well, time to head in to get it replaced. The only problem: they couldn't replace the phone. They didn't have an equivalent phone in stock any more. She could get another phone, but they would only extend her partial credit to her. I've gotten the "buy the extended warrantee" routine dozens of times over years. "If anything goes wrong at all, just bring it in and we'll replace it with the same model or a newer on" is standard. My friend had specifically gotten the extended warrantee so that she could avoid worrying about it. When I confirmed that the salesweasel couldn't offer her anything better, I asked for a manager. The manager had the audacity to suggest that it was inappropriate for us to expect them to be able to replace my friend's phone. After all, she'd only paid for the extended warrantee, how could Best Buy know that they might need to replace it? She then threatened to use to escape clause in the warrantee; they'd refund the cost of the warrantee (after enjoying the money for the last 18 months) and refuse to support it. We finally got the phone replaced after playing stupid games ("Well, if you cancel your service, then sign up for new service and fill out this form and wait 2 months you'll get a $50 rebate.")
Best Buy lost my respect that day. I've never returned anything. I lack the time to hunt down loss-leaders. Their aggresive policies lost a stable customer.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
To illustrate my point Mr. Grammar(I thought you were guy replying to me in the parent post, but I was wrong) let us examine your history.
Re:The Russian mafia
"self-rightiousness"
It is apropriate that this is the word you spelled wrong.
Free Sculpture Foundation
"Erock S Raymond" (Nevertheless, this parody name is missing a period.)
Re:Voting for Badnarik
"Still don't want me to vote third party??" (Two question marks. Tsk.)
Re:Unless you live in a swing state
"Unless you believe that your single vote will be the deciding one, and your state will hinge on a single vote (hint: It won't be.) then there is no reason to vote for a "major" candidate that you don't agree with."
It should read : (hint: It won't) and have no period
Re:One step towards security
"One persan"
"The simple example is insurance." (Should be changed to "A simple example")
Re:Going the way of Free Speech
The first word of that sentence is a coordinating conjunction, which will not do.
Re:I think you mean "taxpayers"
"demendence"
YRO Bingon
"somethin g" "c onnect"
You are just like all the other bursting libertarians in the world. You take yourelves so serious but you are self important and trollish.
I hear about it all the time from people I know who work at best buy, getting rebates on things that means they make money by buying the products. The best buy employees I know should be classified as devil employees. It gets close to stealing from the company. These people encourage open item returns when people have complaints so that they can buy that linksys router or whatever at a discount that the customer couldn't set up. It's pretty rediculous. Of course some of those people spend their entire paycheck from week to week in the store, so there's not as much to complain about, but it's a little fishy.
CC welcomes my dog in the store, and the personnel love her (bonus: cute cashiers!) BB at first said dogs were OK, then later kicked me out for having her in the store, even though she has never caused trouble.
I'll still browse BB when I need to see a digicam or something in person, and I still take the dog just to be obstinate, but I don't buy there anymore. I do buy from CC though; I don't mind paying a little extra now and then to support dog-friendly businesses.
But if I want a decent price, I still go online instead.
They stay in business because they push suckers really hard for their maintenance contract/extended warranties. Its been a few years since I've kept track, but at the time Best Buy's SEC filings indicated a *huge* amount of their revenue comes from those mostly worthless 'service plans'.
{ - Generic Guy - }
Imagine, if you will, a posh boutique store selling fine writing instruments. Subdued, reverent lighting, large Montblanc altar in the corner, polite staff in very nice suits...and in walks some scruffy long-haired degenerate in a worn Motorhead t-shirt and torn jeans who demands a specific $2500 fountain pen, buys it, and shoots the breeze a while with the unoccupied sales reps.
It was even more fun watching the well-dressed customers who walked in, looked at everything, grimaced at the concept of paying $50 for a pen, then seeing their expressions when they found out what I was buying.
"It's HOW MUCH? And you BOUGHT that?" Most beat a hasty, retreat from the store at that point. Their expressions of utter fright at a world beyond their comprehension made it worth every penny.
In 1981 the company I was working for sent me to Boca Raton, Florida, to the big new IBM facility there that was manufacturing the as-yet-unannounced IBM Personal Computer.... This from IBM, no less.
;)
The same IBM who were about to lose the home computer market they created and through their own dinosaurness(*), take a downward spiral towards corporate oblivion that they only pulled back from in the past few years?
The advice seems sound, but I wouldn't place too much value in the fact that IBM said it
(*) I'm patenting this word. So there.
Same thing in french stores; except they use 1 Euro coin... lots more than a quarter.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I like Best Buy a lot because the sales droids tend to really take care of their customers. I speak from experience. I recently bought a projection HDTV from Best Buy. It was an open box return and I got a screaming good deal ($899 down from $1499). I was worried about whether there was something wrong with the TV, since obviously someone had returned it previously. The sales droid wrote on the receipt that if there was something wrong with the TV that they would exchange it for their display model, which worked perfectly. Sure enough, I got the TV home and the picture was distorted. I called the droid at Best Buy and within a couple of days the delivery guys brought the floor model over to the house and hauled away the bad one. Simple as that.
.......... kris
There's a lot of bitching and complaining here about the quality of the sales droids at Best Buy, but I'm a happy Best Buy customer (and my wife works at a Best Buy too, and it's a great place for her to work).
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
If Best Buy doesn't like people who take advantage of rebates, then they shouldn't offer rebates. They're a pain in the ass anyway. And Best Buy shouldn't sell products at a loss to attract customers, because some customers will buy only the low-priced products. Pretty simple.
As far as people returning products for a refund, that's a service that people expect and it probably wouldn't be a good idea for Best Buy not to allow it.
Personally it seems to me that if Best Buy can make billions of dollars a year and give those 20% of people who will go to extra trouble to save money good deals, why worry about it?
I must be one of those 20% of devils. Best Buy pissed me off so bad when I was buying my mom a $500 e-Machine computer that I go out of my way NOT to shop there. It took me 45 minutes to get out of there. All I wanted to do was take a computer off the shelf and check out, but it was much more complicated than that. The saleslady kept pushing the extended warranty, software packages, and various services. They wanted to open up the computer in their service department to check out it because "e-Machines have a high rate of returns." Well if they're so bad why are you selling them? She had no answer for that.
Then more pleas for the extended warranty, software, and other crap. When I refused the extended warranty the second time I actually had to talk to her supervisor to let him hear for himself that I really didn't want it. The saleslady stressed that they aren't on commission, but I found later their managers ARE.
Finally (with escort of the sales lady) I was allowed to check out. If it wasn't for the price and the fact my mom needed the computer, I would have walked off. The good news is the cheapo e-Machine is still happily running years later.
You've probably got a Harvard MBA, haven't you? :)
On a more serious note, there is no reason to waste the reputation in the process of converting it. Just like when you have a world-class research laboratory you don't convert it into money by selling everything as scrap metal.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
That made ME laugh.
> if you had to work half as hard as a corporation does to survive, you'd bitch about how hard life is
Except corporations don't work. The work is done by a multitude of employees breaking their backs so the fat cat CEO can take home a huge paycheck. A smaller but still huge paycheck goes to the whitecollar employees who spend their waking hours glued to a phone or writing TPS reports or the like. And the people doing the actually hard work, manning the cash register or loading trucks or stocking shelves, get pissed on.
...you have to play by Real World rules.
People want different things. Some want low prices - some of them are dishonest, but most aren't, but they have lots of demands. Some want knowledge and service. The advantage of diversified economy is that all of these people can be served at once. The downside is that sometimes we think we can have everything and not pay for it.
Best Buy chose to appeal to the customer base they now have. They didn't make money on knowing their products better or by treating customers well - they chose to make their money by promising lower prices and then trying to screw the more naive of those who show up. This works for a little while, but eventually people realize what you're doing, and behave accordingly. The people who want service or knowledge or low prices or just dignity go elsewhere (and they tell others to do the same), and BB gets the customers that only care about low prices, and who are willing to be evil to get them.
BB can't have it both ways. They made their money by being the lowest priced retailer for electronics and by being dishonest with their customers. People are behaving accordingly - they are getting the customers who are willing to be dishonest with them. If you play at screwing your customers, don't expect my sympathy when the favor is returned.
To everyone out there reading this:
I shop at Best Buy stores in Ohio, Indiana, and MIchigan because of the traveling my job requires me to do. I have bought video and sound cards from them time and time again. I have filled out the rebates over and over, and I have never had a problem.
Do you know why? Because I actually took the time to read the instructions that the clerk handed me when they rang up my purchase. It's there, in plain English (and probably French for those in Canada) how to mail the rebate in, and what each product manufacturer requires to qualify for the rebate. If you, the moron who can't read the simple instructions about how to cut a UPC code off a box, put it in an envelope, and then mail it off by such and such date, then you don't have any reason to be bitching about something that is not the clerk's fault, nor Best Buy's, nor the manufacturer for that reason. Best Buy has always given me duplicate copies of the receipt that are accepted by the rebate place, so I don't even have to get off my ass and find a copying machine, or waste the time running it through my 3-in-1 combo printer/scanner/fax unit.
All stores have idiots that work for them. I will say at least at the Best Buy stores I frequent, the clerks in computers will try to help customer's with whatever the request might be. At one store, the service people went and did research for me, and then called me back with the answer, and I was impressed.
Why don't some of you actually try looking at this from an intelligent person's perspective, read those rebate forms that Best Buy prints out, before you start bitching left and right about being cheated. The only reason you are crying "Cheat Cheat" is because you know that you are too stupid and/or lazy to fill out a simple form correctly and mail it off on time. Sure is easier than those pieces of Betty Crocker cookware my grandmother used to save box tops for.
As far as profiling customers go, I do that in my own line of work and I suspect you do as well. Get a grip people. I wonder what kinds of names you have called potential customers before you alienated them.
Besides, why in the hell is this on Slashdot in the first place?
Best Buy, an established company is also a competitor of rival companies such as CompUSA, Fry's Electronics, and others. Best Buy was geared towards the middle-class consumer until just a few years ago when problems with advertising and fraud emerged. During this time, rival companies were able to scoop up the financial losses of Best Buy and offer customers a fresh new shopping experience with newly designed stores, features, and helpful service.
I live, in probably one of the most expensive cities in the United States where buying a typical run-of-the-mill CD player will cost you $40 (US) versus one from Wal-Mart at $7 (US). In the past year, I've noticed a steady increase in the cost of goods and services from Best Buy, degrading stores, sell-outs to local tech services, and other insecurities ranging from credit card fraud, legal craftsmanships (regarding the Rewards Zone topic), and overall disatisfaction.
For instance, my most recent trip to Best Buy was for basic networking hardware; wall-plates, brackets, and some of those little plastic inserts to cover the other unused holes on the plates. The cost of one wall-plate was an astonishing $9.99 and it wasn't even WHITE! Disgusted at this, I left the store in a furious rage because of what Best Buy had become and the lack of help I was offered in locating the hardware in the first place. I ventured forth to Home Depot where I purchased everything I needed for a mere $8.19. Because of the low price, I was hastly encouraged to indulge in the additional expense of $14.06 for a fifty-foot spool of RG6/u coaxial cable. While standing among the spools of cable, I realized that despite CompUSA not having coaxial cable, they were indeed cheaper than Best Buy and that my decision to drive out of my way to Home Depot, actually saved me money in the long run. My question is, due to the recent explosive growth of electronic demand, is Best Buy raping us for all they can get?
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
I know people who are into this sort of thing. In fact, I ended up doing it once accidently long ago. Our floppy drive broke, I bought a new one at BB. I took it home and started trouble shooting it. I wrote a floppy on it with my only copy of some important data. I worked a day or two longer and my drive failed. I returned the drive as defective. I tried the original floppy drive in a different machine. Worked fine. I ended up calling Dell tech support to find out what to do with this machine, and if there was any way to get the data off the floppy. He said to go get the drive it was written with. It'd be the last chance I had to read the data. I walked into the BB store, about 24 hours after returning the drive and bought it for about 33% off (I offered to pay full price, but they said it was too much paper work). It still didn't work, but I kept the drive.
Interestingly enough, during that same transaction, I ended up working a different scam entirely because the girl at the counter wasn't paying attention (it was her mistake, not mine I walked back in the store and paid the difference). I bought the floppy drive and a PS/2 extension cord at the same time. They had the wrong gender. When I did the return, I walked back picked up the cable I needed and returned the drive. She ended up creditting me for the drive and for the cable I left the building with. She assumed I was returning both because both items matched the description on the receipt. The way to do this correctly, is buy two items, one cheaper then the other. Walk in, get your stuff tagged by security. Go get the more expensive item in the store. Put the cheap one back on the shelf. Return the expensive one for your money back. Buy a half dozen other items while pushing a cart.
If you are good at this, and live in a large enough city. I'd bet I could several thousand dollars a week doing this. Tax free. I'm not sure what you take home for pay, but I'd be thrilled to take that home. It's not hard to make a living being a fraudster. If you can work eBay, pawn shops, and a scams like this, I'm willing to bet I could make a lot more money then I currently do with a lot less work.
I'd never do it, but I did work retail at Babbage's for a while. I had to spot shop-lifters, and always be aware of what was going on at the cash register. Never get flustered.
I believe BB caught on to this eventually, as now I believe security walks returns to the return counter.
I've know people who steal (it's a friend of a friend, he's a pretty cool guy, except he's got fairly questionable ethics), and sell drugs for a living. He thinks the same way a lot of people who've responded to me in this thread. Screw'em, they're a corporation, they screw me, I'll screw them.
As a general rule, mail in rebates merely require you to send in the original reciept. Generally after you return something, if it's the only item, just ask the cashier for it, they'll hand it to you. If there are two items, they have to give it back to you. I've never had to send in a UPC code, and to be honest, I've never had anyone actually check anything I've returned that closely to see if the UPC code was still there.
I guy I know used to buy stuff with cash, go to where he worked, empty the contents of the computer games, put a deck of cards in it, then go to work and re-shrink wrap the box. He'd return it to Best Buy "un-opened". I worked with him at Babbage's (where he could have just taken the games home for free and played them for a week, it was store policy, that's why we had the shrink wrap gun). The sickest part was when he started doing this for a fee for people who had heard about it. Best Buy actually started calling around to places know to have shrink wrap guns (there we're 3 or 4 in the shopping center). They talked with him, and he played coy about it. He was still the manager there until the store was closed down 2-3 years later (about 8 years ago).
Kirby
She'd know you were lying, because if your standing in line at the door at opening time, "the advertised memory will come in later in the day" , and if your not standing in line, then it would be "sorry the store's allocation all ready sold out."
The only thing I buy there is DVD's anymore.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Once I got a DVD burner I found I needed a new DVD player that would play the newly burned DVDs. I went to the local Fred Meyer's, and a clerk and I poured over players trying to decide which one I should get. Finally the clerk suggested I just go ahead and get one, try it out, and if it didn't work, bring it back and try another one (possibly indefinately) until I found the right one. Sounded good to me, especially since I had 30 days to try it out with basically no penalty on my part.
So, why didn't you buy it there? Reward the retailer who was willing to discount without any prodding.
Probably because many stores (Staples, Best Buy, OfficeMax, Circuit City, ect) have 110% or 115% price match policies, where they refund 1xx5 of the difference - so it is cheaper to get it at that store than the original retailer.
Of course, most price match policies these days are so narrow - only applies to certain stores, no online stores, doesn't apply to rebates/coupons/freebies, ect - that they are hard to get anyway
I have blog like everyone else
You seem to have forgotten the two steps most important to a slashdotter:
4. ??????
5. Profit!!
--
Being from Canada, my comments here are about Future Shop. Don't worry though , they are the same company.
1. iPod
The above brings me to another point of irritation. Why is it that stores promote every delinquent turd to "Manager" and give 'em a dimes pay raise for it after only 2 months of servitude.
2. DVD player
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal on-line (sorry a subscription service) had an article on this very subject. They also had Mr. Anderson, the Best Buy CEO congratulating himself on being able to pigeon hole customers, Affluent Men, Affluent Mothers, Small Business owners and early adopters. They steer these people to the big ticket items.
I don't know what stores he was talking about, but my local store seems to specialize in ignoring customers like me (I fit three of the categories), feigning ignorance about products, and opening boxes before one leaves the store so that if the item is a gift, it's return is subject to the restocking fee.
There's nothing wrong with aiming toward the big spenders, but remember someday the young couple on a tight budget will be the people with a lot of cash. They will remember how they were treated when they were poor.
Best Buy is always the last place I would shop for anything.
You're right, I am oversimplifying, but the jist of it all is that it still helps them have a higher price for most people and still get the bargain hunters :]
i have had very good experiences with Amazon and less so with eBay since their customer support policies are specific to a particular member or seller.
the history of big box stores like Best Buy around here is that sooner or later they go bankrupt and shut their doors.
Perhaps you never talked to small retailers before. When I say small, I am talking about cut-rate places, that give good prices as a way of generating business, not cartel members who don't offer reasonable prices in the first place.
I'm not denying that a *small minority* of people might do the whole thing of returning items just to try to buy them again at discount - but I think my original statement is still valid. It's simply not something that a store should be concerned enough about to create new, customer-hostile policies to prevent.
(In your example of a hitman or murderer, no - I may not personally know anyone who has done those things, but I can completely understand the motivation for them and why some folks would kill. That's quite a bit different than acting out small scams to make some extra cash off of retail outlets.)
The "re shrink-wrap" scam you mention is interesting, because I was a victim of that very thing at Best Buy, years ago. I bought a new 28.8K internal Zoom modem, and when I got home and opened the box, a used 2400 baud was in the package! I tried to exchange it and I was treated like a criminal by everyone in the store. I was quite upset - because I tried explaining how the scam could easily have been pulled, and all I got were sighs and dirty looks, like *I* was the one who must have re shrink-wrapped it. That kept me out of Best Buy for months afterwards, actually.
That story is here.
I bought a laptop computer and digital camera from Best Buy. I was talked into spending an extra $10 on the Reward Zone Membership. Unfortunately, when I signed up I thought I would save the paper interaction and use my Hotmail email address to receive the reward coupons. After a long wait I did receive my email coupon. I printed what I thought was a coupon and took it shopping. I was unaware of a required "bar code" that failed to print. I found out while standing at the BestBuy cash register with a home entertainment system in my cart. (Note: I returned to BestBuy and selected the system based on the $75.00 coupon I had in my hand). The store manager and clerks knew nothing about an internal Hotmail conflict with RewardZone. The BestBuy computer department tried, for over an hour, to reprint my coupon. The manager finally asked me to purchase the system, without the coupon, and return "tomorrow" when Reward Zone customer service was available. The Manager promised to refund the difference once the RewardZone Customer Service verified that the certificate was valid. Tomorrow came and Reward Zone Customer Service said they would have to "Reissue" the coupons to a different email provider. They confirmed that a problem existed with the Hotmail customers. "Wow!" I replied, "That's serious, I can't be the only Hotmail customer signed up to RewardZone. I will create a temporary Yahoo account and you can resend the coupon. I am sure a company like BestBuy will fix the problem and I'll change it back later." And I waited and waited, checking the Yahoo account for the "Promised" coupon. Every week or so I would call and ask where my coupon was at. Every time I was told a different story, yet promised the notes were made to my account, and the coupons were in the system to be processed. I even suggested that they forgo the electronic procedure and print them on paper, place a stamp on an envelope, and mail the darn things the old fashioned way. I was told this would only prolong the process. Today I called and was told that the program had changed and I no longer was entitled to $75.00. The value of my coupons have been reduced due to a change in the program. When I questioned the change and why my original coupons had not been issued yet, I was told that BestBuy reserves the right to change the conditions of the program at anytime. I as a customer am out of luck! They will reissue, electronically, $60.00. After far too much arguing over $15.00 and threats of posting the story on the internet the "Supervisor" promised to re-issue me the additional $15.00. I can assure you that if and when I get the promised coupons, and if they print with the bar code, that I will take them to the store and shop for the very LAST time. Well, I, as a customer, reserve the right to shop where my patronage will be valued. I also reserve the right to inform others people of the service I received from BestBuy Reward Zone. My satisfaction comes in the knowledge that I plan to buy a television for Christmas.... I'm sure you can guess that it will NOT be from BestBuy!
http://latimes.p2ionline.com/shoppingchannel/rop/i ndex.aspx?area=ROP&type=cat&webstoryid=7401544 /
If you've ever worked in Retail you'd probably know that shopping carts are incredibly expensive. We're talking upwards for $250 a piece. Therefore each time someone steals them that's 250 to replace them. The security device can keep the cost of cart replacement down, and keep plenty of carts there for the customers to use.