Another wasted trip to Best Buy has gotten me riled up enough to write this post. It’s not a situation that’s singularly theirs, but they do seem to specialize in it … or almost as much as Home Depot, who I thought was the master of this error in advertising.
Here’s how it started -
I grab the Sunday paper and look for bargains in the ad inserts and circulars. Target has a great looking gizmo that toasts muffins, cooks eggs and re-heats my bacon. Looks like a great way to make my own breakfast sandwich and not have to fight the lines at the fast food places.
I drive over, walk in and grab one, head for the checkout and am gone in 60 seconds.
No problems.
Then to the Best Buy, that happens to be about 100 feet away, but eons behind in customer satisfaction.
The circular had a Wacom Graphire4 tablet that i’ve been wanting to get for a certain daughter and her fabulous mother. Both of them are really, really good with Photoshop and this will be a great addition to their arsenal.
I notice that CompUSA has it listed for $99, but it would have to wait til I get to Louisville later this week, as we don’t have a CompUSA.
Best Buy has listed it for $105, $6 more, but who would care about $6 measley dolars when you can get it now.
But wait ! It’s on sale at Best Buy for $69 ! I run over to grab one and think that the savings will pay for the sandwich machine. Cool ! Kinda like a 2-for1 deal.
Except that they don’t seem to have one on the shelves.
I’ll try to flag down one of the dozens of the denizens in blue who seem to congregate in 2′s and 3′s talking to ….uh, each other, not customers.
I look for one of them not using this herd mentality. Kinda like one that the wolves would look for. Culled from the herd because he’s weak.
I find him. Tall and has that mouth that continually hangs open. Perfect. I’ll trick him into going into the back and finding me one.
He leaves and returns the same way. Empty handed.
No deal dude, he says. Not only do we not have any, we can’t even order them.
He does mention that a whopping 2 are scheduled to come in this week on one of the two trucks that bring replenishments.
What day do those trucks come, I ask.
I have no idea, dude, he says.
I kinda knew that already.
I leave thinking these few simple things -
1) Do those who create ads have any way to see if it’s worth wasting the ad space on an item ? If you have 6 items spread out over 50 stores, don’t bother putting it in the circular.
2) Have they thought of putting something on sale that they have a lot of and need to move, instead of clearing out just a few items and pissing off those that get the same feeling that I got ?
3) Can they offer to find a store that has some inventory and have the item shipped to where they’re needed ? Think about it. There may be no need for these in New Jersey, but 100 people in Kentucky that want them.
4) Does any other electronics store habitually fare any worse with this type of situation ?
5) Is there any way to get more than one checkout lane open and have fewer blue-clad talkers talking to each other ?
I hate going to Best Buy just because they always have dozens of blue-shirts doing a lot of chit-chatting, but there’s ALWAYS a long line to checkout and only one lane open.
And that dude at the door who watches his fellow employee put my stuff in the bag and then wants to check my register receipt … get rid of him or put him in a lane that has a register, so he can actually accomplish something besides making me feel like you don’t trust me.
Anybody else want to jump on this train ?
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I nearly wrote a long-winded response, but dont even think it will make a difference. Suffice to say that best buy customers are very lazy, stupid and ignorant. You people ask the most inane questions we have ever heard, but the worst is how you people expect white-glove service at dirt cheap prices and expect there to be an inexhaustable amount of employees frothing at the mouth to answer your more than likely stupid question. “where are the computers” “LOOK UP DUMBASS” “can you help me find a cd” “AND BY HELP YOU FIND IT, YOU MEAN FIND IT FOR YOU…BECAUSE YOU CANT FIND A PRODUCT IN THE MOST ORGANIZED SECTION OF THE STORE, THE ONLY ONE THAT IS ALPHABETIZED, AMAZING…MANDATORY BIRTH CONTROL FOR YOU”
You only serve as a GIANT reminder that I’m right, Harry. Most of you don’t have any idea as to why you get a paycheck or what has to happen for it to continue.
Thanks for being the supreme case study and social proof.
As an example of a clueless Best Buy employee…you rawk!
No. You’re wrong, he’s right. You customers are ******* idiots. I’ve been working at my local BestBuy for over a year now and I keep getting jackasses like you that just expect everything to magically go your way. If you really wanted one of the “pack” to come and help you, all you have to do is go over and say “Excuse me” and somebody will immediately break off and go help you. Don’t be such a *****. We’re not going to wipe your *** for you. Also, remember, while we may be “employees” we’re still human. You ******* idiots go off on your rants about “OMG IT WAS IN THE FLYER YOU SHOULD ******* HAVE IT IN STOCK” and yell at the poor new guy for not knowing how to figure out when the next shipment comes in. If you really wanted the item so badly, instead of wasting time writing this rant and getting me all riled up, you could’ve ordered it online and got it delivered to your house for an extra $4? or asked the employee if they could find out if any other stores had it and gone to one that did. OR even gone to another store like future shop or staples and gotten them to price match. If you would try using that little thing in your head you call a brain sometimes, maybe you would have a good experience at Best Buy.
Thanks Ryan! It’s Best Buy employees like you that make it easy to not spend money at your store, which means you’ll never get enough money to move out of your Momma’s basement, which means you’ll be a 35 year-old tool, wishing you had a girlfriend, wondering why everybody else has more than you do.
Move along now and have a great life!
BTW – do they even have Best Buy’s in your part of Canada or did you just want your Mommy to see your name on the internet and left a comment for her?
…I’m 20, live in my own place with my best friend and am currently attending college. You sure you weren’t mixing me up with yourself there? It’s assholes like you that make it easy to hate my job and why a lot of employees at Best Buy just don’t give a shit anymore.
BTW – Yes we do have Best Buys in Canada retard. http://www.bestbuy.ca
And no. We do not live in igloos.
I know I am reviving an old post but I need to rant right now…
#1 – I work at Best Buy
#2 – I hate working at Best Buy
#3 – I hate selling overpriced (not entirely useless) extended warranties to customers
#4 – I refuse to sell Monster products, totally useless crap
#5 – I hate customers who stand 3 feet away from the laptops and ask, “where are the laptops?”
#6 – I hate customers that ask for discounts and think that just because they ask a dozen times means I will cave and give them a discount
#7 – Geeksquad is overpriced, and I can’t believe people actually use it
#8 – The majority of people that shop at Best Buy are clueless when it comes to technology and the company motto is to prey on them
#9 – Some customers, whether they are in tune with technology or not, are a delight to talk to
#10 – Some customers, whether they are in tune with technology or not, are complete assholes, and they make me want to go postal :\
Now Mike, I agree with you but I also agree with Ryan. I can understand your frustration – trust me. I hate telling customers I can’t do anything for them – unless they are being very unreasonable. BUT there are certain policies that we must follow that prevents us from doing much for customers in these situations. At the end of the day, store management only cares about their numbers. It drives us regular employees insane – unless of course the employees are bleeding “blue”. It drives us insane. But hey, I need to pay for university so I do it. And karma will probably hit me like a bus
/end rant
Mike I have no doubt that you’ve had that type of experience at Best Buy several times over, but I wanted to post to maybe give you a glimmer of hope for that big yellow tag. I’ve been working for Best Buy for the last ten months and honestly I’m perfectly happy with it. I won’t argue with the majority of things I hear about Best Buy, but I will argue that not all stores are the same. Everyone on the internet likes to group us together like all the stores are the same and have the same irresponsible people, but that’s not the case. I will say that you’re dead on about our stocking and ad items. Many mornings I’ve had customers come in and ask for something in the ad only to find our it’s something that’s marked clearance and there’s only like ten in the entire district. Also, some of the items do come in on the truck in ridiculously low quantities. I’m not sure why the distribution centers for Best Buy do this, but I’m sure it’s something that’s well above our stores level. Most of the employees at our store try to help the best they can and often times when one of us doesn’t know something it’s because we’re caught out of our department. like I said, I can’t vouch for all the other stores, but ours and some others actually try to help out the customers that we get. I have to wrap this up, but that’s my two cents on the matter. Thanks for being open-minded to some of the arguments that we had!
Thanks for being mature, well-spoken and mature about it Zack.
I still shop there all the time and they still suck out loud a LOT of the time, but so does most of their competition.
If anyone ever does it like it should be done, the ol’ yeller tag will be gone really, really quickly.
Hey Mike, I think Zack Stone pretty much nailed it.
What goes in the flyer and what the stores are sent on the truck is out of the stores’ control. On the first day of the sale you would expect to have a decent quantity of the sale items, well you would be wrong. On many occasions, the laptops on sale – particularly the sub-$500 laptop that’s on sale is not in stock. The frustration of the customers is easily understandable, especially considering they are lining up outside the store waiting for it to open.
What angers me the most is that we are not allowed to give out rainchecks to customers for SALE items that are not IN STOCK. I thought customers had the right to ask for a raincheck – unless of course it clearly stated “no rainchecks” in the flyer under the item in question. But if you look closely at the flyer, that is not the case. When customers ask for rainchecks, I check the flyer to see if it says “no rainchecks”. If it doesn’t say that, I go ahead and print them a raincheck. And on my next shift I will get in serious trouble for doing so, because apparently “we don’t issue rainchecks here”. The same thing happens with layaway deposits.
I don’t understand why those two methods (rainchecks and layaways) are in the POS system if we are not to use them.
Ughh.
Hey I wanted to see who hates and why they hate Best Buy or any other electronic retailer. This helped me a lot thanks! I have been trying to get some product for our upcoming ad and many of those items are nowhere to be found for me to order or get from anywhere else… the moon maybe? At the store I work at only a few of the employees suck out loud. We are constantly bettering ourselves if you haven’t noticed yet you will. You should mail this to our Corporate and see what they have to say about giving us the option to get product that you and everyone else is going to want. Ideally the weekly ad will be something interesting and useful more than frustrating for our customers. It may sounds cheesy but if you guys are happy we are happy and our days go by better.
Thanks for stopping by Panda.
dude—– first off you need to chill out. its people like you that piss workers off at best buy. you’re the kind of person that makes me HATE my job. you’re the cause of me drinking heavily after every shift. YOU, sir, need to just chill out. Please do best buy a favor and take the bloody tampon out of your vagina. best buy does not need your business or your stuck up attitude. please do us all a favor and SHUT UP.
Wow! Another well spoken BB employee rawks the house with her well worded thesis of stupidity.
It’s fools like you that make me so happy that I don’t work with you, employ you or even see you on a semi-regular basis.
Thanks for proving my points so well.
Alright…I couldn’t help but respond to this. I work for BB as well, and I must say that some of the customers piss me off too. BUT, I can also say that my store pisses me off more. A lot of the customers I get are pleasant and I enjoy talking to them. Usually, the customers who are angry and ranting are doing so because one of our employees misinformed them of something and then they find out what they thought could be done, in fact, cannot. Which brings me around to my store. 85% of my co-workers are completely useless and lazy. A lot of them have knowledge about the products, but they’re too busy “visiting” with other employees in departments other than their own, to bother with customers. If they aren’t doing that, they’re in the warehouse pretending to do an “important” task. I’ll say it again, USELESS!!!!! As far as the management at my store…HAHAHAHA! They are a fucking joke. They don’t have ANY product knowledge and don’t want to be bothered with anything besides talking on their phones and chatting in the office…So, I can’t blame people for hating Best Buy. I do…
Thanks for stopping by Nicky. You see what we see when we go into a BB store.
Somehow, their management, or lack thereof, has created this mess. I’ve been in 20-30 stores in different states and they all have the same thing:
a) employees who come to work just to talk to other employees
b) employees who would walk past a customer even if he was on fire
c) employees who are sorely lacking in salesman ship or customer service skills
d) all of the above and then some
Pay miss Alisha here no mind, if she feels like that then she shouldn’t have a job where the whole premise of what you do is HELPING PEOPLE! Drinking heavily due to strangers being assholes (or in this case someone having a legit argument) doesn’t say much for your character either btw. Just my two cents
You’re on target today Zach. She drinks heavily because she’s stupid, poorly educated and, well…stupid again.
Mike,
I am sorry that you and everyone else who has posted on this site have so many dissapointments with Best Buy. I have Worked for Best Buy for almost five years, starting my junior year in high school. I am planning on leaving Best Buy soon because of finally finishing my classes and getting a new career.
Our Best Buy, even though it has it’s ups and downs, has become a second home to me. Many customers and employees have become close friends and I love seeing them when they come in. We all have our good days and bad days and I’m sorry to hear that where you are from, people are less appritiative of their customers. You are why we have jobs!!!
I have read all the posts here and have to say thank you to all you who continue to shop with us and give us a chance to help you. I have taken your words as a hint in my town and have tried to change my outlook to see things from your point of view. I have printed most of this out and am showing it to our community outreach group in our store to help improve our store… Thanks again…
(sorry if it sounds a little cheesy, but i’m being 100% serious)
Also as a small side note, when we ask you as customers if you need any help, please be kind and remember that we do have feelings too and responses like “I don’t need you.” and “If I wanted your help I would have asked.” are a little discouraging. THANKS!!! It doesnt happen often but it does bother me…
Thanks for taking time to comment Matt.
Your mature and professional attitude tells me you’ll do well in life and work.
As you can see from other alleged BB employees, that’s not always the case.
Personally, I’m glad you’re leaving BB soon.
Why?
Because if you stayed, they’d actually have an employee worthy of having us as customers!
Have a great life at work and work hard at play!
Hey, let’s get with others and really mess with Best Buy,
and get this hate mail near best buy’s spot when you google
best buy.
I madd as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore, or so I think
Paul
Mike,
I know the majority of responses here are employees, and I feel I have to add to the list. I work at the store in South Philadelphia, and I must say I pride myself on my customer service. I absolutely hate to see groups of blue shirts standing around talking on busy days. At the same time, as someone already said, the day can be strenuous and we generally are all friends. The occasional inside joke and banter will make the day go by a lot easier.
I also hate when someone gets bad customer service from one of my coworkers. I try so hard to make everything work out for my customers, but one of my moronic coworkers can completely erase that in one 5-minute conversation.
As for the sales ad, I know some have commented on it. The company is in the process of rolling out an ordering system to track down almost every item in our inventory. If one store is out, in some cases you can pay for the item and pick it up at another store, as it is now reserved for you. But, most of the sales are either dictated from the corporate office, who prints the sales ad upwards of months ahead of time, or by the vendors themselves. I work specifically in the home theater department, and every March manufacturers discontinue models and replace them with new ones – leaving the employees with weeks of the same old “why don’t you have this sale TV in stock?” and “this is false advertising!” I wish there was more I could do for customers, but honestly as a salesman I can’t. Even our store managers can only do so much, they can’t magically make something appear in a store.
The one thing that particularly got me in your blog was the final comment about the Asset Protection person at the front of the store. I have worked this position on occasion, and I feel there is something to clear up here as well. It’s not that we don’t trust the customer per se, but it’s that we don’t really trust the associates. It’s to make sure they ring everything up properly and don’t accidentally put something in the bag that wasn’t paid for, or leave something out that was paid for.
Honestly, all we as employees ask is to be treated with respect. Someone else said this, too, and I must echo this as well. While I pride myself on my customer service, if I get attitude from a customer or if they talk down to me, I will either fire it right back or just walk away. I know that’s not the best thing to do, but the phrase “Treat others as you wish to be treated” rings all to clear to me. Criticize me if you will, but it is very discouraging to face crowds of people demanding the same thing, only to have them talk down to you for doing your job.
I hope I have shed some light on the situation, and I’m sorry if this was too long-winded.
Thanks for another mature, professional response Dan.
I made another trip into this same BB a couple of days ago.
The Blue Shirt that asked to help me was the second most personable BB employee I’ve ever met.
His service was exceptional, compared to what I usually get.
Again, the only bad part was buying one item and having my bag checked 15 feet from the checkout.
No matter what you or anybody says, I’m never gonna like it. Never.
Thanks for dropping by.
I also am a Best Buy employee, I’ve been with the company just over 3 years, and I have to say, I neither agree nor disagree with your original post.
You made a few good points, and a few points I’d like to add to. (And I apologize if I am redundant, I’ve read most but not all of the comments)…I copied and pasted the few questions you asked that I wanted to add to and here are my answers below.
“1) Do those who create ads have any way to see if it’s worth wasting the ad space on an item ? If you have 6 items spread out over 50 stores, don’t bother putting it in the circular.”
**That is a problem. Unfortunately, as I’m sure someone has stated, on the store’s level, that’s not our fault. Ads are released regionally, if not nationally. We have absolute NO control over what is in the ad, and typically the sales associates do NOT see the ad until Sunday when everyone else gets to. It is all Corporate, so please, the next time you or anyone head into a Best Buy and there’s not a certain item in the ad in-stock, please don’t take it out on the employees…It isn’t our fault. Now, if the employees fail to offer to check other stores or to order it for you, then by all means, they deserve whatever foul thing you can say to them! That is something they ALL should be doing! As far as transferring product from another store, it actually (for our area) can take around a week to receive, as stupid as that sounds, and IS a huge pain for both us and the customers so we usually don’t offer that as an option because it is the least effective. And, if you see employees talking and they haven’t talked to you yet, it may be as simple as them not having seen you yet.
But, store associates should offer you whatever solution is best for you and when they don’t, they are doing you a disservice.**
“3) Can they offer to find a store that has some inventory and have the item shipped to where they’re needed ? Think about it. There may be no need for these in New Jersey, but 100 people in Kentucky that want them.”
**As I stated above, they most certainly can, in some cases. But, also like I said, it’s very time-consuming to actually receive the product…And we can ONLY transfer product to stores within our district (which usually are made up of about 10-15 stores), so going from NJ to KY wouldn’t be possible.
Also, each store does not have a huge semi to just send anywhere with any product possible!**
“5) Is there any way to get more than one checkout lane open and have fewer blue-clad talkers talking to each other?”
**Good point. Sometimes I wonder the same thing. But you have to factor in circumstances. What if another employee called in sick? What if it’s a Monday night when we’re typically slow? They’re not going to schedule 3 cashiers on a weeknight. When the line gets backed up, they DO send associates over there to help.**
Also, with the Loss Prevention associate that stands at the front door…I don’t know if they do that in certain areas only, but our LP associates DO NOT check in anyone’s bags!! The only time they need to check your receipt is when you are leaving with a big ticket item, such as a laptop, TV, large applicance, etc. So either that person at LP you ran into is trained improperly, or they have different standards in different areas.
And employees standing around talking…well, typically that’s unacceptable. (We call them blueberry patches)…In my store at least, it’s frowned upon absolutely, and we get chewed out for it! I somewhat agree with some PP’s comments, that yes, it’s nice to talk to our coworkers and joke around, it helps put me in a better mood, but some take it too unnecessarily far. But please believe that it is still possible for some competent employees to talk to other associates and STILL contact other customers and get them taken care of.
Overall, just because you’ve had some bad experiences, please don’t let a few bad apples ruin the bunch! There are quite a few of us “blue shirts” out there that DO enjoy our jobs and enjoy helping customers and are not a bunch of moronic losers. I hate that some of them get to represent our company. Best Buy is and can be a great company, and we are focused on customer centricity, but unfortunately, like I said, it’s just those few employees that are horrible that make us look horrible!
But let me point this out…How would you feel if someone went into your working establishment, had one or two bad experiences, and started saying all this, such as you want us to close down and we’re all a bunch of idiots, posting blogs online and creating websites…
The next time some of you are thinking about ways to “ruin us”, think of the tens of thousands of employees that would lose their jobs, just as Circuit City’s employees did….and for those of you who might say we all deserve it is absolutely ridiculous and childish. Absolutely there are some that don’t deserve to even walk the earth, but there are good people who work at Best Buy!!!!!
Oh, and let me point this out. I get customers who tell me they hate being contacted, and I get customers who tell me they’re not contacted enough. How are we supposed to know how many times someone asked you if you needed help, or if you want someone to talk to you?? So next time some of you want to yell at us for asking you if you need help one time more than you can handle, don’t. How can you be mad at someone who wants to help you?
Thanks for another mature, professional reply Jaimie.
I have a feeling you’ll do well in the future, if you keep this attitude.
You’re too good for BB!
I’d like to add to what Jaimie said about labeling the entire blue shirt army as incompetent due to a few bad apples.
Yesterday, I opened my store. I work in the Home Theater section. I was with one other employee, and we got a little overwhelmed in the department for the two of us. One customer in particular stood out in my mind. I was troubleshooting with a gentleman about his DirecTV experiences and a random charge on his account. A woman came up to my counter as I was talking to him, jumped in front of him, and demanded I help her find a head cleaner for a VCR. I very politely told her where they were and said I would be over to help when I was done.
Literally not even two minutes later, she came running back to interrupt me again, asking if there was another employee in my department. I explained we were both busy and we would help her as soon as we could. She ran to my fellow associate who was busy lifting lifting a heavy product for another customer, demanding she be helped. The woman disappeared again, so I continued helping the gentleman I was with.
Again, not even two minutes later, she came back, but stood in the background this time. I was still talking to the man with his DirecTV issues, as I heard in a very loud and stern tone “There has to be a better solution.” I ignored this. She stormed the counter, pushed her way in front of my customer, and demanded I stop helping him to find her the cleaner. At this point, my original customer said to her, “Look, I’m a customer too.” She stormed off again.
Yet again, we’re lucky if it was two minutes. She came back and stood in the background again. I heard her yell, “This is ridiculous, just show me where it is.” I had to respond to her, so I said, “Ma’am, I have to finish helping this gentleman, he was here first. I’d appreciate it if you could be patient and I promise I will find you what you need.” At this point she flipped out telling me she had been patient as I was helping the guy in front of me. She demanded I call over a manager, so I did. She yelled at him because I wasn’t helping her, that I ignored her.
Long story short, I didn’t brand all my customers that day as impatient and rude because I had that experience with her. I lifted my head, and continued helping everyone with a smile on my face. I know some people take situations differently than others.
The same can be said about employees of Best Buy. Or, who knows, maybe they had a rude customer ruin their day, which started a chain reaction. There could be incompetent employees, there could be very able employees that had interactions like that, who maybe can’t shake it off as easily.
I do welcome feedback to this post. I would like to see myself rising within the company, and anything from a consumer standpoint would be appreciated. Even if I don’t climb the “company ladder,” I always want to make myself better.
Thanks for your input Dan.
I can’t really add much to your story, I’m only concerned with mine
I’d be willing to bet that there were “several” Blue Shirts in the store that could have helped her. I’m also sure that if you’d immediately paged for help, the Manager with a headset could have came over or sent someone.
Asking her to be patient, without knowing her parameters isn’t the best way to handle the situation.
She could have only had 12 minutes to spare, she could have had 1001 other issues, which you weren’t aware of, nor would you find them by asking her to be patient.
I instruct my CSR’s to immediately call for help for a potential paying customers, not to ask them to be patient.
If a “prospect” hears you call for help, they will be patient, versus them not knowing when you’ll ever be done with the person you’re helping. Some of your Blue Shirts tend to make a career out of a customer who could have been helped and on their way in seconds.
Been there, seen it, bought the t-shirt, wrote the article.
Simple human psychology, Dan, will make your job and life easier.
Make them feel important by asking for some special care for them. It works every time … not some time, every time.
Remember the Platinum Rule: Treat others as they want to be treated, not like YOU want to be treated and not like YOU want to treat them and not like YOU think they want to be treated.
Unlike everyone else here, I am not a Best Buy employee. I realize this post is a bit old but I would like to tell of my recent adventure with Best Buy land. I had gone for a sales promotion on video games, it stated Buy 2 get the 3rd free on any (emphasis on ANY) Xbox 360, Ps3, or Wii games. It also said I could mix and match these games. So I go 20 minutes to Best Buy, pick my games, go to the register. The sale rings up as, well, basically no sale. Full price for me. I say wait a minute, what about what it says here in the sales ad? The cashier gets the manager who looks at the ad and the says she will be right back. After 15 minutes of waiting she returns, and tells me the sale doesn’t work because two of the games are new. Only one of them was recently released for starters, and that is also completely irrelevant. So I say, then why does the ad say ANY 360, PS3, or Wii game? She tells me she doesn’t make the ads and that because of “what she knows” she can’t give me the sale. Frustrated, I leave, I go 20 minutes back home, then I investigate. I go to the Best Buy website, pick my games, pick in-store pick-up, it says I get the one game for free, I pay online, I go back to the store, hoping to have the pleasure of that manager handing me my games that ARE ON SALE. I walk in, I see her pretty much turn around and run-away. After 10 minutes of waiting at the customer service desk I have what I wanted. I doubt I will make any general purchases at Best Buy again, the only thing that will ever draw me in now is a good sale, which I will hesitate to deal with again. I notice a lot of supposed Best Buy employees here complaining about the customers, seems they do not understand what a job is. I’ve worked in retail myself, at Target, and anytime the sales ad wasn’t coming up correctly on the cash register you simply pushed a button to adjust the price. You also give the customer all the attention they need, you get paid to do that, not to stand around and talk. You are humans with feelings, yes, but you also seem to want money because you are working at a job. It shouldn’t be confused with social hour, you can do that when you are not on the clock. If you fail to deliver the best customer service, you lose the customer and they will likely tell several other people about their experience influencing their opinions of your store, this is called customer retention. Anyways, most of the responses from the many Best Buy employees remind me of the movie “The 40-Year Old Virgin” and Steve Carell’s job at SmarTech. Sorry if that’s a touchy subject to some of you.
Well, Phillip, you’re now a wanted man, because you’ve dared to interrupt some Blue Shirts from socializing while getting paid to do so.
They have no idea as to what they were hired to do and have no concept of working for their pay.
They think it’s okay to talk, text and ignore customers, because that’s what they WANT to do and still get paid.
Fortunately, they’ll never compete for a job or promotion, they’ll only get what’s handed to them and they’ll forever be wondering why customers can’t help themselves and go away forever … or at least until their 4-8 hours are up and they can go waste more of their lives accomplishing nothing and liking it.
The only shining light is that none of the above applies to every, single Blue Shirt, as there are a few good one’s out there.
Very few, but there are some.
Winning, by getting what the ad writer intended is the best revenge. Congrats!
I am another Best Buy employee. I know just who you want to hear from right? I’m pretty sure you are the type of person who loves to debate and you sponge in all the information possible and spit out all of the negatives. I would just like to clear up a few things with you.
1.) As to products availability: Stores can only order so many products per month. They are budgeted a certain amount depending on what revenue bracket they fall in. It would be impossible for a store to order in a high quantity of every single ad item every week. This ties into my next point
2.) Availability of great deals: So you may have to idea that Corporate Best Buy makes all the decisions on what goes on sale? Well they do not. Many of our big sales are promoted by our vendors (Sony, Samsung, HP, etc.). Those prices are given to us directly by them. The vendor starts by selling Best Buy an aloted number of units. They can only produce so many and not only Best Buy is purchasing them. Once we run out of this product, most other retailers are out as well. Maybe you should call up our vendors and tell them to buy some more property in China and have them employ more people for .50 cents an hour. Just what we all want to see happen.
That is all I have to say for now. I could go on and on, but I know you just try to get everything you possibly can. You’re the type of customer that probably asks for deals on top of deals. Get with it man, not everything can go your way 100% of the time. The world doesn’t rotate around you.
You’re a little late Adam.
We’re way past those issues and now were into rocket science, alchemy and fruit loops.
Seriously, I know it’s a daunting task, but if you’ll read all the replys to BB employees, you’ll see that I answer professionally to those who comment like a adult and not like idiots.
Guess how I’d respond to you, if I had the time to waste on a UWWer. Hope it snows 48″ on your store and you have to miss work and lose your moped because you can’t make the $25/month payment!
Hey Mike,
I used to be the one checking peoples bags as they leave. The reason they check every single bag is to “tag” the reciept. Making a mark on it so that customers can’t come in one day and buy a video game. then come in again the next day and use the same reciept to walk out of the door. Sorry you had a bad experience, i dont think people intentionally want to guve you a bad expperience.
I’d have thought the date on the receipt would have been enough to thwart those that steal, but the “mark” or “tag” on it makes tremendous sense.
Thanks for that info, Monty.
As a fellow Best Buy employee, I do see both sides to your complaint. Yes, those who make the ads not only frustraite the customers, but they frustraite the employees too, especially when we have to be the ones to tell customer we are out of stock on something. Unfortunately, the employees have no control over that. Now they can definetely call another store and put one on hold for you if it’s in stock at a near-by store. Now if you see “blue shirts” huddled together, it would be a great idea to notify their manager because this is HIGHLY discouraged among all managers/supervisors and is CLEARLY communicated to the employees. I am sorry you had a terrible experience at your particular Best Buy store.
As a Best Buy employee for almost 2 years and hearing comments being a cashier, I do hear the good, bad and ugly. In life, you just can’t please everyone. Best Buy is a great store and the employees do their “best” to help. There will be good days and bad days. Maybe you just didn’t luck out that day, but sad to see that you would create a “Why I Hate Best Buy……..” is sad. If you were at our store and had a bad experience, I would assure you by the time you got to my registered, you would of went home and did our survey commenting on how great your shopping experience turned out. So sorry that day was not in your favor, but trust me, “Best Buy” would not be around, if it didn’t care about customer satisfaction, etc. It’s a great store but not perfect and no store is. I have had good and bad experiences, but never would go to the extent of complaining via “internet”. I meet people constantly, some nice and some not so nice, but I am thankful when I come across the nice ones. I feel sorry for people who can’t find happiness in life, their the ones who complain constantly because things just don’t go exactly the way they want it to go. THAT’S LIFE!!!! In my opinion BEST BUY IS THE “BEST”…. and love working for the company.
Mike, I couldn’t agree more, and I have to say that most of the Best Buy staff I meet are complete uneducated morons, which is clear by many of their responses here. Let’s take a quick look at a few…
To “D.” (Jan 10, 2010), learn how to spell “frustrate”. You spelled it “frustraite” twice. I think that word is taught in the second grade. Perhaps you flunked that grade? Maybe Best Buy is the right place for you.
To Lorainne the cashier, where to begin? “…got to my registered” Hmmm. Then “…you would of went home…” Try “would have” or even “would’ve”. Then the whole statement “…sad to see…is sad”. Wow. Try repeating the 3rd grade. No wonder you are a cashier. Good luck!
Alisha’s response speaks for itself. My guess is she has struggled in the simple worlds of grade school and high school with less than average grades, or worse (perhaps a big GED recipient!), and is condemned to a life of mediocre retails jobs, without even realizing what a moron she really is. She’s the kind that will live perpetually with a chip on her shoulder, always wondering why others around her excelled, got promoted, moved up, made more money, etc. She’ll never look in the mirror to figure it out.
I could go on but you get the point. This is indicative of the intelligence level you get with Best Buy employees. I too have experienced the “jaw open” employee who is about as dumb as dirt. I think they hire just about anyone with no screening of any kind. It’s worse than fast food restaurants, worse than the DMV even. Seriously. Some of the people there are just flat out stupid human beings.
The employees are rude too. I have experienced many times when they were clustered together chit chatting while there were long lines at the register and other customers (myself included) who needed help. I have literally put items down while in line and just left the store, rather than wait for them to assign one more checkout person after the line is 40 people deep. God help you during the Christmas season.
Then, they have the policy where you can’t open a box to take a harder look at a product. Now, while I can understand that, keep in mind that the floor staff are nowhere to be found when you need help, then they suddenly come running over in droves the second you crack a box, even OPEN BOX ITEMS! They don’t offer help. They merely give a tsk tsk condescending “please don’t open the box sir” remark, and offer nothing else.
Notice that I haven’t even gotten to the competence issue with respect to actually knowing something about what they are selling. We don’t even need to get that far because the whole experience is so awful, so ridiculously bad on such simple levels, that we don’t even need to get to that. The biggest fear I have now is that they opened a musical instruments section! My god, they are going to ruin that industry too, and I am afraid to even walk in there and sample their competence level when it comes to selling musical instruments when they are clueless when it comes to selling a DVD player.
Best Buy is a joke, a terrible company and full of poorly run stores and moronic employees. They are all that is wrong these days with these superstores putting smaller, better stores out of business with their undercutting tactics. (They use CDs as a loss leader to bring people into the stores in order to get them to buy other items. Thus the cheap prices and exclusive deals they struck with some musicians, yet their shelves are poorly stocked. But that’s a whole other can of worms.) Best Buy is “superstore”, which means they specialize in nothing while they sell everything, and don’t know where to stop. Circuit City made the mistake of getting rid of semi-knowledgable salespeople and hiring just anyone to sell. They are gone now. Sooner or later it will catch up with Best Buy. For now, I’ll shop elsewhere. There are plenty of options.
Thanks for joining in Jim.
Over the weekend I went in to my local Best Buy for a laptop.
I chose an ASUS and the Geek that was watching me decide offered to “tweak” or optimize it for me for $39.99.
This means they unload all the bloatware that they allow the software mfgs to load when it’s built.
They clean the Registry and a few other things, such as bring it up to snuff with all the current Windows downloads.
Since it would save me an hour or two and much frustration, I allowed them to do it.
It was around 1 PM on Saturday. They said they’d have it done in a couple of hours and call me.
At 3:3o PM on Sunday, I paid a courtesy call, just to see if it was ready.
Nobody ever called and when I pointed that out to 3 different people, nobody ever apologized.
They had also dropped the price $20 in that 24 hour period, so I had to suffer thru getting that taken care of as well.
Not very good customer service, not very good human relations, basically a fail all around.
Typical Best Buy.
I work at Best Buy and stumbled upon this thread… while looking for a new job, actually. Best Buy, in my experience, has been a terrible place to work. Shitty pay is just for starters. The managers are incompetent, and when you aren’t dealing with idiot-managers, you get the pleasure of dealing with oh-so-lovely customers. I empathize with both parties… Best Buy employees do tell customers the spoon fed bullshit that they were given and forced to rehearse, but some customers are just assholes. But you know what, I figure it’s better to pay for college, get a degree and hopefully find a somewhat less shitty job.
Watson, my man, I think you’ve got it.
Sorry, couldn’t help the Sherlock Holmes stuff.
Thanks for your view of the situation and hope you get out of there soon!
I’m a Best Buy employee, actually at work right now. We are about to close and there are no customers. I can completly understand what you mean to an extent, however, here at my store we always help customers and do the best we can about shipping items in. The person at the door is horrible and even has to check my$.75 candy bar before I eat it on break.
Best Buy is as good as retail gets for an employee…retail sucks. Hopefully my degree in progress will get me out.
Thanks for the props, Steve.
I hope you make it out soon!
Hey, I am currently a Best Buy employee. I am lead sales and in charge of both Home Theater and Appliances. You can say all the crap you want about best buy as a corp. but your basing your opinion of a couple employees, or even a bad store which in my opinion is rather immature. No one is stopping you all from shopping at Ulitmate Electronics or Frys Electronics… Buy you don’t WHY? because you know that best buy isn’t going to pressure you into buying useless junk, like you will be at commission based retailers. We do offer you many “accessories” buts its what we call the “Solution” say your buying a new LCD TV, we are not going to let you leave without you knowing that inorder to get the picture you deserve is going to cost you extra; blu ray, HD sorce, HDMI cable, Calibration…. the list goes on and on. Would you rather come to us and buy your product and go home wondering why your new HDTV looks worse then your old CRT? my guess is no.
We do have a website where you can post your complaints and receive a E-Mail or even a Phone call from a Store GM or Dist. Manager on how we can better your experience with the company. (Bestbuycares.com) you may think to yourself “this doesnt change anything” but contrary to your moronic state of mind we have changed the way the COMPANY has approached our customers. We now follow what we call “TRUST” this is our way to build the relationship with you in order for us “Best Buy Employees” to better serve our customers “you guys”
I do agree with you on the fact that our stores AP (guy by the door) doesnt need to check all of the receipts that come from the front lanes, but you have to keep in mind that alot of employees dont scan the product and just type in the SKU number. so our AP guy will match the numbers with the product in order to make sure or inventory counts are accurate to better sever our customers. So by you being patient and taking that extra minute we are acutally helping you (the customer) with any and all of your future purchases. He is also suppose to ask you if you found everything you were looking for.
Now as far as Best Buy having uneducated employees, you should know that best buy employees are the most trained and always kept up on new tech. We might not know all the answers to your absurd questions, but we will try everything we could to find the answer.
Now you may make fun of my grammar but im pretty sure this isn’t an English paper, you may say I am not going anywhere in life because i don’t agree with you on your opinion, I am going into the AF as an officer what that means is i have a college degree, so i am leading a successful life. I have had many jobs and i would have to say this is one of the best. You have people who are lucky enough to get this as their first job… best buy doesn’t just hire anybody. It is a great company to learn leadership skills and get extensive amounts of knowledge at your fingertips, by online learning sessions, fellow employees or even dist trainings. Not to mention our fantastic discount.
I hope this help answer some of your questions. If you have any input please reply i would love to hear it.
Thanks for your input Jason.
I’m sure there are many, many good BB employees out there somewhere.
The reason I don’t shop at any other electronics place is they’ve all gone out of business.
There are no other places to visit simply because the business model is flawed.
Sell stuff cheap.
Wow! That was an original thought now wasn’t it.
BB adds no real value before the sale, during the sale or after the sale. None.
Try this instead.
Before the sale: Give the customer some real education on the product and ask them what they’re going to be doing with it, instead of trying to get them to buy whatever’s in stock, like you do now.
During the sale: How about not selling things cheaper on Sunday than you did on Saturday. I just bought a laptop on Saturday and had to go back out on Sunday to get part of my purchase price refunded because you dropped the price overnite.
Maybe you idiots should start the sales on Friday, you know, PAYDAY, for lots of people, and get those people’s business for 72 hours, instead of what they have left on Sunday, a day when many people want to rest, not fight lines and idiots who couldn’t ive away ice water in hell, much less sell it.
After the sale: I don’t see one, single class about how to become a power user of your new purchase. Where’s the continuing education of your customers that would bond them to you forever and make it much easier to sell to them the next time and make them more likely to tell everybody you rock, instead of telling them you suck.
Your turn Jason.
Well one thing you should know is that best buy has little to do with the price of your laptop, you should be happy we have a 15 day price match guarantee on them. The vendor tells us what to mark the prices at… \
We start the ads on Sunday because its the first days of the week, second the majority of people are paid biweekly, so would you like us to make exceptions for all of our customers and make everyone their own add? and also we have a “win the weekend flier” that comes out every Thursday. As a customer you need to know that we cant make everyone happy.
We do our best to help all of our customers. I will agree with you on the fact that not every employee has extensive knowledge about all their product. If you are going to a SOLID best buy store then you will be asked “Life Style” questions; whats your main use for your computer/tv, will your kids also be using it?… the list goes on and on. Also you might want to ask anyone in the store if you can get some hands on training on your new product, the majority of store offer training classes on DSLR’s Mac Computers and even if you need help with your new Home Theater system you can schedule and Installer to come out to your house for a leaning experience that you will not get from any other retail business. I think that goes over all of your remarks as far as i can see.
But by all means please go ahead and complain about more things. Instead of be reactive to your situation why dont your try being proactive and submit some for your FANTASTIC ideas to your local store, and if you have tried this then go ahead and email me them and i will submit them to my Territory Manager. But by you sitting online and complain about you “Horrid” experience at the Number One Electronics Company in the country you are gaining nothing but a slight ego boost by belittling fellow employees and customers who do enjoy their experience with us.
Ill tell you what, go ahead and tell me your ZIP CODE and I will find out what store you go to and i will send their GM an email telling them to get in contact with you and try and solve some of you issues.
Side note… Did you watch the Gold Medal Game Tonight? Came SOOOOO Close. lol
I gave you three things, Jason, and you skillfully avoided them. YOU have a future at BB!
I’m guessing if I went to the local manager, he’d say, ” Well one thing you should know is that the local Manager has little to do with the…”, just like you did.
You guys are the next one’s to drop, so, like Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that workin’ for ya?”
Maybe you’ll be able to get a job at the #2 electronics company when BB goes down like a rock in a pond.
Maybe not.
Either way, I’ll be able to get what I want from Amazon while sitting online, as you suggest
First of all your an idiot, second I answered all of you little complaints with a legit reaponce and third best buy is goin no where because we have customer like you who complain and complain yet you still shop with us! Go you!
Thanks for your mature, professional responses Jason.
You make it easy for people to hate anyplace stupid enough to employ immature little minds like yours.
Go play in the sandbox and leave me alone.
Ur an immature moron, do everyone a favor and stay home I’m sure no one will disagree with me.
Jason,
Please go back to playing games in your mama’s basement and leave the adults alone.
One more idiot reply from you and I’ll block your IP address. We don’t have time to play kindergarden with you anymore.
Looks like someone has to high of an ego…Does anyone else agree? You must be one of those people that are always right with everything they say.
Actually Adam, I’m just too busy actually doing things that make a profit to be bothered with a fool and his opinions.
You wanna go that route too? I can block you too, you know.
No offence, but maybe you should’t look at the problem as bes buy’s fault. Your constantly blaming them for your problems but maybe you should be looking at youself. It may just happen to be yourself.
Not all people are incredibly smart, but you shouldn’t rag on the intellegence of an individual just because they work at best buy. I’ve met some of the smartest people at this store, they could tell me every single thing about an item that is possible to imagine.
The people out on the sales floor do their jobs, they are to help out customers who need them. Now they aren’t to be out in groups talking with one another but it’s not against the law to talk to co-workers at the work place.
Also cashiers have the hardest job at this store when comparing them to the others who work out on the sales floor. They have to make sure you leave happy, they tell you everything about your item. They deal with the people who didn’t find all that they wanted, deal with customers (like yourself) who find everything wrong in everything and try to atleast make them have a good experience. I can promise if you are nice to them they’ll give you the same respect back. And a lot of the time you don’t need twelve cashiers up at the front because there isn’t much need. Just when there is a line it’s at that particular moment but not the whole day.
Best buy isn’t a bad store and if you gave it the chance you would meet some pretty incredible people there.
Thanks for adding your thoughts Kristin.
I’m not really blaming BB for anything, I just pointed out facts. Blame is a completely different animal.
What I’d like for you to do is this:
Consistently go into a place of business and have them do stupid things to you, like BB does me.
Listen to their people lie to customers that have no idea that they’re lying. That’s called taking advantage of them, like BB does.
Have them add things, like bloatware, to products brought into their stores, then charge you to remove them, like BB does.
Then come back and let me know if you’ve changed you mind about what I’ve written. You may or may not and that’s okay.
The good thing is, if you don’t, I won’t come on your website and tell you how to or what to think, I’ll just let you be what you want to be.
Peace and thanks for dropping by and acting mature!
Mike,
As Zack mentioned, not all Best Buy stores are alike, and unfortunately you seem to have found one that has poor customer service. I literally just started working for Best Buy, so I can’t say too much specifically about the store or the employees, but so far this is what I have observed.
1. There are lots of different departments in each BB store, and employees are trained for a specific department or role. For example, I am in the computer department which borders the car installation area, cameras, music, and video games. I personally know a lot about cameras, but would still be very little help to you in that department because there are SO many products, the same follows with any other department. Even in our department, I know a lot more about Apple products than PC s and there are other people that are the opposite. We are trained well, but can’t know everything. Sorry.
2. Customer service everywhere is not what is should be, and that is truly unfortunate. I think I could say that about just about any store. I will walk in to 5 different stores in the week and find employees more concerned with sharing their personal lives with each other than helping customers. They feel they don’t get paid enough, or it’s not worth it, that is more a reflection on our society than a specific company.
3. I have worked there for less than a week and I know which day of the week our shipments come in, and how to search the inventory. If someone tells you that they don’t then either they weren’t trained properly or they don’t care.
4. The customer service in the stores have absolutely NO control over what products we will have in the store or when we can get more, so don’t hold it against us.
5. Like some of the employees have said, we constantly get people that come in and ask completely idiotic questions, like, where is a specific children’s movie. The section is clearly labeled and in alphabetical order, if you can’t find it yourself, than we don’t have it, and if you can’t figure that out, then I’m sorry but I don’t know how you function in everyday life.
I think unfortunately people expect to be treated like royalty whenever they go to buy things, like they are entitled to be fawned over, and in some cases, like when you are dropping thousands of dollars, you will be, but if you rush in, are rude and expect that if you snap your fingers someone will bow down to you and give you your hearts every desire in 5 seconds, you are going to be sorely disappointed everywhere you go. Society has become rude, most of the customer service employees at places like Best Buy are barely making more than minimum wage, it’s a typical example of you get what you pay for, and that is unfortunate, but I doubt it will change drastically any time soon.
Thanks for a mature response Ashley.
They don’t deserve you.
Just thought I would stop by and tell all of you that your are feeding this opinionated retards ego by trying to explain best buy to him. He obviously doesn’t know what he is talking about. He is that customer who like to bitch and bitch and does nothing about it.
I’m obviously not as stoopid as you are.
For instance, you list your name as Jason but your email address as Greg Busby.
Did you have to borrow an email addy because the one in your Momma;s basement was broken?
Are you psychotic and aren’t really sure who you are?
Or were you just scared to list your name and email addy because you were being juvenile and immature?
Which is it little man?
Do they not teach you how to be big boys in the Scottsdale-Phoenix area?
Man up. Use your name and email address and point us back to your website where you dispense wisdom.
well arent you just the little detective! champion of google huh? ya we can all do that, just like you sit around on your ass all day watching march madness and trying to live through people that you could never even dream to aspire to be what they have made for themselves.
and i don’t live with my parents champ! Im actually Air Force CCT.
Just like an Air Force guy to watch while an ex-Army guy does all the hard work and heavy lifting.
When you get a bit older and wiser, you’ll think more, speak less and stay out of useless fights. You shoulda listened when they told you not to argue with fools in public, because those watching won’t be able to tell the difference between you and the fools.
And if you don’t, you’ll never make it big like those who served with the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment.
Peace.
Go look up CCT, see why I do.
I did look it up.
That’s the only reason I responded to you as nicely as I did.
You look up the 325th and see where we were in ’83.
I try to be as respectful as possible to people who serve in the Armed Forces, like I did for 6 years.
But, remember, you started this by coming on my blog, calling me a retard and being disrespectful.
yea true and i apologize. I actually quit that shit hole about a month ago. lol
Be great Jason and live hard, because life’s short!
Hey Mike, remember me? I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. I would first like to start off by apologizing for being so rude, I’ve just been losing my patience very easily lately. I’ve also been reading some of the comments on here (a lot of them your’s) and noticed a few things. One that really stood out to me was where you said that you bought an ASUS laptop and got the Geek setup on it, but said it was $39. To me thats crazy talk. At my Best Buy in Canada, we charge $79 to do it. And if you want Norton 360 with it, the price goes up to $149. Maybe thats why your Best Buy experience is so horrible? Maybe it’s just Best Buy in the states? Cause here in Canada we don’t get paid minimum wage. I personally as a sales associate get paid $12 an hour (I know not much, but I am a student working part-time) and Geek Squad starts out at $12, immediately increasing after they recieve their A+ certification. We get paid a decent wage because we know what we’re talking about. I normally do enjoy doing my job and genuinely enjoy helping people. But when ignorance comes in, I have no tolerance. I’ve removed people from the store because of the way that they were treating a fellow employee. But if the customer is friendly even in the slightest I will go out of my way to help them get what they need. Even if it isn’t carried at our store. I’ve sent many a customer to another location that I know has what they need because I know that we don’t.
I don’t mean to sound like a pretentious jackass, but to me it seems that the only reason you’re getting angry comments on here is because you’re asking for it. You insult people constantly as if you are an all mighty god and everyone else has to bow down to you. Take myself for example. I say some things you don’t like and you immediately start insulting me, my mother and telling me that I’m not going to go anywhere in life because I work in retail as a student. Is that really a mature way of handling a disagreement? I bet if any of these people were standing in front of you in real life, you wouldn’t be able to say a thing to them. And thats why you come on the internet to spout your hate for Best Buy.
P.S. If you hate Best Buy so much, why the hell do you keep going back?
The reason we got off on the wrong foot Ryan is because of your comment. I have not insulted one person who didn’t insult me first.
Think about it. How could I? I can only respond to a comment after the person leaves it and I have no reason to be nice to people who come along and trash me first.
I’m glad you’re back and responding differently. You’ll notice I am as well. It’s this way every time I interact with a commenter.
I did insult you, because you started it. I did not insult your Mother, I just mentioned that someone who responds the way you did, with the language you used, usually ends up as a burden to his mother because nobody will tolerate you long enough to keep you around, hence you having to live with her til you’re 55.
I’m delighted your furthering your education. Best Buy is a great place to work while you do that. I have no problem with that in the least.
But all your brethren aren’t furthering their education and Best Buy won’t be around long enough for them to retire after having worked there for 35 or 40 years.
Ain’t happening.
I never intended for this one post to be an ongoing thing Ryan. I don’t really want a new argument every other day from another Best Buy employee who reads this one, single, solitary post and starts it all over again.
Every week I consider deleting it, just because I hate having to hear from another employee who’s having a bad day.
This post was written in December of 2006. 3 1/2 years ago. 114 comments ago.
If you’ll take time to read every comment, you’ll see that every time a BB employee makes a mature, professional comment, I treat them with respect right back. Kinda like life.
When they come on my blog and call me names and tell me I’m the reason their life sucks, I treat them like the fools they are. Kinda like life.
If I was standing there in real life, none of these little pencil necked geeks would insult me, because I’m 6’2″ and 260 lbs, kinda like a tank. Ex-Airborne Infantryman, ex-boxer, currently still in good enough shape to clear an entire store if I wanted to. I don’t have to hide behind a blog. I use my name, unlike a lot of your brethren who are too stupid or too scared to even use a real email address.
I walk into a BB store with a smile and happiness in my heart. I usually leave with disdain for the idiots who tried to sell me something I didn’t need, instead of trying to find out what I wanted or needed and just filling that need.
Sales isn’t that hard, Ryan. Find what the customer needs and sell it to them for more than you paid for it. Tough huh?
Then how did Circuit City mess it up?
How is Best Buy messing it up?
I’ll tell you how:
The last time I was in BB, buying that ASUS laptop, I had to shoo away a little blue shirted idiot who had just finished telling the biggest bunch of crap I’ve ever heard to a poor woman who was trying to buy a laptop. He didn’t know DD2 RAM from a Ram pickup from Dodge.
All he did was mislead and lie to her.
The Geek Squad guy happened by and asked if there was anything he could do and I said yes, keep that fool away from me.
He said, yeah, he’s a “lying little tool” and he doesn’t really help anybody he talks to, he just tries to convince and persuade them to buy something, whether or not it’s what they need is of little consequence to him.
That’s what will end up being the downfall of Best Buy. Social media => blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and whatever is next, will kill Best Buy because sooner or later everybody will be able to quickly and easily tell everybody else about the crappy, lying, misinformed, poorly trained, poorly supervised, stupid employees and people will slowly migrate to an online solution, where they won’t have to suffer thru this type of treatment.
Watch for it to happen, Ryan, sooner or later.
Unless the leadership of your company changes the atmosphere, you’re on a train with no bridge over the canyon and it’s a long way to the bottom, but you get there fast.
Peace, young friend, peace.
Stay in school, study hard and watch as social media weeds out the companies that are poorly run and staffed with anything that will show up on time.
wow.. what a waste of time this is AND I was actually looking for something like this because Im starting my own computer repair/geek squad type service and I was looking for a quick link to disuade people from best buy but after reading a bulk of this Ive decided NOT to do that.
the employees that moan here probably had a bad bad or bad customer(s) and are venting in a bad way. the customers complaining usually are princesses pissed for not getting EVERYTHING they want.
repairing computers I have two types of personalities telling me that Im condescending – either for dumbing technical stuff down or for saying things in tech terms. I cant win. I just have to say things for what they are in the most general of terms and expect YOU to ask about things you dont understand. Its YOUR responsibility to know tings or to look them up if you dont.
Ive done a lot of customer service and Ive been a customer in bad situations, esp a cell phone company who was billing me for a phone I sold months ago, and after talking to 20-30 people pver 4 months I got nowhere, they stopped billing me eventually but they havent retracted the money owed… I moved to another cell company , then another and they are ALL bad in CSR and service.. whatever problem i had at one place could happen at anohter so its not the company itself its the design and structure of service implementation.
The system screwed up, the CSR wasnt trained properly, due dilligence wasnt honored, …
Every company has its service or CSR issues, some are better at fixing it than others and when I was a CSR I felt horrible for telling some people there was nothing I could do.. especially when I was working for the bank of new york mellon and those poeple were losing money everyday.
Trouble was we could only do what were told to do, I evenn tried bending some rules to help which couldve goteen me in trouble with all sorts of legal agencies (esp the SEC).
In short i told her we couldnt help her, she needed the account holder to call in and jokingly added that she could pretend to be that person (she was trying to help her sick mom) and hinted HEAVILY that she should call back AS her mom… she didnt get it!
Some customers are really stupid, REALLY stupid and its frustrating for us, some CSR’s are ignorant and stupid, its frustrating.
Ive been on both ends and instead of fighting about it, just find a way to make it work. Im a chef, we dont have time ot waste pointing fingers and bullsh*t, just FIX IT NOW!… yeah I also have a computer repair/service thing too, PT in both fields at the moment but thats aside from this.
that lady who tried to sue best buy for 54 million in 2007 had the right idea to get the point accross (but did it the wrong way). Big companies need to know they are there for the customer first and maintain steady focus on making sure they are happy and that products/advertising is as accurate as they should be. If they need to hire district advertisers to make sure only stuff in nearby stores is shown then so be it. Id be pissed too if i saw someting then found out it was only available in stores 800 miles away.
Customers need to also realize that csr’s are people too, even if they seem miserable, probably just a bad day, dont take it personally, even if it is unprfessional.
Customers should – like in real life – take responsibility, dont expect things to be handed to you, if your looking for something ask for the department, not the GPS co-prdinates of the item.
When someone asks you if they can help you dont get pissed off that they want to do someting nice, just smile and say no thanks – its easy.
CSR’s are usdually pretty good at figuring you out, if you avoid eye contact they probably will ask you for help, if you look at them and smile while turning away they will get your fine on your own. try this out and other simple pshych stuff, its not just for scientists.
Every store has its issues. Circuit city |(the one by me) has THE WORST employees Ive ever seen, totally indifferent to me or my needs but I wont stop shopping there because of it. Theyll probably get fired or if theyre THAT miserable, theyre probably students who cant wait to get a job in their field and hate CSR jobs.
In restaurants I see people come and go every week. When someone tells me “I love that restaurant” I ask when the last time they went because its not always the restaurant thats good but whos workign there at the time.. ting is with corporate places like the keg and best buy is they implement rules that govern ALL stores, so maybe a few bad apples ruin it for a bit but the foundation is already laid. Small restaurants and stores will only thrive if the customer is happy EVERTIME they visit. Corporations dont carebecause another customer will replace you.
and on that note is where you all should be directing your complaints, not to the humans that are looking for a way to pay their way through life and temporarily have to take a job they might despise, not the customer who will be a retard in all aspects of their life, but to the corporate source. the ones who create policy. We have no connection to those people and they DO NOT want to connect to us. they care only enough to make sure figures work out, nothing more.
With a little searching, blogging and effort we can change these issues but dont take it to the counter at the store, even if they WANT to help you, they probably cant.
start a group on Facebook to petition change agaisnt a corporate policy then send it to them. If you have 500,000 supporters they will notice. posting here just creates controversy and changes nothing. Wait, Im wrong, now Im in a bad mood. Bitching does nothing productive and this argument will never end.
treat the cause, not the symptom blah blah blah
We have no idea what you wanted, what you said or what you need from us, BUT we’re all glad we don’t have to deal with you everyday.
And the best part is you used a Hotmail email addy. What real geek uses Hotmail?
Can you say faker, hater and wannabe?
Thanks for not being in our sphere!
Hello…
well I am late on this conversation here but I just wanted to add my words in… If I don’t make sense sorry I am not american I am from Brazil can speak fluently but when it comes to putting words together it can turn out to be a lil of a mess.
So yeah I am a cashier at 825 in Cranberry PA and I just wanted to say that definitly what you experience goes really from store to store… Some stores have better customer service than others. For example we always have customers drive thirty minutes to our store because the one next to their house has a poor customer service. I always treat customers the way I would like to be treated if it was me buying. Although I do get a lot of real mean customers that are just ignorants and they just don’t care and yell and don’t listen to you. Sometimes if we don’t have something in stock or you know some bigger problems there is a point were there is really nothing we can do. Like with some returns when a customer doesn’t have his receipt, payed with cash, is not a store member and wants to return the product. So when we say no we get yelled at and trust me not too many beautiful words come out of their mouths.. I mean we understand sometimes you may not get lucky and get an employee who’s there for their paychecks and don’t give a crap about customers. But you have to understand our side, we sometimes get customers as well that are mad about whatever and just scream at us when everything that we can do is already done.
I hope you understand what I am trying to say.
And really like I said I do my best to help customers the better I can all the time.
Thanks for your time reading it anyways
Thanks for your thoughts Vanessa.
I appreciate your time and am truly glad you took time to write.
If you were in my store, I’d buy everything from you.
Please come back soon.
i personallly have only purchased a few things from best buy, and they all generaly went fine. the first was a call of duty game for my son, and it was just like an average store that day. nothing horrible but it wasnt exceptional service either
. the second thing was an ipod touch. or rather i didnt purchase it but i came in and asked an employee for help as to pros and cons, and also as to what he thinks i should get as far as an ipod. he was very helpful and that day service was great. so maybe it might be that i dont go to the same store as you guys, or maybe its that i live in the U.S.A and best buy is different here. i dont know. but i dont think that you guys need to get so crazy over this. because if you dont like best buy, i have an idea DONT SHOP THERE!
its so simple that you guys dont even really need to get crazy and use bad language here.:)
Mike,
I am a 22 year old that literally just graduated from a Top 40 National University (according to US NEWS) this year. I have a degree in the liberal arts and sciences and my cumulative GPA is above 3.0. I have been unable to find a job, and I just did my first in person interview with ANY company since I started applying several months ago. The interview is for a low paying hourly position at Best Buy, and honestly I would not even consider taking this job if I had a choice. Unfortunately, I have a considerable amount of student loans, as well as other bills to pay. What is someone in my position supposed to do? I have a degree from a good university, and a decent GPA, yet I cannot even find a decent job!
Any job is better than no job, Anthony, but just working there and not progressing towards what you really want to do is not a good deal.
I searched the classifieds for any openings for someone do do Art Liberally and I didn’t see any, so that was your first mistake.
Don’t compound it by continuing in that vein.
What do you really want to do?
What’s the ideal position for you?
Mike,
I have literally used almost every single resource that is available to me. Everything from online job search engines to Craig’s List postings. I know my degree is in the Liberal Arts and Sciences, but I honest want to do something business related. Like I said before, the job market is horrible out there, and I live in Chicago, not some small town.
The ideal job for me is one that compensates well. I believe the 2009 average starting salary for college grads was around $49,000 per year plus additional benefits such as 401k, medical, dental, vision, and stock options; so anything around that would be nice. I would also like a job that give me a good work/life balance, so a 9 to 5 job with 40hr work weeks, paid vacations, holidays, and sicks days seem good. I would also like a job that has a lot of upward mobility, one where I can gain additional responsibilities, respect, and compensation. I would like to get a graduate degree or two as well, so a job that offers tuition reimbursement would be fantastic.
That being said, working part time at Best Buy for a low hourly wage is definitely not my ideal job by any means, it is just that I don’t really have a choice. I am trying to achieve the American Dream here, but I am being given any opportunities.
- Anthony
Mike. You make some very good points and hit on a lot of problems most all retailers deal with. i.e. employees talking to one another in big groups, inventory discrepancies, rudeness etc. etc. However I will point out that you have been extremely nasty to a lot of the responses (most I’m sure have been made by young teenagers) You ask for respectful responses and mature insight and yet you can’t keep your maturity or respectfulness in check, even if people are rude to you. This pretty much describes a typical retail shopper. Anyways on to Best Buy. I’m not an employee with Best Buy but I do love to shop there. I have a few associates that are even like close friends to me when I come in and shop. I remember one particular occasion when I was waiting in line to be helped back in the car audio installation section. There was a lady in front of me asking if she could get a radio installed. (They were very busy and the installer was covered head to toe is sweat and dirt. He had four cars being worked on with one other guy to help him. You could tell they were bustin’ some butt trying to get those cars done and keep their customers satisfied.) The installer was extremely polite and said “Mam, I would be more than happy to install your radio but I’m afraid today is very backed up with appointments. I would be happy to try to take it today and squeeze it in in between my appointments and I will get it done as soon as I possibly can but you may have to wait a little while. Or we can set you up with an appointment for another day and you will have a designated time that is all yours!” She responded with “I don’t have time to deal with your sorry bullshit excuses! I WANT MY FUCKING RADIO INSTALLED!” Then… she spit in his face. I was so taken aback I wanted to intervene but I was SPEECHLESS! The installer wiped his face and simply, calmly asked the woman to leave, or to calm down and he would still be happy to help her. She then proceeded to rip up an invoice (not hers, some other customers) that was on the counter, throw it in the boys face and stomp out. This man still managed to greet me with a smile and ask if there was anything he could do to help me. This is only one of many examples of customers I have seen throw temper tantrums in best buy over things the associates have no control over. Working in retail is not easy and I hope you would be aware that while there are a few kids that don’t care about their jobs or customers. There are some like this young man (and many others I have talked to) that will take the worst abuse from retail shoppers and keep on smiling. They do not wake up in the morning and think “how can I ruin a customer’s day today?”. Just a few things to think about before you fly off the handle. Most situations are completely out of the associates hands, and if we haven’t forgotten. They are people too, capable of mistakes, misunderstandings, and mishaps. Understanding this will make your experience with these stores so much better. You may even find you get better service if you are more understanding and polite. “Whodathunkit!?” Have a great day
You don’t need me or anyone else to hate your job, little fella, all you have to do is look in that mirror everyday and be reminded that you work for very low pay in a dying business and have no hope of doing much better in the stupid wasteland in which you live.
Enjoy what’s left of your miserable existence
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