Slashdot Mirror
Best Buy Will Now Send a Salesperson To Your House To Sell You Things (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Starting next month, Best Buy will launch a free service where salespeople will come to your house to make recommendations about gadgets and services to try and sell you stuff. The service has been in testing in five markets and will be expanded to more cities around the U.S., according to the Associated Press. The Verge reports: "Best Buy has found that shoppers spend more money when at home than in store. CEO Hubert Joly says the in-house service is one way the company will open up 'latent' customer demand. Sales associates are responsible for promoting the service -- when customers ask about certain products, the salesperson will suggest an in-home visit. The topics discussed during the home visits usually involve recommendations for products and gadgets, and other services. Best Buy says the salespeople working in the in-home service receive hourly rates, or a salary, and not commissions. The company already operates a 'Geek Squad' facility, but that's a paid service that offers repairs and installations."
They wont.
I suppose if there are enough people who are lonely and clueless enough to invite a stranger into their homes to suggest ways to randomly spend money on tech gadgets, then by all means. This will not be happening in my household any time in the foreseeable future, but maybe this seemingly desperate move in some way helps BestBuy find a way to stop the beating that Amazon is putting on them.
Worst Buy
So, let me get this straight: they're taking one of the worst parts of going to Best Buy (dealing with the salespeople), and sending them to my home? In the words of Lana Kane: Nyoooope.
This is worse than that time they decided to "Fire" their own customers.
Jesus, I know they're basically just a shitty cell phone store and somewhere you go to look at a product before buying it on amazon, but this is embarrassing.
With the characters wearing khaki pants and blue shirts. ABC, Always Be Closing [your crappy retail stores].
If it is anything like when I worked there long ago when going to school, sure they don't pay commission. But don't sell enough service plans and see how long you stay employed.
I wouldn't call this a 'service'.
...Time to short the stock, I guess.
We already have delivery of groceries picked by others and then delivered to us, we have cars chosen by others and delivered to us, we have clothes - the same thing. Random strangers you can book to come and do your laundry, cook your food, clean your house. This seems like a logical extension of the "retail experience" - it comes to you. I don't want it, but I'm not surprised...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
And it's not because they are going to send salesmen. But that will become one more reason.
The reasons I avoid Best Buy are due to two or more slashdot stories over the years.
The first is so long ago that I'm sketchy on the details. It involved someone getting arrested for complaining to the store manager about a graphics card. The problem was clearly something the store had done, not the manufacturer. Sorry, that's not very informative. But it was when I stopped going to Best Buy. That, and the fact that any time I set foot in the door, I was instantly and continuously bombarded by and harassed by sales people.
The second is more recent, but still some time ago. Again, a slashdot story. Best Buy had an "optimization" service where you could pay $100 to have them send a kid out to your house to make sure all of your TV / audio equipment was properly set up, and to "optimize" it to ensure you were getting the best picture. To sell this service, Best Buy had two identical large screen TVs set up. Tuned to the "same" channel. But the person reporting this could clearly see that one TV was tuned to the SD channel and the other to the HD channel. Yet Best Buy, and sales people when asked, denied that was the case, or the reason why their "optimization" made the image on one TV so much better than the other TV.
Oh, yeah, I remember another reason. Again, on slashdot. It was discovered and shown that if you browsed bestbuy.com on your smartphone, while in the Best Buy store, and using the Best Buy free WiFi, that they routed you to an alternate "fake" bestbuy.com. That fake site had artificially inflated prices to be higher than the in-store prices. That way you would pay the inflated in-store price rather than go home and buy online for less.
So despite not going to Best Buy stores for more than a decade, there is now another reason that I won't ever go there. They're going to send sales people to harass people at their homes.
No thanks!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
They will be price matching with Amazon.
Otherwise, I have nothing better to do than have them demo everything, saving someone else from them.
They *do* have a reputation to uphold.
Will price match with Amazon for the same products (regardless of model number fuzzing)
Otherwise, I'll waste all their time, and save others from them, I don't have much else to do.
Maybe they can bring some nice vacuum cleaners and clean and dust my house as a demo.
I'm not interested GEEK! This is Texas, we can shoot trespassers here if we want too...
Now take that pitiful Volkswagen bug and get OFF my lawn!
I don't buy at Best Buy if I can help it. (Yes, I have my reasons, given they damaged two appliances while delivering them, hid the damage and then refused to fix them when I found out.)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This sounds incredibly pointless from every angle. The average consumer mostly just goes to Best Buy to either touch stuff before buying it on Amazon and will swat away salespeople with a stick, so sending the blue shirt army to their house won't work. The complete idiot usually has one or two friends who know shit about tech that they can ask for advice, and the savvy consumer is too busy reading reviews to go to a physical store, much less hear some pitch from a salesperson.
On Best Buy's end, I can imagine that this costs them money to send workers on duty to people's houses, merely so that they can tell people to buy stuff that they'll probably purchase on Amazon anyway. It makes next to no sense from either side, with maybe the exception of LA/Manhattanites used to the 5th Avenue/Rodeo Drive experience of personalized shoppers.
The local Best Buy has a showroom for a theater system with a large screen, surround sound and leather seats. All for $250K. They could probably sell more if they have a salesperson explaining how the family room can be renovated into a family theater for $250K. That's a lot of money to see the wood grain on Bruce Springsteen's guitar.
Best Buy has found that shoppers spend more money when at home than in store
.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
If not, what's the point?
Best Buy sales people are the new Fuller Brush Men..
No Thanks, if I don't shop in their stores why would I want them at my door?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
What a timesaver! Now the Geek Squad can look for porn on your home computer without your having to bring it in to them!
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/01/10/238223/why-you-shouldnt-trust-geek-squad
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/03/12/0358242/how-the-fbi-used-geek-squad-to-increase-secret-public-surveillance
The majority of commenters didn't seem to figure out that they don't randomly show up to your house uninvited. You didn't even have to read TFA, just the OP.
> when customers ask about certain products, the salesperson will suggest an in-home visit.
Oh, wait...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Man, thanks for the laugh. I needed that today!
I wouldn't let a BB employee into my house if they paid me. All so these people who have already been shown to be sketchy with techs installing spyware, etc on PCs they work on. Now they want to bring their shitty employee's into people's homes to scope stuff out for coming back to visit and steal your shit.
No thank you Best Buy, you are not a trusted business by any means.
Isn't spam and inserted ads in everything on line enough?
Pretty soon, they'll be using the desktop background for ads!
Do you really still open your front-door for random non-appointment morons ringing the bell?
For a couple of years now, since my postal office introduced depositing packages automatically at a specified location and the water, electricity and gas counters got a wireless reading system, I never react when the bell rings. :-)
It's mostly off anyway, because I like to nap and I'm not curious
It's only Jehovah's witnesses, real estate salesmen and other soliciting scum that comes to front doors, visiting friends know to call first.
Gun stores across the US are now selling anti-best-buy-sales-rep ammo...
I just signed up for a service where someone breaks into my house, kicks me in the balls and takes a dump on my living room rug. I am thinking this Best Buy service will be almost as good!
love is just extroverted narcissism
Great news guys.
Rather than going into the store to have the sales person read information on the back of the box to you. Now you can stay at home in your PJs and slippers and have a Best Buy sales person come into your house - to read stuff off of the back of the box to you.
Will the salesmen also try to pawn off copies of the Watchtower for a small donation?
OR maybe Dianetics.
They invented the totally new idea of sending a salesman door to door. Never before seen that.
Big money. FBI money.
If you will not go to store,
they will come to you. Cause CP.
I'm sure these new Best Buy sales strategies will help keep the company as profitable and robust as Circuit City and Radio Shack ... oh, wait.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
so we come in to your house, install malware on all pc! then we hide paedo files on all your devices, then we get BIG commission from interpol, fbi, rcmp, etc! AND THEN WE SELL YOU MORE SHIT! MAKE BIGGER COMMISION!
I live 15 minutes outside town in a cabin at the end of a dirt road. If you get to shallow hole next to a bunch of small earthen mounds, you've found it.
If consumers have devolved enough to pay for something like this, could I get rich by charging people a daily fee to spam their inbox?
That might be kinda fun just to see what the salesman recommends. Except for 1 gaming computer (ok, 2) all the tech at my house is probably older than said salesman :) Suppose he would want to suggest a new stereo, that would fun to question which ones support pure 4 channel sound. Surely some new wireless speakers would blow away my old clunky 15" six-ways, well, after we add some subwoofers and another amp it might get close. Wonder if he'll want to sell me a new turntable too? Telephone will almost certainly be older :) Network gear is probably an antique. Cel phone already is...
None of which has any better modern replacements for my use.
I might even listen when we get around to the 20 year-old TV ;) If it had a horizontal size adjustment we wouldn't talk about that either :O Damn picture doesn't fit on the screen and only a service adjust in ONE dimension!?!
Unless they are after a theater system and install I can't see it making sense. And that would need a visit anyway to be any good.
...
"Starting next month, Best Buy will launch a free service where salespeople will come to your house to make recommendations about gadgets and services to try and sell you stuff."
As long as I get to rummage through their stuff when they try to leave my house like they do when I try to leave their stores.
Door Guy at Best Buy: "I need to look in your bag, sir. We just want to make sure you haven't forgotten anything..."
Me: "Fuck off and die. What's in this bag is MINE and NO, you can't look in it and NO you can't look at my receipt either. Have a nice day."
Door Guy at Best Buy: "But it's my job to check the bags as they go out..."
Me: "What part of 'NO' seemed unclear?"
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
it's easy to add employees when you're not paying them anything. More 'sharing' economy; you get to share your time with Best Buy because there aren't enough real jobs.
On another note, these scams have always been around. What's scary is seeing a company as large as Best Buy engage in them...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I lived in Minneapolis-St Paul in the 80s, and shopped in the original Best Buy stores. If you wanted to buy anything worth more than about $50, there was no price listed and you had to haggle with a salesman. Sometimes you'd get the price on a piece of paper, other times no, meaning the price lasted as long as the conversation. It was horrible to try to comparison shop.
Only because they were losing business to competitors who had a price on each item (and left open the door to haggle/price match) did Best Buy follow suit. The pressure of the old way still comes to mind every time I enter one of their stores.
Why would they ever want to not only bring it back, but put it in my living room?
... premises search.
How The FBI Used Geek Squad To Increase Secret Public Surveillance
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Just wait for them use fine print and other BS to get out that.
Comcast door to door Sales have misrepresented terms. How can best buy do better?
With out them useing bait and switch to sell extended warranty's and over priced Geek squad stuff.
years ago best buy wanted $100 more for a PSU then an other tech store for the same one.
limited supply!! on the $30 pack buy now before price go up.
only $2.50 each limited time. or you can get 24 for only $1.79 each
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Salespeople are terrible. I hate talking to people. Avoiding people is part of my daily life.
I would much rather have Uber track me, Amazon know everything I consume, give my phone company my whereabouts at all times, allow Target to predict my pregnancy, and allow my credit card company to sell my data then talk to someone in person.
So I'll call every Best Buy in my area and schedule their sales people to all meet at my house at the same time. Whomever can convince the other guys that their enhancements are best gets my best offer (which will be $0, but I won't tell them that). I'll make sure to have popcorn.
So now it won't just be GeekSquad planting child pr0n on your computer that you bring to them, so that they can make money by turning you in to their FBI handlers (See many internet articles), but now they can get a cut of the action when the DEA confiscates your house and property via RICO due to the drugs the Best Buy Agents hide in your house then report...
A lot of people here seem to be under the impression that they are going to be canvassing (banging on doors, looking for sales). I get the feeling that this is more of a service they will offer on-demand. They'll probably try to upsell it at their checkouts and in advertisements. You call them, schedule a date/time, and they come out to your house to check things out.
>Best Buy has found that shoppers spend more money when at home than in store.
Well that is correct. You know why? Because they don't have to deal with SALESPEOPLE!
Following them, asking if everything is ok, recommending this week's best deal... I mean really. Now you expect people to welcome that into their home shopping experience? Will these salespeople be OK with JohnQPublic in their underwear & a half-lit cig stuck to their dry lips while they have a professional experience together?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Please tell me one day a hater buttblasted you so hard you felt the need to make this your signature.
Oh god I'm dying.
so because people are not watching tv anymore because we're freaking sick and tired of the relentless over and over commercials , after trying to push marketing on webpages , people started to use add stoppers and now with their complete failing on Facebook ( again add stopper) they are going to come knock at our doors ? i can see how that's going to go well , have you ever seen a salesmen break sound barrier between a house door and the curb ? well you're about to , invited guest as such are trespassers and it's actually a breach of property , my home is my sanctuary from all those modern life nuisance , knocking at my door to sell me garbage is a garanteed way to end up on my boycott list , and i know plenty that do the same
Those creepers have already been shown to look all over your hard drive when you bring in a system to them--is anyone *seriously* considering letting them in their home?
NO THANKS!
Not getting past my front door. Thet should focus on doing the opposite of what caused Circuit City to close: Get real tech experts in stores. Geek Squad in every department, not just the service desk.