The Bargain Thread

[Qessinge]

BB remains head and shoulders about CC for a couple of key reasons. First, BB actually has cash registers. I dunno about your local CC, but mine never had any cashiers. Instead you were force to take stuff up to the customer service desk, where you had to wait behind the lady returning a vacuum and a guy trying to get a rain check before you could check out. Secondly, BB actually has employees on the sales floor. Finding someone to unlock the game case at my local CC was like finding a virgin in a whorehouse.

They could do a mini-series about all the things that CC did wrong, including these two. When they fired all their employees years ago but allowed them to be considered for rehiring (at a fraction of pay) their course was set. BB at least tries to educate and motivate their employees, and I had a very nice experience last month when I bought a TV, and then an even better experience when I returned 3 weeks later to get my $200 price protection credit on the same TV they put on sale…

[nlanza]

Haven’t seen this mentioned yet. Jets n’ Guns Gold for $12 Monday only.

Don’t be put off by the weird art direction. You want this game.

Oh man. I lost so much time to this game. It’s one of the best shooters I’ve played in a long time. Pure over-the-top awesome.

There’s a good Mac version too, btw, though I don’t know if that one’s on sale.

[Marcin]

Haven’t seen this mentioned yet. Jets n’ Guns Gold for $12 Monday only.

Don’t be put off by the weird art direction. You want this game.

Has anyone been able to successfully buy with PayPal on that page?

[Swordchucks]

Does BB pricematch their online prices? I went to my local store this weekend, but RA3 was not $29.99. It was $49.99, making the $20 off coupon a far less compelling deal.

I went to BB over lunch to pick up the same thing. RA3 itself was $29.99 as advertised, but the Premier edition was $65 (when it’s online for $29.99, too). Yeah, so I got the base version.

[Zilla_Blitz]

They could do a mini-series about all the things that CC did wrong, including these two. When they fired all their employees years ago but allowed them to be considered for rehiring (at a fraction of pay) their course was set.

+1.

I went to a CC and a BB on Black Friday two years ago, which was a few months after CC brilliantly decided to fire all their smart people. The contrast was incredible.

CC was mass chaos. It took two hours to get in the store, find about half the items we were hoping to buy, and get through the checkout line. At BB, however, we were in and out of the store in under 20 minutes. At every turn, there was someone there to help us locate what we were trying to buy. We found everything we wanted, and ended up spending twice as much as we did at CC in a fraction of the time.

[Coca_Cola_Zero]

I agree that Circuit City was on a whole other level of suck than Best Buy.

I’m fairly neutral about going into Best Buy to buy things. They overcharge a ton for some items (cables, etc) and have OK prices on other items, and overall their service is pretty good compared to the fairly dismal state of customer service across all big retailers.

I always hated my trips to Circuit City, though. I made about 4 trips to different local (San Diego area) Circuit City locations in the past few years because of sale offers I couldn’t refuse and in hindsight, I regret every trip. Saving the $50+ bucks or so per trip wasn’t even worth the fucking hassle I went through every time I tried to give Circuit City my money.

[JonRowe]

I went to BB over lunch to pick up the same thing. RA3 itself was $29.99 as advertised, but the Premier edition was $65 (when it’s online for $29.99, too). Yeah, so I got the base version.

The premier edition was 30 bucks at my BB, but I didn’t buy it.

[Zilla_Blitz]

I wonder, though, where all the Circuit City talent will go next. I swear that CC got most of their low-cost staff from Comp USA after it went belly up. I just hope they all don’t go from CC to BB now. If I had to guess, I’d vote MicroCenter. That chain seems ripe for disaster if they could just nudge their customer service down a few levels.

And I agree that Best Buy is hardly a shining beacon of customer service.

[Jab]

Does anyone know of any upcoming deals on MadWorld or House of the Dead Overkill? I really want to pick them up but I’ve done a lot of splurging already.

[Alan_Dunkin]

I wonder, though, where all the Circuit City talent will go next. I swear that CC got most of their low-cost staff from Comp USA after it went belly up. I just hope they all don’t go from CC to BB now. If I had to guess, I’d vote MicroCenter. That chain seems ripe for disaster if they could just nudge their customer service down a few levels.

And I agree that Best Buy is hardly a shining beacon of customer service.

I’m kinda shocked MicroCenter is still around. They must do something right. Still great for parts I suppose.

— Alan

[Omniscia]

How much money did CC lose on that whole DivX experiment, anyway?

Also, thanks for the heads-up on Stalker, unbongwah.

[Aleck]

I wonder, though, where all the Circuit City talent will go next. I swear that CC got most of their low-cost staff from Comp USA after it went belly up. I just hope they all don’t go from CC to BB now. If I had to guess, I’d vote MicroCenter. That chain seems ripe for disaster if they could just nudge their customer service down a few levels.

And I agree that Best Buy is hardly a shining beacon of customer service.

Wait… Microcenter has customer service?

When the hell did that happen?

[henryc]

Does BB pricematch their online prices? I went to my local store this weekend, but RA3 was not $29.99. It was $49.99, making the $20 off coupon a far less compelling deal.

Was it marked $49.99 or did it actually ring up $49.99? Best Buy’s prices are almost always nationwide, so it was probably still $29.99 even if it wasn’t marked that.

[Lizard_King]

No. And it’s utter crap for a brick and mortar store to have prices online that don’t match the prices in store.

In their defense, that’s nothing compared to their track record.

Wait, that’s not a defense.

[Lorini]

You realize that story is nearly 2 years old. They’ve made a lot of changes to the in-store kiosk since then, like putting up a notice that the prices the person is looking at are national prices and not local prices. This notice appears on every single page view, not just at the top of the page.

With Amazon changing prices by the minute, I don’t see the problem here as long as there is in fact notice.

[BigWeather]

BB remains head and shoulders about CC for a couple of key reasons. First, BB actually has cash registers. I dunno about your local CC, but mine never had any cashiers. Instead you were force to take stuff up to the customer service desk, where you had to wait behind the lady returning a vacuum and a guy trying to get a rain check before you could check out. Secondly, BB actually has employees on the sales floor. Finding someone to unlock the game case at my local CC was like finding a virgin in a whorehouse. Finally, while some are apparently not having a good experience with timeliness of new release games at BB, my BB always has the games on the day they’re supposed to (typically Wednesday). CC was all over the place in this regard and they’d typically get a new release days after everyone else had it.

Odd, maybe we had one of the better CCs. Actual cashiers (I don’t remember ever checking out at customer service) and employees on-hand to unlock the new games case. Not the most knowledgeable employees ever, though (hardly a CC exclusive) and for some reason their CD / DVD area was always in chaos (a CC exclusive, and never been in one that was organized nicely).

I have been very pleased, on the other hand, with BB’s price matching and their price protection and customer service in general, as noted by another above. And the stores are clean and fairly well organized too, which is a plus. I just wish they’d actually run specials on newly released games and such, even if it’s a “buy this game and get 1600 MS bucks.” CC was great for that (yeah, they were losing tons of money and needed loss leaders to get people into the store).

[Lizard_King]

You realize that story is nearly 2 years old. They’ve made a lot of changes to the in-store kiosk since then, like putting up a notice that the prices the person is looking at are national prices and not local prices. This notice appears on every single page view, not just at the top of the page.

With Amazon changing prices by the minute, I don’t see the problem here as long as there is in fact notice.

I was aware of its age, that’s why I linked to it as such. I still think it’s a bullshit tactic that they had to get called on publicly to give up. I found out about it well after it happened, and I think it’s a track record worth mentioning. Your comparison to Amazon’s tactics does not seem to hold up to any scrutiny: that company has its own issues, but they are not similar from what I have experienced and read.

More than anything else, I’m curious why you would feel you need to defend BB. Not curious enough to start a new thread on it, but still. They’re doing fine, I wasn’t exaggerating, and my comment was constrained to the context in which it was offered. But this is the bargain thread, so I’ll drop it.

[Lorini]

Had the article been current I wouldn’t have posted. I could probably post dozens if not hundreds of 2 year old articles that are no longer relevant. If you are only going to shop at stores which have a perfect history of customer service, then you won’t be shopping at many. Also, that issue has mostly to do with other media such as CD’s, you would not have seen different prices on games in the first place.

Thus, I felt the posting was mostly irrelevant, sorry to bother you. Or should I get your permission to post next time? I’m not entitled to state the facts as they are? Why the attack on me anyway?

Fry’s Electronics normally discounts brand new games when they come out, but I know that some people are not normally local to one. The discounts aren’t great (most times $5) but occasionally they’ll discount PC games by as much as $15.

[MSUSteve]

In their defense, that’s nothing compared to their track record.

That article mentions that Best Buy will price match with online competitors, but I swear I’ve had the customer service people tell me that they don’t do that. Weird.

Anyway, Amazon is offering HAWX (360) for $46.99.

[Telefrog]

Was it marked $49.99 or did it actually ring up $49.99? Best Buy’s prices are almost always nationwide, so it was probably still $29.99 even if it wasn’t marked that.

It rang up at $49.99. :-(