%@#& YOU, BEST BUY!

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misschiefmaker replied on 11-12-2009 5:08 PM

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I went to Best Buy one time to buy a laptop, and was waiting for an employee to come help me.  They were all busy except this one kid, who was standing right next to me on the computer pretending to look busy.  He was standing there by himself, so obviously not helping anyone, and I could clearly see the computer screen.  He was entering costumer information for a "Peter Griffin".

And I agree that the Best Buy employees are mostly clueless about the products they sell (but Target electronics is worse).  You'd think they'd be assigned to a specific section and trained on the products, but I guess that makes too much since.  I do thorough research online before I make any electronic purchases, because I don't trust the employees at any store to know what the hell they're talking about.  They usually just try to bullshit their way through the sale.

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Maskim replied on 11-12-2009 5:11 PM

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misschiefmaker:

They usually just try to bullshit their way through the sale.

If the formula works 9 times out of 10, why change it?

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misschiefmaker replied on 11-12-2009 5:35 PM

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Maskim:

misschiefmaker:

They usually just try to bullshit their way through the sale.

If the formula works 9 times out of 10, why change it?

haha yeah I guess.  Oh I forgot.  Once I did finally buy my laptop, I also purchased Microsoft Office...only the guy actually sold me student office.  I didn't figure it out until I was installing it though.  I guess I only have myself to blame for that one.  Never again will I let my guard slip.

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smkymtnkid replied on 11-12-2009 5:48 PM

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I once tried to buy a new release game from best buy that was in their ad for $40, it was still $60 everywhere else. They were of course out, so I just went down the road to Wal-Mart and showed them the AD and they sold me the game at the $40 price.

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kwaz28 replied on 11-12-2009 7:04 PM

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Wildo88:

has uninformed commision based employees in a situation where you could be spending $100s or $1000s of dollars.

I'm not defending Best Buy, but I wanted to point out that Best Buy employees are not paid a commission.

/edited for clarity

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stoudman replied on 11-12-2009 7:31 PM

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I too hate Best Buy, and it is a COUNTRY WIDE problem.

Story 1: Houston, TX

I went into a Best Buy one night in December a few weeks before Christmas looking for a DVD I wanted to buy. I looked in all the areas that the DVD should have been, the section of DVDs that fit the description of the movie, the section that kind of sort of fit the description, ect. Finally I went to look for an employee to help me find it, as...surprise, surprise...I had not been approached even once in the 15-20 minutes I had already been there. Of course, this isn't the same case in every store, but this particular Best Buy was "special"...in a mentally challenged way. The store was kind of busy, but not so busy that there was no space to walk or anything..it wasn't like it was black friday or anything.

The first employee I saw walking toward me, I asked "excuse me, can you help me?" and...I'm not kidding....the guy just walked right by me like he didn't even see me. I was pretty bewildered, so I went to find another employee. When I did, they were on the computer but didn't appear to be helping anyone else, so I asked "excuse me, can I get some help?", to which he replied "sure, just a second". After about 5 minutes he finally stopped whatever pointless crap he was doing on the computer and said "how can I help you?", so I shrugged off the incompetent employee and asked this guy where the DVD I was looking for was, at which point he got this look on his face like he had just suffered severe brain damage. He told me he didn't know if they had it or where it was. He was still sitting right next to the computer, so I said "can't you check on the computer system or something?". He said "oh yeah, sure!....what was the name of it again?".

........

It took him only a few seconds to completely forget what I was looking for. Man, this guy seems like he's really out there to help me and he really cares about his job. I told him in the interest of saving time, and he said "Nope, I can't find it on here".  Big surprise, you probably can't find your way out of the store at closing. I had a thought to check the special promotion aisles/ $5 bins and the like, and after about a half hour of searching still hadn't found it. I went to double check the sections I had already looked at, and I still couldn't find it. Eventually after an hour I gave up and left, and I was pretty pissed off with the customer service.

Story 2: Portland, OR

I saw a special deal for Blu-rays that came with movie cash was going on at Best Buy. The second I saw it was BB I knew I was in for trouble and though twice about jumping in, but the deal was just too good to pass up. Or so I thought. I bought online and went to the store to pick it up. When I got there I found they had reserved two copies that did not have the movie cash -- which was kind of the point of the sale. I asked about it and they said they had not known anything about the sale. GO FIGURE, YOU WORK AT BEST BUY AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING? WHAT A SURPRISE!

I decided that since I knew I was dealing with monkeys pushing buttons that I would direct them in what buttons to push, and show them the sale on the website, which they have to honor if I bought it online and am now picking it up at the store. In honoring the sale, every stipulation of the sale must be followed -- however, the response I got was basically:

"Nuh uh! We don't have to honor anything!"

First they told me, matter of fact-ly that the movie cash would be e-mailed to me after purchase. Since I knew this was not how it worked and you needed the stickers on the front of the blu-ray packaging to get the movie cash, I informed them that they were wrong. That took about 15 minutes because everyone there has a bad case of ADD. Then they said they didn't have any copies in stock with the movie cash, shortly after which another employee who had been working with them found a copy of one of the movies that I had purchased with the movie cash on it. When they could not find the other they said they would have to ask the monkey who works in the back office. Yes, at Best Buy they have elminitated the need for anyone who knows what they are doing to work up front with the customers -- now they hire 1 or 2 "specialists" to help out with "special" issues, effectively babysitting these apes. Incredibly, this specialist was mysteriously absent.

They ran the blu-rays through the system to finalize the purchase, and when they did so apparently somewhere along the line one of them missed a "1" and ended up giving me $10 off one of the blu-rays completely by accident. I noticed it on the reciept, and being that I had gotten movie cash on one of the blu-rays I figured that and $10 off was pretty much the same thing. I high-tailed it out of there telling them I'd be back, and never returned.

Basically I try not to go into a Best Buy anymore unless I truly have to, because the experience is one for the ages, man....let me tell you. I've seen bad customer service, but Best Buy offers customer service so inherently horribly bad that it makes me want to randomly scream in anger right now. I am thoroughly convinced that they do not train their employees on anything, and if they do it is the simplest and least helpful training that has ever been done in a retail environment. I mean, McDonalds is probably more comprehensive in their training than Best Buy is. Unless you know exactly what you're looking for and you're NOT trying to take advantage of a sale, STAY AWAY FROM THIS STORE AT ANY AND ALL COSTS.

It didn't used to be so bad, they used to have employees that actually knew what they were talking about and knew what they were doing. Of course, that was at least 10 years ago. Since then it seems they've taken a simple approach at Best Buy:

Hire only Teenagers and Elderly people.

Why? You don't have to pay them as much or give them as many benefits.

Best Buy's policy? Well, everything they sell obviously SELLS ITSELF, who needs actual sales people when everything sells itself? Just stick the cheapest employee we can out there without any training and hope everything goes well.

Their prices aren't even as good as they used to be either. When they first started out they had competitive prices on most items, and now with inflation and what not it just seems like Best Buy is one of the more EXPENSIVE big box retailers out there! So not only do you have to deal with the worst customer service ever, but you also have to pay an arm and a leg? I'm surprised people haven't caught on, and I'm surprised they aren't out of business yet. If this continues you can guarantee they eventually will be, which might seem impossible to the younger audience out there, but to me it's just another big box retailer that will most likely eventually bite the dust in favor of a much more responsible and responsive one.

I heard Best Buy price matches some things on Amazon and what not. Why would you do that? You know the customer service employees are just going to look at you with that "durr" face and ask "WHAT IS PRICE MATCH, UGG!". You couldn't pay me to go through that crap.

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Wildo88 replied on 11-12-2009 8:08 PM

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kwaz28:

Wildo88:

has uninformed commision based employees in a situation where you could be spending $100s or $1000s of dollars.

I'm not defending Best Buy, but I wanted to point out that Best Buy employees are not paid a commission.

/edited for clarity

Really?  I could have sworn that at least some of them are.  But I could have been misinformed. 

I can't think of any other reason why they would be browbeating customers into buying Monster cables.

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Maskim replied on 11-12-2009 8:18 PM

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They used to be paid commision.  Best Buy dropped the commision pay scale something like 5 or 6 years ago.

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Chambered replied on 11-12-2009 8:21 PM

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They earn commission on extended warranties, too. At least, I think they do..

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Drillah replied on 11-12-2009 10:11 PM

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Request it on Goozex and you will get it sooner or later.

...patience grasshoppers. You don't have to struggle with Best Buy to buy the game the day of release. Sooo many games you haven't played yet that are out.

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kwaz28 replied on 11-12-2009 10:31 PM

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Wildo88:

Really?  I could have sworn that at least some of them are.  But I could have been misinformed. 

I can't think of any other reason why they would be browbeating customers into buying Monster cables.

Unfortunately, you can blame management and Best Buy corporate suits for that.  Accessories at Best Buy carry an insane markup (80%+ markup is not uncommon).

When I worked at Best Buy way back in the day, the employee discount was store cost + 5%, which leads to insanely good costs on cables.  Paying $2-$4 for a $20-$30 product was not uncommon.

Comparison shop for HDMI cables in Brick&Mortar stores and compare it to prices found online (amazon.com, etc) and you'll see what I mean.  It's no surprise that corporate pushes the cables with that kind of profit margin (seriously - people need to be smarter with their shopping - online is the only way to go for some products!)

Furthermore, if you read the stories of the brain-dead and half-stoned employees the Goozers have had the misfortune to deal with, it makes sense that they will not provide the best customer service.  If they were on a commission, they would fall over themselves to get a product into a customers hands.  More sales = bigger paycheck.

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kwaz28 replied on 11-12-2009 10:36 PM

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Maskim:

They used to be paid commision.  Best Buy dropped the commision pay scale something like 5 or 6 years ago.

I worked at Best Buy in 1999-2000 or so, and the employees were not paid on commission.  The only employees who have an incentive to improve store performance are department supervisors, assistant managers and store manager.  These people work off a budget, and if they meet/exceed the budget, they get a bonus in pay.  Needless to say, the incentive is strong to push accessory sales among the rank and file employees.  This isn't too difficult to do, because every statistic is tracked.  If an employee is not doing their job, they are let go and a different employee is given the chance.  You can imagine that lots of employees were recently put into tough situations in this down economy and have had unfair expectations put upon them.  I imagine that as a general rule, the supervisors and management don't really care about the economy, because the most important thing to anyone is putting money into their pocket - the more money, the better.

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Maskim replied on 11-12-2009 10:45 PM

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Interesting.  Folks I used to work with about 5 years ago said they had left Best Buy to sell cars because the Best Buy had dropped the commision, and instead given the salesmen a whole dollar more an hour. 

What do I know, though?  My information is all 2nd and 3rd hand.

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kwaz28 replied on 11-12-2009 10:52 PM

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Maskim:

Interesting.  Folks I used to work with about 5 years ago said they had left Best Buy to sell cars because the Best Buy had dropped the commision, and instead given the salesmen a whole dollar more an hour. 

What do I know, though?  My information is all 2nd and 3rd hand.

I could be wrong, but maybe certain departments had commissions? (I imagine that cell phone sales would have provided commissions...) Or is it possible that you're thinking of Circuit City?  I think before their downfall, they tried shifting to a hourly rate for their employees in an effort to hang with the big boys (read: Best Buy, Walmart).  Obviously, in Circuit City's case, it was too little, too late amid a huge mess of other problems.

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Maskim replied on 11-12-2009 11:01 PM

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Circuit City was still alive and kicking and doing well at the time.  This was in 2005, and he had left at the end of 2004, from what I remember.  He said he sold TVs and home theatre and that was it.  I wouldn't imagine that folks selling dvds and games would be looking at a commision, but it made sense for TVs.  *shrug*  Could be I was misinformed, or, whatever.  It doesn't really matter one way or the other.