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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.
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!
you are not the only one.
I know of many people that will never ever shop at "worst buy" again. Mostly because of sheer rudeness and other insanely stupid tactics typical of undertrained and unskilled management.
Best buy had better realize that people have lots of other choices for shopping and they certianly will go elsewhere. Personally, I stopped shopping there because their prices are high compared to online merchants even after factoring in shipping. Considering I recently bought 2 512meg CF cards for $25.00 each online and the cheapest they have on the shelf is $58.00 it was a no-brainer. plus I don't get someone trying to shove an extended warrenty down my throat every 5 minutes.
The Best Buy near here 4 years ago was packed most of the time, now? their parking lot is no where near as populated while their competition has the full parking lots.
They can redeem themselves if they get management that has a brain, or at least wipes their face off after pulling the head out of their butt.
ABC warehouse has friendlier staff and management compared to Best Buy, and they are scumbags.
The answer is simple. Those are weasel words. It probably means they looked at the data on their customers and decided to change the rules to squeeze them a little more.
As long as any retailer makes buying appliances and electronics a negotiation, this is what they get. As long as they use service plans as a negotiation tool, this is what they get. As long as rebates exist as a tool for bringing in the masses, then this is what they get. As long as these stores advertise loss leaders in the Sunday paper, then this is what they get. Best Buy and stores like Best Buy have become the car dealers of the electronics world. They're own practices have brought this upon them, I have no sympathy.
So basically, they want people who :
:
- Don't buy their "loss leaders", but stock up on their overpriced stuff.
- People who don't check other companies price, but get attracted by the "Best price policy"
- People who don't return their mail-in rebates.
Why don't you just ask me to give you my money?
On the Canadian side, FutureShop is exactly like that : Best price policy, overpriced stuff... and they "labeled" me a devil, for sure (a seller once "recognized" me : "Yes, I remember you...", first time I meet the guy). When price matching Camera-Canada for a new Canon G5, a seller even told me
-"I can't match that price, maybe remove 50$ 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
Yeah, unfortunately you failed to mention that all "extended warranty" information (actually called a "service plan") is stored in the Best Buy system, so that in the event of losing the receipt, that receipt can be retrieved.
And it doesn't "extend the warranty," it goes above and beyond what a manufacturer's warranty will cover. Just simply read the terms of both plans and tell me I'm wrong.
"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.
It is hard to tell, but Ars is giving attribution to WSJ by changing the quoted aspects' font color to red, and linking to the article in the first paragraph.
Not plagiarism so much as piss-poor editing.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
If you want good deals, you go online.
http://www.newegg.com/
Visit the
If you have one in your area, Micro Center has always been good to me. They have decent prices for a retail shop, usually a great selection of books, and a wider selection on pretty much any computer component than any store I've been to. Plus, (at least in my area) they seem to hire more geeks than your average Best Buy/CompUSA, so it's a good place to go if you want to shoot the bull about how the new Microsoft mouse looks like it was designed for a Mac, or something like that.
As for online stores, I second the vote for newegg. They consistently have among the best prices of any reputable online reseller, and their service is always top notch.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
I've bought things that had 3 rebates before. Most rebates will accept a copy of the UPC because of all the multi-rebate stuff.
Personally, I think that an instant rebate with the deduction at checkout would eliminate the buy-and-return. But that would make it so everyone would actually get the rebate, and they don't want that.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
Razor thin margins? I take it that you have never worked in grocery, either sales or consumer goods supply to grocery. Lets look at some of the numbers behind grocery; Average margin on goods - 20-60% for most non-perishable, sub $20 goods. Thats excluding "Trade promotion" spend from the consumer goods supplier for better locations, shelf spaces, next-to-counter implulse buy locations, etc. Listing fees for each and every item - with a limited guarantee for how long it will be listed. Not performing? Either pay another list fee, or get yanked. Price varies by country. Catalogs, TV ad placements with products named - all paid for by the supplier of those goods. And guess who pays for the 40c discount per item (in Trade Promotion spend....) hint : not the grocery store! Returns? Freshness issues? cough up supplier. OK, so what to pay for? Staff, restacking of shelves, rent on property (although most chains own the entire complex). Sounds like a sweet deal to me :-)
Grocery is the a huge cash cow out there right now - the only people being squeezed are the little mom & pop grocery, who don't have the muscle to stand up to suppliers and the buying power to compete with the major chains. And guess who aren't putting locks on their trolleys?
Insightful? I think not.
1/3 of jokes get modded OT. If you get the joke, mod 1 in 3 insightful/interesting/underrated to restore karma balance.
I'm pretty sure that Best Buy employees are not commissioned sales people. They're hourly. But, I wouldn't be suprised if they get "perks" for pushing those extended service plans.
-Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat-
It's not that they wheel the carts off to take their shopping home. Its that they then don't TAKE THEM BACK.
The area where I work had this problem; the scrote housing down the road had shopping trolleys lying about on street corners where they'd simply been discarded, having finished being useful. They'd get wrecked, dragging into the canal, littered about on the industrial estate...
You have to understand just what animals some people are, and how little concern they have for anyone or anything outside what they want to understand why supermarkets do this. They have absolutely no regard for the expensive involved for the shop or the inconvenience for customers for whom there are no longer enough trolleys.
They won't even push them back the next time they go, because it's uphill and now they let go of the trolley, it's not even "not their problem" anymore. It's not even in their environment.
So Asda bought a whole new fleet of shopping trolleys along with the wheel locks and little red "don't cross" lines.
Net effect is that at least most of the trolleys are abandoned at the red lines now... although we STILL find them in the industrial estate, lying wrecked where they were abandoned because they'd made it down the hill that far before getting bored of dragging something with one locked wheel...
The trolleys are, actually, quite expensive. The stores cannot afford to go around giving away a "disposable" 200 pound trolley with every tenth purchase of a bag of potatoes.
Think of it as a tragedy of the commons thing - some people are such mindless thugs, they can't be trusted to borrow and return a shopping trolley and they've wrecked it for everyone else.