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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."
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
Yes. Put them in your shoes. Now that I'm 24 and make twice the average family income whatever this is worth I find it almost impossible to shop unless I know exactly what I want. I guess there aren't too many single guys in their young 20s shopping for really nice vacuum cleaners or $1500 mattress sets. Who knew?
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.
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.
BUT we still hate BB for calling the cops on customers who ordered stuff on their website.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Having worked retail as a profession for 9 years, most sales staff do not have the ability to help me. They're not skilled enough. Therefore I have an easier time if they don't bother me. Luckily most of them do look at you and make decisions, so I usually use my "annoyed and disinterested" face to ward them off.
Most of the time I find consumers know more than the sales staff because the sales staff at most places are not paid high enough to have high quality sales staff.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
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!
This unfortunately is not surprising. One thing I have noticed about modern corporation customer relations is that when the customer is clearly going to be screwed, they always try to spin it as some sort of benefit. Comcast does it when they have their annual 20% rate hike.
Example:
Dear Comcast Customer, you can now pick from an exciting new cable package with more home shopping channels plus the Hallmark channel! Try not to notice that it's $10 more expensive than you are used to paying.
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)
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.
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 worked at Best Buy for about a year while in undergrad before leaving for Law School. I worked in several different departments before finally settling down in tech services, so I've had experience with just about everything.
Anyway, all the managers make a huge push to the sales team that the service plans are not just an extended warranty, they cover so much more! (With the exception of laptop computers, this isn't really true.)
Here's the exciting extra benefits they say you get above and beyond the manufacturer:
1. Dust, heat and humidity coverage. (While not specifically covered by manufacturer's warranty, I find it hard to believe the manufacturer could prove otherwise, and will usually replace the product anyway.)
2. Power surge coverage. (See above)
3. Something else I can't think of that is equally useless.
For laptops (and cellphones), you get the benefit of free replacement batteries as many times as you can convince a tech to order you one; you can also usually get them to replace your AC Adapter. Everything else for every other product is a consumable and not covered.
Best Buy is very effective at convincing their employees that their service plans are not extended warranties, when for all intents and purposes they are. I even worked there and one of my co-workers was very rude to my dad when he flat out told him he would rely on the manufacturer's warranty for the new washer and dryer he bought (at significant discount, thanks to me); to which the employee basically made a wisecrack demeaning to the manufacturer (way to support the products you carry).
I have plenty more complaints about the way they run things there, but you have to give it to them for breeding zombies that can recite company policies and acronyms all day long (and actually believe what they're supposed to tell customers).
As for the Jill and Barry info, this has only been rolled out in a few stores; basically they're gathering data and certain areas with high concentrations of certain types of shoppers will receive "personal shopping assistants" or other things catered to that.
It's a neat idea, but you might turn off some customers that way.
What?
I think most retailers have already figured out this scam, and will only price-match local retailers who have the the item IN-STOCK
I used an ad to get a price match at a retailer that I will not name. The competitor was local, and they DID have the item in stock. The salesdrone asked me "Well, why didn't you buy it there?" as if I were annoying him just by trying to spend my money there.
My answer was "I stopped there first to get the ad, and then I decided to see if your price was lower. Rather than drive across town again, I'll buy it here".
Convienently they were "out of stock" on the item at the time.
Also, many stores will intentionally carry different models of similar items so that they don't overlap inventory with competitors and have to honor low price guarantees.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Off topic, but it sort of reminds me of some "odd" things that were going on (maybe it was local to Colorado) when I was in college.
A bunch of guys would go to a store in a van, and buy out the entire stock of powder baby milk, and drive off. Since it's not usual to see a bunch of guys do this, let alone drive off in an unmarked white van, people got very suspicious. The sherif commented that perhaps it was used to "cut" cocaine or heroin, but the sheer volume of powdered milk being purchased would suggest that there was a freakin' GARGANTUAN drug production facility in town, which was unlikely.
The news picked up on it, and for a couple weeks consipiracy theories were abundant. Then everyone found out what it was really about. Stores tend to sell powdered milk at extremely low, no, or minus profit in order to attract customers. These people were buying up that stock, and selling it off elsewhere where the practice was less common. Some people commented how this was a "dirty" trick. But really, everyone understood that it was the store's fault for selling it that way (without a per-customer-limit) and the guys buying were just doing business.
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.)
It's quite a bit more devious than that. Low price pledges are signals to other competitors that you are ready to end a price war, or enforce a cartel decison. If you match low prices you can find out that one of your cartel partners is breaking their half of the bargain, and you didn't have to spend anything on cartel enforcement (your customers did it for you). That said, if you don't already have a cheap DVD player, a little birdy told me that they would have the cheapest ones on black friday.
Best Buy's CEO (or one of the chiefs) is a firm believer that one of the best ways to boost profitability is to reduce the customers that don't make you any money and provide excellent service to those who make you tons. It's a bit like the difference between a Nordstrom's and Wal-Mart (grew up in the NW so Nordy's was the only high end retailer for a long time). One has free coffee, and salesfolk who kiss your butt. The other is doing volume business. The former makes up the services they offer with a markup, the latter makes a smaller margin on each sale, but has much, much lower overhead so they each net about the same amount on each dollar spent. Best Buy's goal is to become more like Nordstrom's but without pricing themselves out of the latter market. This is a very tall order, and we won't know if they succeeded for about a decade.
If it wasn't over in the Ars article, the WSJ (free today) has an excellent article about the whole topic. It's available here.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I've been to a best buy that wouldn't take cash unless I provided a picture ID.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
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
"Also, many stores will intentionally carry different models of similar items so that they don't overlap inventory with competitors and have to honor low price guarantees."
Heh, Packard Bell used to actually renumber the model numbers for each and every retailer for this express purpose. I co-developed the PC service systems for computer city and compusa and it isn't that uncommon for this to happen on the low end computer systems.
Pan
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
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.
Is this representative of a trend away from PDAs, perhaps as a result of more-capable cell phones? Or has Best Buy just decided there isn't enough money to be made in this market?
I left without buying anything. I used to go to Best Buy because, in a pinch, I could find just about anything I needed. If this is part of a trend away from that "we have everything" approach I'm willing to bet that they're going to lose a lot of traffic in their stores.
If all they're interested in is selling $10,000 home theaters I think you're going to see a lot of Best Buys closing down within a few years. Sure, there's a lot of margin on those big-tickets but the volume isn't there to support stores of the size that Best Buy runs.
Well if you actually step into a Best Buy, they seem content to drive off any customer, just for the heck of it. If you actually know something about computers, just ask someone there a question, and they will pretty much ignore you. Best Buy, in my opinion, is the worst retailer in electronics. Case in point -- I tried to buy a computer there, but the salesman wouldn't give me the time of day, much less actually help me to get the computer that I wanted to buy. I know own a Dell because of it. I will only buy things at Best Buy that don't require ANY associate interaction (well I'll give you the cashier and that is it). I doubt that any /.er would buy memory there, but for kicks just go up the memory counter and ask for a price. You'll be amazed at how fast they blow you off.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
I work services too (computer services) and my motto is:
"If the customer was always right, he/she wouldn't need me."
I definitely tell my customers when I think that they are wrong about something, respectfully of course. Customers pay *me* to be right. Yes, my customer base is growing largely on the basis of customer referrals.
But Best Buy is doing something different and extremely counterproductive. The customer might not always be right about the technology, or other things where they pay an expert, but the customer is *always* the expert on the customer's needs. Best Buy is second-guessing the customer's intentions and integrity. If you are hostile towards your customers (like the ??AA) your revenues will shrink, and you will find yourself in a viscious cycle fighting with your customers and losing money in the process!
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I'm an ex Stapler myself (Red Swinglne). Yes, Service Plans were a Big Deal. There was no commission on hardware, but there was a bonus for every service plan you sold. Ditto for cell phone plans. Embarised to say that I was the king of service plan sales. Forgive me, I was weak and in school and needed the money for Ranmen noodles and tripple lattes.
As for restocking fees, we had them on laptops and projectors. I assume it ws so that you could not come into town and "rent" a projector for your presentation for free.
We had a few real scammers. One guy would buy a palmtop then come in the next day and return a broken palmtop. He did this several times. The suspision was that he got some broken ones cheep and was "returning" then and selling the good ones at a profit.
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
Yeah, I'm the type of guy who'd REALLY piss Best Buy off, since if I were in that situation I would have interrupted the employee and tell white collar dad exactly how full of shit that employee was.
In fact, that makes me want to go to Best Buy right now....
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I cannot detail them all, but once I waited 20 minutes for someone to show me a $2000 HDTV. Sure, it wasn't the most expensive unit, but something like that had to have a margin. It was not on sale. After I had been forgotten ,standing there in front of the unit I just wanted turned on, I walked out. Nobody notice. I went a mile down the road, and got it for $200 less from Circuit City (were it just happened to be on sale).
One time I went in to buy a 23" $2000 LCD monitor. The salesmonkey didn't have time to show it to me, but after 10 minutes a department manager came over. When I ask her to show it to me in it's 1600x1200 Native Resolution, she said "we can't do that".
Me: You Can't Do that?
Her: No.
Me: Okay, thanks. (I proceeded out the door)
I purchased the unit an hour later from Comp USA at full retail price.
Another time I went in to get a 1Gb SD card. The salesmonkey told me that they "didn't carry those kinds of cards, but we have flash memory". When she stepped 3 feet to the left, I found the SD cards right behind her. They didn't have 1GB though. I got it at Fry's an hour later. Full retail price.
I went in for a hard drive and some other accessories. It took the salesmonkey 45 minutes (no, I am not kidding) to find the key to the cage that the hard drive was in.
I bought that mechandise, but that is the last purchase I made at Best Buy.
Now, the folks at the local Circuit City know me by name. I buy decent-margin stuff every month.
I don't return things, and I don't buy rebate scams.
I'm sure Best Buy has no idea that i'm gone, but I personally have no idea how they stay in business. I couldn't get them to take my money on the largest ticket items!?!
Granted, I don't dress like a Barry or Buzz or whatever. I'll go in sweats to buy a laptop. I don't care what the salesmonkey's think of me (should I?). Do they get extra margin if you buy it while wearing a tie? I just want to get what I came for and leave. I can't do that at Best Buy.
For the record, the Best Buys I am speaking of are in Atwater Villiage and West Hollywood in LA.
Maybe it's different elsewhere, or maybe I just smell really bad (I bathe daily, but maybe they prefer cologne).
All of the salesmonkeys seem utterly clueless and disinterested, and seem to detest the fact that they work in Best Buy. As a matter of fact, they seem to detest the fact that I exist on the planet. The most rudimentary question is met with a blank stare or an utterly ridiculous incorrect answer (yeah, sometimes I ask when I already know because I like to know if the salemonkey is shooting me straight).
Thank goodness for the competitive market.
Ah, yes. CompUSA. I went there a couple weeks ago for a 9-pin male/male gender changer adapter. There wasn't a price tag on it, but I figured even with the ridiculous markup on cables at Best Buy, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc, that it'd be $10, maybe $15 at the most. But I needed it right away, so I was willing to pay extra. I about keeled over when the cashier told me the total: $23.78. I put the $10 and $5 bills I was holding back in my wallet and walked out of the store muttering some choice words that I can't recall. I ended up at Radio Shack in the mall, and somehow felt better about spending $12 for a gender changer. So, no CompUSA for me.
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 realized something after working retail sales, especially in the computer department. the more you know about the product, the worse off you'll be. i could go on and on about how overall system performance isn't dictated purely by processor speeds, "how big the hard drive is," or how expensive the product is. some people may listen and learn a lot from you. some people are still brainwashed by brand name or perceived speed. but at the end of the day, i can either spend hours upon hours educating people, trying to help them make the "right" choices, or i could sell a computer.
i started off the job with a lot of computer knowledge and experience, but very little sales experience. you soon realize people just want to be told what computer is best for them, whether it is or not. you spout out numbers, figures, and specs that sound attractive to the customer and they'll buy. if i were to start complicating the matters, by explaining bus speed, processor architecture (intel vs amd vs powerpc), the customer would think the product is VERY important and tend to not buy on the spot. they'd consult others first before they buy. mind you, i think that's the smart thing to do, but management wants results at that point. they don't want customers to come back a week from now after "thinking about it." supposedly, they've done studies about this and studies about that and these techniques such as dumbing down everything work for Best Buy's target audience.
it took me a while to learn that i shouldn't get technical with people. i'm sure other sales associates do the same. on the other hand, i've known *many* people that just repeat what people tell them, what managers want them to say, etc to make a sale. my old manager started off as a sales associate himself, not even owning a computer for the first 2 years he worked in the department. he'd always use the line, "yeah, i own this same one," "my mother owns this one," "my sister owns that exact one," etc. he had no real knowledge about computers aside from the fact that it was his job to sell them, along with what ever product he can attach.
think about it, these are sales people. i know some that plan to make it their career and make $20 or more. sales is what they're good at, not computers. and that is exactly the type of employee Best Buy is looking for. i finally quit because i couldn't stand it any more.
hackers of the world unite!
Absolutely no way they'd let me exchange an unopened video recorder to buy a more expensive one.
So the clerk said. Walking up to any manager, however, quickly reveals that common sense prevails.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
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.
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.
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...
I work at a grocery store. Carts cost $150each new.
I'm not advocating that overclocking and then returning is a good and honest practise.
BUT a lot of businesses know that occassionally things are broken by customers abusing the product. Know why they exchange it?
If you don't exchange it, you might stop people from abusing and sending them back. Also, you'll probably get some guy who didn't. Now, that guy is going to tell all his buddies what utter fucktards you are. All because you wouldn't exchange a product where a lot of the costs of the goods are in everything but the manufacturing costs (R&D, advertising, plant).
Even for the bad customers, maybe they fry it. But at least they'll probably buy another of your processors. How much does an CPU physically cost to make?
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.
Instead, I went to another shop, asked lots of questions which got answered and then later went home, and told my dad that the computer could do all the things he needed and the shop to buy it from.
Look at the raw numbers, score one sale for CompUSA even if they made only spare change on the deal. Sure they don't mark up their products on the same scale as furniture stores, but even so...
Also look at the happy shopper who will be returning to CompUSA first.
The problem with BestBuy's outlook is that they are considering any sale at less then sticker price to be a profit loss. Did you actually send in a rebate form? Thats a profit loss to them, though luckily the odds say that there were 3 more people that didn't mail it in. I would be willing to bet they are still making more money off un-mailed rebates then the "devil" shoppers are costing them. That is one reason they switched to the rebate model from the sale model.
So basically Best Buy is receiving a profit hit on the expected 3/4 of non-mailed rebate forms. They would likely start complaining if everyone suddenly mailed in all of their rebate forms from all of their sales.
With four sales you get the sale price * 4 (from the store perspective). With four sales of a rebated item you get the sale price * 4 + 3 * rebate amount. With multiple rebates the percentage increases (in favor of the store).
I say we should give them a choice:
1) Suck it up and stop being whiny
2) Take it out on the customer but by government mandate be forced to set aside all rebate money in seperate accounts with a computer system that tracks sales vs rebate periods. When a rebate is not claimed in the 90(?) day period, the money goes straight to charity without the tax write off.
Wanna bet which one they would choose?
Whee signature.
Staff, restacking of shelves, rent on property
Often times the restacking of shelves is also done by outsiders. Many softdrink vendors (Coke/Pepsi, for example) will have their delivery people stock the shelves directly. Same with chips, from what I remember. I would guess for many of the larger stores 10-15% of shelf space is maintained by outsiders, not store staff.
creation science book
Unfortunately, many of us only have two choices:
1) Best Buy: good luck finding someone to help you.
2) Circuit City: good luck keeping the sales rep from physically handcuffing himself to you until you buy something.
Yeah, I call bullshit, too. Kroger is happy to inform me that, with my KrogerPlus card (don't worry, you libs, it's on a fake address and name) I've saved (8 to 15)% on my grocery bill today! The price of Kraft American cheese, I noticed, was 40c higher on the shelf than marked on the package (pre-printed), and the KP card brought it down to the on-package price.
In fact, for the same items, I've found WalMart to be about 20%-25% less than Kroger on a typical shopping trip. Now, I know WM is the devil, and they beat suppliers into submission, but we're talking Pillsbury, Kraft, General Mills, and the like, not the poor slob trying to market his new mousetrap.
It's also worth noting that much of the gloom and doom scenerios spun by the food stores is a direct result of their over-growth through financing. When you add 7-9% overhead via financing, you certainly can put yourself in a pinch. Also, remember that every employee - from the bottom all the way to the gilded Aeron, bonus laden CEO gets paid before any "profit" is made. I think you'll find most industries have a "razor thin" margin because, let's face it, every dollar in profit means forty cents to the government.
No crying is necessary on behalf of the grocery stores.
Oh, and a shopping cart costs in excess of $100. They are quite expensive, both to buy and maintain (I have a FOAF who has a handful of welders who just fix shopping carts. He makes very good money. I think he bills his guys out at about $80-120/hr.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That's interesting. My wife forgot the charger for her Blackberry when we were on honeymoon. We stopped in at a Best Buy in Calgary and found exactly what we wanted -- after a fruitless search at Radio Shack.
Cheers, Matt
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
Meaning the Dark Blues have more incentive to lie and generally screw you over?
This attitude really annoys me. Maybe where I worked was different (and I seriously doubt it), but when I worked for commission, if the item came back, it got deducted from my check. For that reason it was fully in our interest to make sure that the item that we sold stayed sold i.e. met the customer's requirements.
It's the ones who aren't on commission who don't care and will sell you the wrong things just to line you up for a service plan.
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
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.
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Same thing in french stores; except they use 1 Euro coin... lots more than a quarter.
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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.