A Dummy's Guide to Best Buy

[MrQ]

For those of you who shop at Best Buy, here is the sum total of the things I have learned.

1. The protection plan is good for 1 year on laptops as it gets you a free OEM battery replacement and charger cord at your discretion. The accidental stuff included is nice, but don't pay over 150, it just isn't worth it. Getting it with a desktop or All in One is a waste of money.

2. Tech support is only good if you have time to sit on your thumbs and only affordable if you get it with a computer purchase. Turn around times are 3-5 days at best, unless you have serious damage in which case you are looking at 2-3 weeks. Unlimited virus removal, optimizations, diagnostics, hardware installs, and software installs on three computers is a pretty nice deal for $99, though. Just be aware that a LOT of services you think would be included are not, such as computer setup, network setup, part replacement, recovery software, or data backup.

3. Don't get annoyed at the Best Buy employee who goes through a pitch with every sale. He or she is just trying to not get written up for poor performance and wants to bonus on the little pay they receive. Average pay of sales employees on the floor is about $7.50 an hour. Computer, Tablet, MP3, and Mobile associates bonus on Notional Margin with has to be at least 98% or above per month. This is pretty damn difficult when all your core products barely bring in 3% of purchase price. Geek Squad services are their bread and butter, in some cases, literally.

4. Don't trust a blue shirt on tech knowledge, period. Check your info first. Their primary purpose is to sell you shit you don't need and more than half can't tell you what a wireless router does. This is not to say that all blue shirts are not tech savvy, but that as a rule of thumb watch and listen to cues that they don't know what the fuck they are talking about, such as multiple "Um's", glancing around nervously for somebody else, or sidestepping the question entirely. A good blue shirt would get someone with the right answer and not make one up.

5. Don't believe a company promise that doesn't start with the employees first. Best Buy is technically supposed to have the latest technology and services, but my store is still running an outdated Point of Sale system on 6 year old IBM computers. We have more failures in our own network and technology than the Jurassic Park.

6. Blue shirts are not servants, they do have breaking point. You treat them like shit, talk down to them, or act like an utter moron, you are going to find that any further interactions with anybody in the store down the road is going to be very frigid. You are marked as a troublemaker by the blue shirts and they are aware when you walk into the store. In essence, you catch more flies with honey. You will be surprised what happens when you cool your heels and look at it from their point of view.

7. Don't be the ass that walks into the store, stands around in a section for five minutes, and walks out telling the manager you were waiting for 20 minutes without any assistance. Blue shirts have to walk around the floor and try and greet every customer, but scheduling constantly gets fucked up and there are insufficient employees at peek hours. Please be patient, if they look sniffing glue just give them a heads up that you need help and follow up. However, if you see a blue shirt huddle, break that shit up and get them to help you.

One final note, don't buy the cheapest computer on the floor. Just because it says its $229 doesn't mean that its a bargain; more than likely it will cause you more costly problems down the road. Allocate at least $500 and up on a laptop, $400 and up on a desktop, or $700 and up on an All in One. Brands to stay away from are Acer and Dell. Good brands are Asus, Lenovo and high end Samsung. Higher end Toshiba's and HP's are good for middling but a few models will stand out as better. Sony is high quality and high priced, only go for it if you can get a good deal.

Apple - This computer is nothing but a ripped off operating system, a half-eaten apple logo, and an aluminum unibody. The Mac OS can run on any computer not just Apple's. The internal components are Samsung, All in all its fad based shit, if you want to drop a grand on something that is equivalent to a device half its price, than all power to you. However, their quality is good, again not due to Apple, but Samsung. And they do have a tendency to last a while, but that has more to do with the operating system than anything else as it isn't as resource heavy as Windows.

Best Buy is doing its best to come back, but as a common retailer their bottom line is what matters to them and their investors. Don't expect the employees to go the extra mile, applaud it in the survey if they do, but for the pay that they get and the money they make Best Buy, they already go above and beyond just to keep their jobs.

There it is, A Dummy's Guide to Best Buy. Enjoy!

[TxPlates]

Does anyone really shop at bestbuy any more? Way better avenues to obtain electronics, and not having to deal with the unpleasant employees in my opinion is a big reason to stay away (the money is the biggest factor). Don't take offense to that Dan, not meant at you.

[MrQ]

None taken, Parker. Best Buy is just one of the few brick and mortar left for electronics. If makes you feel any better, I train all my new hires to put the customer first.