Best Buy Co.

I don’t have a local best buy in my area - just a circuit city. And I spend way too much time and money at the circuit city. Actually, the Best Buy thing sounds like a reasonable marketing plan. I hope they open a Buzz store in my neck of the woods.

YA Think?

I don’t.

I think he was pointing out another company’s marketing strategy. If it was a rant, it would have started and ended with him saying that BestBuy sucks (which it does, but I digress). This is just a little tidbit of info in the everything else category. Every high revenue company does (or should do) market research, to learn what its customers want and how to best approach them.

the only time I even go in a Best Buy is if I bought online and need to pick up in the store. There’s no need anymore to go to stores to browse, you can do it online so much easier :slight_smile:

I’m a total Buzz, and I think that I am profitable for a lot of these companies. I wish that businesses would realize this though. I get thoroughly ignored at car dealerships, and Fry’s Electronics. I have to practically beg for assistance.

At Fry’s they would normally have to print an invoice for items in the cases, such as processors or ram, so the cashier can get it, and the salesperson receives commission. The last FIVE times I have gone there, I waited at least 30 minutes before I am acknowledged.

The times that someone finally helped me, and printed out a slip for the cashier. I rip the bar code off of it, so it just shows the item info and number, and then tell them they aren’t worthy of my commission, and that if it were possible, I would rather the cashier get paid it, since that person does triple the work of the salesperson in 3% of the time.

The one time I didn’t get any help, I just grabbed the high dollar items I was buying, put them in a small shopping basket, then go up to the cabinet and proceed to write down the item numbers. When the person saw the stuff I had that they could get undeserving commission from, they come running and try to grab my stuff, telling me that they are “required to print a slip for customers”. I then proceeded to laugh at them, saying “I thought you are required to help customers?” to which he replied “of course!”. I then concluded with “Well, I must not be a customer, because you haven’t helped me even once in the hour that I have been standing here, now if you don’t mind, I am going to go speak to a manager and ask if I am a customer, and if the several thousand dollars I have spent here and the over one thousand dollars worth of stuff that I would like to purchase classifies me as a customer, thanks for not doing your only task, good bye”

I know it was a bit harsh, but I didn’t see any reason as to why I had unnecessarily waited at least 30 minutes to give them my money, when they should be thanking me for my business.

A few best buys near me have remodeled to fit this marketing style. One prob. They have totally nerfed the one thing they really had going for them, variety. It used to be the only place to go and look for a router and have 20 choices. I went the other day to purchase a wireless router and ethernet card for a customer. The “networking section” had be reduced from one side of an entire aisle to a 3 foot section of the same aisle. I got to choose one router from the 5 options, only 2 wireless and one card, from the 3 they had, only one of them wireless. Luckily, they were the exact parts I needed, but it is ridiculous to have not only slimmed the selection, but chopped the majority of it off.

I am thoroughly disappointed with retail electronics stores, its almost as if they don’t want business. TGFTI, Thank God for the Internet. I can buy every flipping part for my computer, without waiting for some arrogant selfproclaimed tech-god teenager to finish telling me that ECS makes the best motherboards because supposedly they use the best capacitors on their boards, and that corsair ram is crap because a low CAS latency is actually a bad thing. One time, this especially gifted salesboy tried to tell me that “a 1000 watt power supply uses the same amount of power as a 100 watt one if they are both connected to the same devices” and that the only difference between a crossover cable and a patch cable is that the crossovers are orange and have “higher quality wires”. I honestly don’t know where they get this crap from.

Thank you for existing woot. You saved me like 40 hours of having to deal with a television salesman and him trying to explain that having a black tv is actually better for the eyes than having a silver one, because it has less contrast to what you are watching, despite the fact that black is an absence of light, and the entire screen is light. I wish these guys were replaced with computers that could answer simple questions about the items like, “how much does this weigh?” and “what is the price per square inch of this screen?”

Okay, I’m done with my rant, sorry for getting carried away.

But seriously, I don’t know why i get ignored. I am a young white tech savvy male, that has a wad of money perpetually burning a hole in my pocket, it’s people like me that are retail business’s bread and butter.

Now that! ladies and gentlemen, is a rant! [;)]

hell yeah…that’s exactly what you should have done…damn young punks. work for your money, especially if I am going to be spending mine there.

Connected to the same devices, which perforce means no more than 100W load, the typical KWatt supply would waste a little bit more from input power in the form of heat. In general, anyway. So you’re *just barely * right, and only on a “technicality”.
Whereas, the sales person you’re putting down was trying to do a customer a favor by steering him to the less expensive alternative, specifically when conditions were appropriate for the substitution. Possibly at a *cost * to his prospective commission.

Other than that, I found your rant pretty much right on target.

Actually this came from the associated press it wasn’t just a rant. I read this in the Seattle Times the other day.

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Not that you did anything wrong, and I commend you for your effort, but if that had been a restaurant, they probably would’ve spit in your food or worse.

The salesman was trying to sell an 850 watt power supply to this old guy to replace his IBM 300PL’s power supply. I am extremely familiar with this computer, as I was a “network support administrator” at my vocational high school, and I personally set up over 80 of these. This computer sports a 400 Mhz PII processor, 128mb of ram, 6gb hard drive and a cdrom. He was trying to sell a $300 power supply to 60+ year old man with a computer that isn’t worth as much as said power supply.

You are correct, on paper a 1000w and a 100w power supply consume the exact amount of power given a steady input, and exact same devices under same conditions. Of course, slight variables in nature make the actual power consumption different, but it is negligible and could teeter in favor of either depending on given circumstances.

I am sorry, I didn’t correctly phrase my original rant, he was right in his statement, but it was also a baseless one used to coherse a customer into purchasing an unnecessarily beefier item. I don’t appreciate that form of salemanship, or more appropriately, swindling unsuspecting people that genuinely need assistance.

Sorry for the double post, I am rather passionate about this topic.

Funny story… Nah I’ll save you the time, or try to. Basically, he didn’t take our order for about 20 minutes after informing him that we were ready to order, accused one of my “minor” friends of drinking someones cocktail, then hit my friend in the arm for not fessing up to something he wasn’t doing, then in the end, charging for drinks we got directly from the bar, and overcharging on the vast majority of the check. I don’t remember the exact total, but it was over $250.

The manager apologized up and down, comp’ed a good amount of the check, making our tables check around $70. The bartender, chef, bus boy and host/manager each received near the amount that the waiter would have if we tipped 22% on the original check. The waiter received ZERO tip. Also, he was reprimanded for his actions, and fired while arguing with manager moments after we left.

Keep in mind, we were the only party in the restaraunt at the time, and it was a group of 9 people getting sushi and most of us getting drinks. We had been regulars there for 6 months prior, and have continued to be for 2 years since.

You only have to worry about spit in your food if you piss off the chef or the expediter (who are also the bussers at this restaraunt). It also helps to be friends with the owners and managers. Agreed, you have to be careful, but are careful about keeping loyalties with the right people.

Sorry, I suck at keeping stories short.

To keep this somewhat on topic. I appreciate that businesses are trying to cater to their customer base, but I feel that businesses need to focus more on appropriately serving the customers with reasonable swiftness and due respectfulness.

Micro Center now has geeks running around with bar coded stickers with their names on them. They hit you as you head for the checkout and slap their stickers on the items. Gives them commision credit. When I got to the checkout I borrowed a pen and drew a diagonal line through his bar code. Cashier was shocked but I told him, he didn’t help me, I work in sales too, and when he deserves a check, I’ll give him credit. The guy called over the manager and I had to repeat the story. The Manager said he was sorry and told the cashier to just put in “tony’s number”. I laughed and walked out leaving the crap on the register.

Good for you. Tony didn’t deserve crap. I would’ve ripped the sticker off immediately after him putting it on there, but you did good too. That manager was a punk for condoning that crap.

You should print out the dictionary.com definition “4. A fee or percentage allowed to a sales representative or an agent for services rendered.” and ask if unsolicited sticker application is considered a “service rendered”

Now I wish micro center existed in Vegas, just so I could go deal with that situation.

I am not a complete jerk about stuff like this. When I go to fry’s and get stereo equipment, or pretty much anything other than computer hardware, they are quick to answer questions if I ever have one. So even if I don’t ask for help or need it, I grab my stuff and go to whoever is closest and tell him to print me an invoice, which they are always thrilled to do, since they dont scavenge for their commission.

If that happened to me, I’d quietly take the item back to the shelf, do my best to place it wilth the sticker really obvious (to management), and try to find another with no stickers. Repeat as necessary.

Eventlually, *somebody’s * going to get in trouble for “claiming” shelf items.

I’m more of a “Prozac” type of guy. I would have gone back to the shelf and just started randomly picking things off the hooks and dropping them while saying out loud “NOPE NOT THE RIGHT ONE, NEXT” and then walking away. I did good by just doing what I did. Maybe Tony will learn to help, and I will learn to chill. It’s going to be a long winter though…

yeah… I’ve had to do precisely that a couple times at microcenter…

Bumping a dead thread to show Skektek what it really means!!! :wink:

Wow, this is an awesome thread! I wish I had seen it sooner. I have never been to a store where people get commission though.

Some of these stories are actually very funny!