Best Buy: Thieving Scumbags!

I assumed the double meaning was intentional.

Here’s a handy tip for avoiding this type of asshattery without completely shunning BBY for life:

Order online for instore pickup. The register biscuit at the customer service desk where you pick it up most likely won’t try to upsell you on anything. They hand you the box, and you’re on your way.

My new favorite term is “register biscuit”.

Wish I could take credit, but it’s a Penny Arcade thing.

Okay, assholes, I don’t shop there. Like I said, it was my next door neighbor. Mo-rans!

One in Hampton Roads, VA.

I tried contacting “someone” at that 888 number… good luck. perhaps someone knows a shortcut but after waiting about 10 minutes I got sick of waiting and hung up.

Generally speaking, the Best Buy “Geek Squad” is the bane of IT Departments everywhere. Every once in a while, we get a computer in here with some problem, and they’d taken it to “Geek Squad” first. The customer brings in the report from them, and invariably whatever the “Geek Squad” did had nothing to do with the problem whatsoever. This same customer has usually payed over a hundred dollars for the Geek Squad work, where we either did it for free or charged $25. This isn’t to say that the Geek Squad are a bunch of overrated dipshits, but it does suggest to me a very lax quality control in the management.

Also, I read in the paper about Best Buy not wiping the hard drives of computers they resell. That’s dangerous stuff. Again, this is probably not a company thing, but a local thing. Still, I hope they’ve really started cracking down more.

The problem with Best Buy (and Geek Squad) isn’t the basic idea but how they mismanage employees and have such high turnover rates. I think, though, this is endemic amongst all electronic retailers.

Geek Squad would be a cool thing if they hired qualified, competant employees, paid them commensurate with their qualifications and output, and managed their work well. But, then, it wouldn’t be Best Buy! When the average BB employee is held in no higher regard than the average Wal-Mart stocker it’s not suprising the output from their specialty departments is low.

You hear about “good” Best Buys occasionally; and then, invariably, when some middle manager or corporate flunky arrives and fires or drives off all the experienced workers, how said “good” Best Buy deteriorates into nothing.

The biggest problem facing electronic retailers is (all imo), to use a phrase that i heard describing the Nazi heirarchy, the “awful internal rot” of it’s average store managers and supervisors. The crazy cases i heard second hand from my brother-in-law of outright theft, incompetance, nepotism, vindictiveness against employees, brown-nosing internal politics and utter cluelessness seem rather commonplace in that retail world.

If they did that (hired good/great people and paid them in line with norms) with the Geek Squad staff, the service would make no profit. Because the rates they’d need to charge would be so high nobody would use the service.

Inboarding used to be common practice among smaller computer retailers until BB, CC and other major chains drove them all under. It’s not a common practice at the big chains, but I’m not surprised to learn it’s happening some places as the department probably gets bonus money based on “upsells”, the additional products, services and waranty terms they convince customers to buy.

That said, I’ve never encountered resistance when offering a firm “No thank you” to the initial offer of an upsell, and I’ve been shopping BB and CC for years. Keep in mind, being a pleasant customer can get you a lot farther in a store than being an asshat. People these days seem to think it’s their gods-given right to march into a store, demand whatever they want, and generally act like a dictator and expect the employees to cater to their every whim. Why? When did this become acceptable?

Sure, I’ve got horror stories about long checkout lines, out-of-stock advertised items (“oh, those never came in Friday”) and the sales clerk from hell, but shop anyplace often enough and these will happen to you, it’s a sad fact of retail. I have many more stories about an employee who helped me get a lower price, find one last “out of stock” item in the back room, or turned me on to a better (and sometimes cheaper) product than one I was looking at.

Oddly enough, my experience is the exact inverse of yours.

The longest period of time I’ve gone between calls in which someone took their computer into work or had their corporate IT neighbor come over and eventually be forced to call me is four days.

But hey, all of us, no matter where we are in the computer support food chain, deal with the “I had someone else look at it, but …” stories.

I think it’s Costco’s fault. Or Wal-marts. Which ever store it was whose return desk takes absolutely everything back with no questions. Probably Costco’s more, because I’ve heard stories where people bring back items they’ve used for more than a year, and get a full refund.

Of course, this behaviour is also not new. I’ve seen it before a long long time ago when I worked at Zeller’s (like Walmart, but losing). Everyday there’s always some customer arguing with the returns desk about one thing or another. It’s just now spread out to the floor…

Also, high end car owners act exactly the same way. Just 'cos they have money to wave around…

These stores already exist. They’re not called “Best Buy,” and Midnight Son’s neighbor would never consider shopping at any of them. And if he did, who would post stuff like this anymore?

Actually, mom and pop computer stores are a dying breed, unable to compete with the volume pricing of Dell. I’ve seen at least 10 of them close up locally in the last few years. That said, I’m in the IT field and used to sell systems… but not any more!