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Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn Resigns After $1.7 Billion Loss
An anonymous reader writes "Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn has resigned amid the big-box retailer's major financial problems. The announcement comes two weeks after Best Buy announced a $1.7 billion loss for its fiscal fourth quarter. Best Buy is trying to avoid the same fate as Circuit City, which went out of business in 2009, but the future looks grim." The article provides a reason not to trust middle-management: the company claims it had "no disagreements with Dunn about operations, financial controls, policies or procedures." Best Buy may not be Shangri La, but in many rural and semi-rural parts of the U.S., it's the nearest and best place to actually find a wide selection of electronics.
...but I only buy sale items. We bought an Epson 8350 video projector when it was $100 less than any other competitor that I could find, and have really liked it. But, again, I don't buy cell phones from them, and it's not common for me to buy computer parts from them anymore either. They probably can't survive as a big-box store when many customers are looking for a discount-boutique experience as far as the occasional big purchase is concerned.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Their customer service is bad. Their sales clerks are trained to be pushy. Their prices are just so-so.
No big surprise.
How much of a bonus does he get for leaving?
Just curious.
If it weren't for online retailers, Best Buy would be my only choice for computer hardware other than a few small vendors (which cost even more than Best Buy). Thank the silicon gods for NewEgg and Tiger Direct.
The days of the big box electronics retailer are dead.
I can't say I'm too surprised, nor am I very broken up about it, either. I haven't had a very good shopping experience there since the early 2000's and haven't even stepped foot in one in over a year.
Why can't people in rural or semi-rural parts of the US just use Amazon like everyone else in the US?
I'm not sure I'm spoken to a Best Buy employee once without them lying to me. My most recent purchase was a new 3D TV. I made the purchase at Best Buy because they had the lowest price, despite how much I normally despise that store. The employee was insisting that I needed to buy high-end HDMI cables as well (despite the fact that digital cables don't have signal degradation in the way that analog cables can) and he insisted I needed a new 3D BluRay player. I told him I had a PS3 and he was adamant that PS3's couldn't play 3D BluRays, so I had to buy a new one. I pointed to his demo unit which was using a PS3 to play 3D BluRays.
I also know people who have worked at Best Buy in the past who admitted it is official company policy to lie to customers. They are trained to claim to own whatever item a customer is looking at, so they can recommend it.
Given Best Buy's business practices, frankly I expect them to fail over time.
Small electronics sales will likely move to Amazon, and people will just buy TVs and large items elsewhere (department stores, Walmart, Target, etc).
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
You say "The article provides a reason not to trust middle-management".
I don't think you know what middle management means. Sure, this is a reason not to trust corporate PR, but I think it should kind of go without saying that you should never trust corporate PR, as regardless of the truth of the situation, it is their JOB to say things that are "best" for the company.
Even with that gargantuan loss, I'll bet he still has a huge golden parachute in his contract.
American CEO's - the only job where you can lose billions and still get stupid rich for doing it!
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
And yet Fry's Electronics is still going strong, has a great selection, and is really the only big box electronics store I'll go into.
Yes, they have a small army working the floor, just like BB, but unlike BB they aren't obnoxious or constantly harassing you*.
Here's what BB should do: Look at what Fry's is doing, and DO THAT!
*I understand from previous /. stories that this behavior is mostly the fault of the management, so apologies to the conscientious BB employees.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
I went in looking for an ethernet card (pretty basic, right?) and the salesdroid informed me they hadn't stocked "wired networking stuff (sniff!) since October" and the manager standing right there just went "yup" and didn't seem to think it was a problem.
I went across the street to Staples to get the same card as the BB website for $9 cheaper.
Your boss must really hate you.
1. Your employees are jerks. I hate talking to them, they are not people friendly. Every time I go to BestBuy, I cannot count the number of times where an employee follows me all around the store and asks what I think about whatever it is that I'm currently looking at. I wouldn't mind that so much but then when I finally find whatever it is that I came for, no one is within a 100 mile radius of me?! WTF?!
2. My ears hurt after leaving your store. I think it might be the employee that is trying to sell dude over there a new 346" HDTV that has said HDTV set to where the volume has to rival any 747 that might also want to take off in your store. Literally I travel to BestBuy with earplugs.
3. Your prices suck. That is all there is to that.
4. I feel bad for coming to your store. I hate to keep beating on the employee gong, but when I go to the local BestBuy, employees look so soulless and that in turn makes me feel bad for coming to your store in the first place. No one is happy to be in a BestBuy. I can't put my finger on it exactly but it just seems so, loud, dull, and annoying at BestBuy.
5. I miss CompuUSA and for some reason or another, I always go into BestBuy looking for computer parts first, until I realize, oh yeah the selection is pathetic at best. Of course, people say that I could just jump on the Internet and ask them to ship whatever to the store, but if I get on the Internet, I'm not surfing over to BestBuy.
6. Yeah that whole Amazon.com and them not collecting sales tax, yeah that's a big problem for BestBuy. I have no idea how they get away with it but I've seen lot of friends head to BestBuy to look at the product, yank out phone, and order the exact same thing from Amazon. They like it because it is usually free shipping and by paying no sales tax, they usually save about $5.00 to $20.00. (Local sales tax being 10%)
I've got no idea how BestBuy can turn the tide, but it sucks to walk into a BestBuy. It's not a very happy experience.
Then it would have been a walmart card
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I worked for Best Buy from 1999 to 2001. They were a pretty good company back then. The only thing they really pushed us to sell was the extended warranties... excuse me, protection plans. I really enjoyed working for the company. I stayed in touch with my former co-workers that stayed on with them for many years after I left. According to them, Best Buy's policies got worse and they became a pretty bad company to work for. They got super high pressure with everything. I actually interviewed with them again in 2009 but ended up turning down the job offer. I didn't like what the company had become.
Actually, if you've been into a BB lately, you might have noticed that at least 70% of the floorspace is taken up selling what you might call "hardcopy media". Stuff like movies, music, and electroic games. All things that are increasingly being purchased online these days.
For a while I had hope for them when they starting reserving a good chunk of space for selling actual equipment for musicians. That seems to have been a fad though.
They still are my favorite place to shop for computer games (yeah, I'm old-school that way), but they've countered that by shrinking their selection down to about a shelf or two. :-(
If they honestly don't see any problems with their current operations, policies, or procedures, I don't see how they can expect anything other than more of the same decline.
Last December I was shopping for a TV and cruised through Best Buy to check out their sales. They had a reasonable looking TV that had just gone on sale at a very good price, but like any tech geek I wanted to do some comparisons before buying. It was one of their house brands, but the price and reviews compared favorably to similar TVs from other manufacturers. So the next day, my wife stopped by to pick up the TV.
One problem, though. Best Buy pulled a bait-n-switch on her.
They had been advertising the sale price for the TV I had seen. But sometime in the ~24 hours since I had been in the store, they brought in a pallet of TVs that looked identical to the one I wanted, but these had weaker speakers and fewer inputs. They marked these TVs at the same price as the one I had seen the day before. My wife went in to buy the TV, asked for the TV on sale at the specified price, and they gave her the inferior model.
I looked at the model number before opening the box and saw the error, so I packed the TV and my toddler in the car (the wife wasn't home) to exchange the TV for the correct model right away. Before going to customer service I surveyed the electronics section. Sure enough, there was a pallet of TVs of the lesser model that had not been there the day before. Not far away was the shelf with a handful of the TV I saw the day before on sale for the exact same price. I went to CS, toddler in tow, to make the exchange. The CS person was, to her credit, was very accommodating. But the slacker she sent to bring up the right TV took 20 excruciating minutes (my daughter HATES her car seat) and a reminder from the CS associate to get the new set out to me.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the way things are going. There will be one or two "retailers" left on the Internet which will be in unassailable positions because of heavy discounting on freight and committments from suppliers. Buying anything locally will be an option fondly remembered by grandparents and a concept utterly foreign to the next generation.
Why will there be only two? Well, Amazon ships with UPS and UPS charges them so little based on volume that they can make money offering free 2-day shipping. Should some new player come along they aren't going to get discounts like that until they have a huge volume, which means their prices will be higher, meaning they aren't going to get that huge volume. Same thing with suppliers: if you buy 1,000 TVs from Samsung they give you a different price than if you buy 100. If you sell 1000 a week you are going to be buying a huge number - maybe more like 10,000 at a time - and get such a better price that they new start-up can't ever get that good a price.
So what do we have now? A monopoly. Mostly driven by the Internet and the way shipping works in the US. Best Buy had their own fleet of truck for distribution so their costs were quite different than using UPS or FedEx. The idea that some new startup can come along - as Best Buy did - is pretty much gone. The market is closed to new entrants. Would there be room for two such distributors? Maybe not - we might end up with only Amazon as the big retailer in the US and WalMart for low-end stuff. We can all see that the small independent seller is doomed if they haven't already closed up shop now. WalMart put those folks out of business a long time ago.
You can certainly say that Best Buy failed in providing customer service, but we are seeing a passing of a lifestyle. We are also seeing an interesting phenomenon whereby more and more things in people's daily lives are being supplied through a single source. Did you know there is only one factory in the US making glass bottles? If one can do it, why have more, right? Except it is a single point of failure and there are many substances that a glass bottle is required for. If that one factory has a fire or some other accident the entire US is without glass bottles for perhaps a very long time. With retailers being eliminated we are focusing more and more on online retailers and two shipping companies - of which there will only be one in the end. When it is only Amazon and FedEx (far more diversified then UPS and therefore the more likely one to survive), what happens if there is a strike against FedEx? Well, it means people stop getting stuff. When it is WalMart and Amazon alone and everyone is getting food, clothes and everything else through these channels what does it mean?
One big thing it means is that if the buyer at WalMart doesn't like some supplier, their stuff isn't getting sold in the US. It means decisions that consumers get to make today are then made by the buyers for the retailers that are left. If the buyer doesn't choose it, the consumer can't choose it. Period.
Oh, you think "the long tail" will solve this problem. Not really. There will be only a few retailers because the dynamics of an online store are quite different from opening a little shop on Main Street. It is already pretty much impossible for an upstart to compete with Amazon today and it isn't going to get any better. Which means if Amazon doesn't strike a deal with a supplier - on Amazon's terms - their stuff doesn't get sold. Manufacturers are ill-suited to sell things directly, so that isn't really an option. Neither is Amazon going to take on a new product that completes with an existing high-volume product unless they get a really good deal - why trade dollars for pennies? This puts Amazon in control of what brands of toothpase you get to choose from - you will not have the option of going to a different store.
Pretty sad, isn't it. At least it isn't the government making these decisions for us.
They can't -force- you to stop. I had the same thing happen in Wal-Mart, once. I bought a Rubbermaid tote and, with a few bags inside, but the top off because I knew they'd ask to see inside, the greeter guy - Patrick, it said on his name tag - wanted to see my receipt. We went back and forth, I told him I'd just paid for it and that it was my property, now, and he had no business either asking to inspect my property or prevent me from leaving. I ended up calling the police to report being held against my will - they said, "Why don't you just show him the receipt?", fucking sheep - but said they'd send a car over. Eventually, the manager came over, and I asked, "Are you calling me a thief?" He said, "No." I asked, "Am I free to go?" He said, "Yes." And I left. Cops didn't show up before I left, which is good - I probably would've been tazed and arrested for resisting arrest.
My wife won't let me buy totes in Wal-Mart anymore. Apparently, avoiding embarrassment leaving the store is more important than standing up for my rights.
Since people are already using brick and mortar stores as showrooms to try before buying online, maybe that's what BB needs to embrace in order to survive. Stop holding vast inventory, trade in big stores for smaller spaces that focus on social events centered around technology, and affiliate themselves with online merchants rather than fight them to their inevitable death. Imagine a place where you get to experience the future high tech house/bar/coffee shop/office. It's slicker than an Apple store, and everything you touch is a product you can buy. Snap a barcode with your phone and you're taken to a BB site where you can post your reaction/experience to facebook along with a link to buy (with BB taking commission). Couple hundred clicks/likes and you get a discount to any of their authorized affiliates.
*inb4 crappy 5 minute ideas get ripped apart :)
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
In my more entrepreneurial moments I've been thinking of setting up a GC exchange corporation where people could trade cards they don't want for a modest fee say 1% off the top. My wife for example would enjoy trading cash for your GC, assuming that store isn't the fat chick mall store (don't recall name sry).
Too bad your idea has already been done, and it works quite well: see plastic jungle.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
I think people here are over selling Fry's because they are so much better than the alternatives. Fry's have plenty of clueless employees that will just make stuff up. They also have a lot of crap, and broken merchandise on the shelves. The difference is that Fry's runs their stores more like grocery stores. If some tries to sell you on something and you tell them to go away, they generally will. While a lot of the stuff on their shelves is junk, their inventory is so huge that the non-junk still dwarfs Best buy's entire inventory.
With Fry's, it is a matter of understanding what they are, and shopping the right way for the environment. with Best Buy, there is no right way to shop their environment. It sucks from the ground up.
Yeah, I had the same reaction. Maybe change the statement to "MANY users aren't comfortable buying parts online - they want a salesman to tell them exactly what to buy".
You know what I always tell people that my real job is? Reading. It ain't TS, it ain't SysAdmin. It's reading and researching on how to do something - that's it. Understanding and interpreting the instructions to those who, for whatever reason, lack the ability or the desire to do it themselves. I'll direct those who haven't seen this to this handy chart:
https://xkcd.com/627/
Yay - computers de-mystified. Of course there is the theory behind how things work, troubleshooting methods, anticipated expected behavior, etc, but to a large degree this chart tells the real story many times over.
If I have to give a wack at rewiring portions of an engine's electrical system, or changing out a compressor in a fridge (both RL examples for me), do I have any inside knowledge on what to do? Nope. I google up some shit, use some logic and test it out, with the knowledge that I really DON'T know what I'm doing. If I find I am digging myself a hole, I (usually) have the humility to call it quits before I lose the patient for good. Then, when I call in an expert for help, I have a bit of background on the issue, which hopefully will give the repairman incentive to just fix what is wrong instead of taking me to the cleaners over it.
This doesn't work all the time obviously, but its true enough - at least, I have found so. Non-nerdy people, hear my voice! Wanna not get fleeced, constantly? Do a bit of research and read before you plunge into an unknown pool. The frustration (and cash) you save may be your own...
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
Seriously, I make a living off ex-geek squad customers. I run a small one-man computer repair / virus removal business. Can't tell you how many PC's I fix and find Geek Squad fingerprints all over it. One lady called me in a panic because GS had quoted her $1300 to "repair" her unbootable PC ( new Motherboard, new hard drive, new RAM ( WTF?) and a new power supply.. I fixed it for a flat $75 by running chkdsk on the drive and cleaning off the virus. She's still my customer to this day and I've easily made a grand off her over the years, migrating data, removing new malware and viruses as they come up (gotta love teens )
I have a simple business model that geek squad can't compete with.
1) I do it better for less. I pick up and drop off too, if you dont want me to stay at your place and work on it rt.
2) I WARRANTY all my work- ie: if for whatever reason you aren't satisfied, I'll make it right, NO CHARGE, no argument and no hassle.
3) you get ME every time you dial my business number, not some kid that worked the fry basket last week. I can rmember the ongoing issues with your stuff.
4) this is the biggie: I will do everything I can to recover your data, BEFORE I format it and reinstall. Even if I have to spend an extra hour with a ubuntu bootable disk picking it off the disk and putting it on a backup drive.
I've around 350 regular clients, some have been with me for 7 years. They're my bread and butter. Most of them despise GS, and by extension, Best Buy. Customers have a long memory for getting screwed.
I was about to reply with about the same story...and then read your reply.
My last one was at a Guitar Center. I'd paid for my stuff, put my recipt into the bag..and walked out...the person at the entrance was saying "I need to see your receipt"...I said, no you don't and kept walking..they tried following me out saying they needed to inspect..etc.
I stopped briefly for a second and asked if they suspected of theft or anything.....the people (might have been manager with door watcher at this point)..had this puzzled look and said sheepishly..."no...but..."
At that point I turned and walked to my car. I did hear one of them say "you'll not be able to return any of that if we've not marked the receipt".
Geez.
There is only ONE place I let check my receipt, and that's sam's club....because if I recall, that was part of the membership contract I signed with them....but I don't have any agreements with any other stores out there, and I frankly do not like being automatically suspected of shoplifting.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
the last time I ever set foot in a CC was when I went there to buy a hard to get CD. I was standing at the counter for five minutes with the CD in one hand and cash in the other. When no-one showed up to take my money, I put the CD onto the counter and left.