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 ?
Don't miss a thing! Subscribe to our RSS Feed or sign up for our e-mail updates (in the sidebar). To leave a comment, click on the post title, then scroll down to the bottom. Thanks!
{ 99 comments… read them below or add one }
← Previous Comments
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!
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 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.
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!
← Previous Comments