Yesterday, we asked you for your tales of big-box stores with items on the sales floor that weren’t actually for sale. A decade ago, Jan scored a consumer victory against Best Buy with the help of her state attorney general. Big Blue and Yellow had a case full of portable DVD players that they wouldn’t sell her, claiming that they were on hold for customers with rain checks. Guess who had a rain check? Jan. [More]
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Maybe Best Buy Would Compete Better If Their Employees Acknowledged Customers
By 10.29.12
Ryan wanted to buy a tablet, but he’s in the Northeast and couldn’t expect a delivery to show up reliably while his region is getting smacked by a massive Frankenstorm. He took the opportunity to try to buy the tablet he desired in person. Where he lives, the main place to buy electronics is Best Buy, which had the Asus Transformer Infinity in stock. Should be simple enough: go to the store, buy the tablet, then come home and play with the tablet. Right? [More]
The Good, The Bad & The Complicated Of Employee Discounts
By 10.26.12
Between the hours, the pay and the occasional scowling customer, working retail isn’t always the fun times it’s made out to be in film comedy. But at least there’s the employee discount, right? [More]
Court Rules That Best Buy Violated Federal Telemarketing Reguations
By 10.22.12
Reversing a summary judgement by a U.S. District Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that calls from Best Buy to customers asking them to update their Rewards Zone accounts cross the line from informational to telemarketing, in violation of federal law. [More]
4 Black Friday Myths Debunked
By 10.22.12
Black Friday has grown from the day to kick off the holiday shopping season to a bizzaro holiday of its own, with people celebrating by cutting Thanksgiving dinner short to camp outside of a big box store to clamor for deep discounts that are gone by sunrise. During this evolution, Black Friday has also taken on its own mythology. [More]
Will Price-Matching Websites Just Result In More Angry Best Buy & Target Customers?
By 10.18.12
In the last week, both Target and Best Buy have each announced they will match prices on Amazon and other online retailers at their bricks and mortar stores. While the goal is to woo customers into retail stores by taking away the attractive discounts seen online, some wonder if this will result in ticked-off customers standing in line. [More]
Analyst: Best Buy Employees Feel The Most Threatened By Amazon
By 10.17.12
With the holiday shopping season looming on the horizon, and retailers wondering just how much of their business will be lost to Amazon and other online retailers, an analyst for Topeka Capital recently visited some of these bigger stores and came away concerned that their attempts to adapt to online competition might be too little, too late. [More]
Target Follows Best Buy’s Lead, Will Match Online Prices For Holidays
By 10.17.12
Less than a week after Best Buy announced it would be price-matching online competitors this holiday season, the folks at Target declared “us too!” and dove headfirst into the price-matching pond. [More]
Best Buy To Price-Match Online Competitors
By 10.12.12
Best Buy has already said that it intends on dropping its prices on BestBuy.com to better compete against Amazon and other online retailers, but now comes word that the electronics chain plans on actually matching the prices of its online competitors at its bricks-and-mortar stores. [More]
Geek Squad Expands To Target And eBay
By 10.8.12
Have you recently gone to make an electronics purchase somewhere other than Best Buy, but found yourself wishing you could engage the services of the Geek Squad onsite, or buy one of their special Black Tie warranty plans? If you’re one of the regular readers of this site, probably not. But plenty of other people do, and the Nerd Herd is expanding outside of the walls of Best Buy. [More]
Best Buy Comes Up With Genius Idea To Compete With Amazon: Lower Online Prices
By 10.3.12
Hey, consumers. Best Buy knows what you’re up to. Yup, it knows you’re out there on the sneaky ol’ Internet, comparing prices and trying to find the best deal. And now that the company is hip to your tactics, it’s come up with a potential plan to make sure you buy online with Best Buy and not say, Amazon. How’s it gonna do that? By reducing prices. Consider your mind blown. [More]
Introducing The First Ever Warranty Shrink Ray
By 8.1.12 — Updated: 9.29.14
We’ve seen many different variations on the Grocery Shrink Ray over the years, but somehow never anticipated this: a Warranty Shrink Ray. A sneaky tipster who works at Best Buy noticed that the same product, a Seagate hard drive for notebook computers, had a lovely redesigned box. And a few years lopped off the warranty. Much like how other products change the size of an item just a tiny bit rather than raising the price, Seagate cut back on the warranty. [More]
Best Buy Employee: Pressure To Cram Credit Cards Down Customers’ Throats Now Intensifying
By 5.25.11 — Updated: 1.2.13
The next time you’re shopping at Best Buy, try not to get too angry when employees attempt to cram store credit cards down your throat. They’re not personally out to scam you, or hawking cards to line their pockets. They’re just trying not to get written up, reprimanded, or fired. A very insightful tipster who works at a Best Buy somewhere in the United States shared with us the impossible credit application quotas now in place. Update: The tipster reports that Best Buy management has backed down on this particular threat. Hurray! [More]
Update On Woman Sent To Jail For Using Gift Cards At Best Buy
By 2.4.10 — Updated: 3.13.15
Last month, New York City’s NY1 news channel produced a news segment on the woman who was arrested for paying with AMEX gift cards at a Best Buy. If you read our earlier post with Ilona’s email, you already know most of the basics, but you can see the problematic gift cards and hear Ilona describe the experience in her own words. It turns out that after she was released, she went back to Best Buy for either a refund or the DVD player, but had to leave without either one–she was told she’d have to contact American Express to resolve the problem. [More]
Geek Squad Soaks Your Computer, Blames You
By 4.11.08 — Updated: 3.9.13
Still think using Geek Squad to repair your computer isn’t such a bad idea? That’s what reader Nicole thought when she took her laptop in for a warranty covered repair. The laptop was sent off to a service center, “repaired”, then sent back. She immediately noticed it had the same exact problem and sent it back 48 hours later. This time, she was told the warranty wouldn’t cover it, as the Blue Screen of Death was now being caused by water damage. Nicole pointed out that there wasn’t water damage the first time it was repaired for the exact same problem two days ago. Geek Squad responded by quoting her $775 for the repair. The details, below.
Do Coat Hangers Sound As Good Monster Cables?
By 3.3.08 — Updated: 3.4.13
Can you tell the difference between music that passed through a pricey Monster stereo Cable, and a coat hanger? A reader forwarded us a post from the Audioholics Home Theater Forum and its author says no. He says his brother ran an experiment on him and four other audio aficionados listening to a new CD from a new group blindfolded. Seven different songs were played, each time heard with the speaker hooked up to Monster Cables, and the other time, hooked up to coat hanger wire. Nobody could determine which was the Monster Cable and which was the coat hanger. The kicker? None of the subjects even knew that coat hangers were going to be used. This is, of course, “nothing new,” a Google of “monster cables vs coat hangers” shows that some users have been saying this for a while. Still, this is an experiment begging to be recreated under controlled conditions (say, for instance, a double-blind test). Science fair project! Read how it went down, inside…
