One of Best Buy’s Black Friday deals was a $229 laptop. Each store was supposed to have 15. A complaint letter posted over at Notebooks.com alleges that a New Orleans Best Buy hoarded the most laptops for the employees and passed out only a few vouchers. At one point, an employee’s girlfriend in line threw a hissy-fit because she didn’t get a voucher and her boyfriend snuck over and palmed her a voucher, skipping over the other customers in line. Shame shame shame, Best Buy. Yet another reason we hate Black Friday, the stores can’t even abide by the rules of the in-store promotions that are designed to lure more people inside than will ever get the deal and then offload otherwise unsellable crap.
Best Buy Employees Hoarded Black Friday Laptops? [Notebooks.com]
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I didn’t do any doorbuster deals, but when I went to Best Buy for the ‘regular’ BF deals, they were a horrendously unorganized mess. NONE of the black friday deals were listed in store with updated signage. There were no flyers available to check on what the deals were. So there was basically no way to see what was on sale, so I didn’t buy anything.
@smitty1123:
“Market-bearing price” – I see plenty of people buying $30 USB A-B cables for printers when they could buy them at Wal-Mart for $8 and change.
A store can charge as much as they want for whatever they want. You can choose to go somewhere else.
(Doesn’t apply to things like gas, of course [I know someone will mention anti-gouging laws], because you logically can’t allow people to charge ridiculous amounts of money for things people are often required to purchase. If only we’d add medicine to this protected category.)
@RvLeshrac:
I hate to toot our own horn, actually, but the chain at which I work has been handling BF and Christmas sales well for this and last year.
Commissioned salespeople, so the big-ticket items (televisions) have a percentage of coupons handed out at the door in the morning, with a few held for the afternoon sales crew. Customers are asked to return the coupons if they decide not to purchase, so that they’ll be available for others.
X of an item will be in the store, with Y items held to handle the number of defective returns (that way, you don’t have to wait a week to replace that TV if the tuner is out or it has a big cluster of dead pixels in the center of the screen).
Employees are allowed to purchase items – if they stand in line like everyone else. Anyone caught stashing merch or coupons is subject to immediate termination. If you’re interested in purchasing something, you’re expected to ask for the morning off, switch with someone, or hope that there is something left at the end of your shift.
People are allowed into the store only a few at a time when the doors open, so that huge crowds don’t build at the registers. Large lines are queued and people are directed to certain registers.
It works out well for everyone involved. While day-to-day ops can be a stretch during busy times, the entire store is expected to work the holiday sales.
While I’m at it, anyone notice that Wal-Mart has 50 registers at every store, yet there are only 2 open at any given time?
Things sure have changed for the worse since I left retail 10 or so years ago. The store I worked at was a very high-volume store to begin with, but in the 2 weeks building up to ‘Black Friday’ we started getting the big shipments to build up inventory. The warehouse would literally be overflowing with stock, with additional product heading to the sales floor (this was back before the days of self-service).
While we would occasionally run out of certain popular items, most ad pieces had plenty of stock to carry us through BF without a problem. No long lines, no vouchers, just plenty of inventory with lots more on the way. As for employees hoarding the good deals, this never really happened at our store. The employee discount was just as good or better is most cases. I guess it’s different game now.
if youre dating a guy that works at best buy the least they can do is give you a cheap notebook
last year they ran out of a flatscreen my sister had a ticket for and they gave her one twice as nice.
@RvLeshrac:
lol yes. they specifically put out a commercial claiming that all lanes (or maybe just “more” lanes?) will now be open for the holidays
I work at the IRS and let me tell you, it sucks. So why should I pay taxes? Everyone else in my office cheats their taxes, and if I happen to have a few connections that can make evidence say, disappear, then why shouldn’t I use that to my advantage?
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I work for the police and let me tell you, it sucks. So why shouldn’t I make a little extra ‘protection’ money for myself? Everyone else is doing it and nobody is getting hurt. These shop owners are still making money. Sure, extortion is illegal, but if my sargeant is going to look the other way, why shouldn’t I take advantage?
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I work retail and let me tell you, it sucks. So why shouldn’t I take advantage of my position? There’s nothing wrong with keeping some of the black friday deals for myself. It’s not stopping anyone from getting that laptop if they really want it. Just look me up on ebay and you can still have it slightly below retail. Besides, everyone else in my store is doing it.
@backbroken: Well, to be fair, in Situation A you have a moderate salary, government benefits, and probably investment in a career. In Situation B your very job description includes honor, integrity, and upholding the law. In Situation C you have a minimum-wage job, little to no future with the employer, and the chance to be fired by Skippy the assistant manager if he’s upset because he got a bad parking space that morning.
I’m not excusing or justifying the behavior, but it’s not exactly surprising. There’s a reason Situations A and B are a lot less common than Situation C (or their respective equivalents).
@Mr. Gunn: @chartrule: @xtc46:
Well since it would be hard to prove unless you were to ask Brad Anderson himself about the month of Christmas cards he received at home 2 or 3 at a time explaining what happened,just going to have to take my word for it .And Mr. Gunn its not nice to call people liars so you can go F@#! yourself
I guess I am guilty of this… the better half’s sister works for a audio/video store. Once a year they have awesome sales on their TV and such…
Because the sister is the accountant, she called the day before the sale, told us about a $7300 73″ Mitsubishi DLP set that will be sold for $1700. We went down that day and purchased it… one day in advance.
It was a great deal indeed!
@smitty1123: No kidding. I thought it was funny that BB was advertising line-in cables for like 20 bucks this week and it was like some generic brand. I was like ummm why not go to Wal-Mart and pay 4.47 for the same dang thing. LOL.
Best Buy was hording Xbox 360 systems in Lansing, Michigan on the same day!!! Sick of that store!
I was a cash paying customer and they admitting to having 25 systems in stock, but couldn’t sell them until the weekend following black Friday!