Best Buy CEO: We're Not The Authority In Electronics Anymore

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And the "no-duh" statement of the day is brought to you by Best Buy's interim CEO. Who knows if he can turn things around, but at least he has acknowledged the company has serious problems.

“Not that long ago, Best Buy was the authority in this market; our stores wow-ed consumers,” he said. “Not anymore. Today’s marketplace is different. From my perspective, it’s a marketplace we weren’t prepared for.”
 
Not long ago? Maybe 15 years ago Best Buy "wow-ed" people. The marketplace is different in the sense that it's highly competitive, especially in regards to E-Commerce.
 
Fire half the blue-shirts, move to warehouse type store like Sam's Club and stop selling monster cables and pushing needless warranties. Then best buy would stand a chance of survival.
 
Fire half the blue-shirts, move to warehouse type store like Sam's Club and stop selling monster cables and pushing needless warranties. Then best buy would stand a chance of survival.

And fire all the incompetent assholes in Geek Squad (which would probably be all of them).
 
Fire half the blue-shirts, move to warehouse type store like Sam's Club and stop selling monster cables and pushing needless warranties. Then best buy would stand a chance of survival.

Pretty much this.

Get within 5-10% of Amazon's prices and I'll buy it at Best Buy instead simply due to the "I want it now" factor.
 
Quit charging retail price and bullshitting people by calling yourself "Best Buy". It makes you look stoopid.

Quit raping people with outrageous "Geek Squad" services that are severely overpriced.

Quit trying to sell people things they clearly don't need. Recovery Disks for $50? Paleaaase.

I don't go to electronics stores for Slim Jims, Gummy Bears or Pretzels. Get rid of that shit.
 
In today's news, Best Buy's CEO seems to be repeating what the PC market has been telling him for the lest 8 years.
 
Must be tough being Best Buy. People come to the store all the time to check out gear like HDTVs, then they pull out their phone app, find a better price online, then leave. Meanwhile, Best Buy probably has that same HDTV on sale in one of the next two flyers, but they lost the sale. Then when they do sell a HDTV, they sucker people into buying a $50 HDMI cable, the people eventually find out they got raped on the cable, and they turn into the same people buying HDTVs online a couple years later.

Also having non-retarded employees (like ANYONE who knows how to calibrate a TV) would be a huge bonus. Why can't each store have one ISF trained specialist for example? Combine that with better demo setups and sales would improve. Hell I was in Best Buy last week and they didn't have a single surround sound demo area setup. Back in the 90s, stores had surround setups people would walk into and go "Holy $#!7, I need this". Years ago I remember my dad going into a demo room at Lechmere (I think), listening to something for about 15 seconds, then dropping $1.2K on a surround setup. Now people buy theaters in a box and hope for the best.

Personally I would love to see Best Buy drop the shenanigans with gouging on cables/services, maintain reasonable prices all the time (because really its stupid to go there and buy something that isn't on sale), and focus on service. People will pay a little more to get their TV right there in the store, but they shouldn't be stuck with "Pay MSRP or buy it online" which is where they are now. Also they need to SHOW people how the gear can look and sound, instead of leaving all the TVs in Torch Mode and all the speakers in a box...
 
Fire half the blue-shirts, move to warehouse type store like Sam's Club and stop selling monster cables and pushing needless warranties. Then best buy would stand a chance of survival.

I think Best Buy is still a good place to buy TVs if you're not invested in a specific brand. Their Dynex TVs are functional and cheap. No, my eyes may not implode from bells a whistles like in-TV apps or built-in 5.1 surround sound systems, but they're cheap enough for my living room to go with a 2 HDTV attached to 2 Xbox 360s setup that I have.

And I have noticed that they'll have better prices on some TVs than even a Sam's Club can provide. For the rest of the store, burn it down and start over.
 
Eliminate expensive services BS. You don't give your employee's commission but you push products and services on the customers as if you do. Geek Squad is a well of over priced services , bring those upgrade costs down to reality. PC's are not the ultra complicated beasts they use to be , anyone with 10 minutes to search on Google can get walk through tutorials online on how to do everything that is required to maintain , fix and install into a PC.

You can't compete with Amazon , face that reality. They have all the advantages and don't have to worry about running a store front. Until Best Buy can give me a good reason to go inside and get what I want and stand in line then I'll prefer to get my free 2 day shipping from Amazon at a cheaper cost.
 
Fire half the blue-shirts, move to warehouse type store like Sam's Club and stop selling monster cables and pushing needless warranties. Then best buy would stand a chance of survival.

So stop selling the only two things that keep them any money?
 
The guy sounds like he has a level head on his shoulders - perhaps he'll steer the company in a good direction.
 
Fire half the blue-shirts, move to warehouse type store like Sam's Club and stop selling monster cables and pushing needless warranties. Then best buy would stand a chance of survival.

Sam's Club already exists.
 
You really think BestBuy can out-compete Walmart at Walmart's own game? LOL

Fire half the blue-shirts, move to warehouse type store like Sam's Club and stop selling monster cables and pushing needless warranties. Then best buy would stand a chance of survival.
 
Their biggest problem is a lack of brand and logo recognition. They haven't been able to get the word out that their stores exist. They should start running ads on MySpace so that people become aware of them and know what they sell.
 
I don't they have any issue with brand recognition. Everyone knows what Best Buy, Amazon is the 99 percent factor, but it is a large part of it.

There are quite a bit of people who don't do any online shopping, my parents included, but refuse to shop at best buy due to customer service. Best Buy servery underestimated this.
 
I don't they have any issue with brand recognition. Everyone knows what Best Buy, Amazon is the 99 percent factor, but it is a large part of it.

There are quite a bit of people who don't do any online shopping, my parents included, but refuse to shop at best buy due to customer service. Best Buy servery underestimated this.

I think Skribbel was being sarcastic.
 
they need to make prices like 10-15% cheaper than amazon or any other online price and i'll shop there. also they should give freebies like hdmi cables so we dont have to buy them
 
There is just something about Best Buy that makes me want to NEVER buy ANYTHING from them.
Same thing with CC back when they were around. I would wander around WANTING to spend money and just leave feeling dirty.
Don't quite know, but everything they offer can be bought somewhere else cheaper and knowing that makes it kind of pointless.
 
they need to make prices like 10-15% cheaper than amazon or any other online price and i'll shop there. also they should give freebies like hdmi cables so we dont have to buy them

That will never happen. It'd put them out of business.

They need to lower it to about 5-10% above amazon's price and up the customer service to a level where customers feel that it's worth are paying the extra amount. Toss is really cheap/helpful (HDMI with new tv's, etc) items to go with their product and show them all about what they're actually purchasing and how to use it. Hell, maybe even build upon it and offer that sort of service for an added price (on a as need basis) into their tiered extended warranties.

There's no other way around it. Amazon doesn't have nearly the overhead that best buy has to maintain with their store fronts, employees (along with little things like theft/security).

If the customer walks out of the store feeling like they're a king... they're going to come back.
 
it wasn't just market place, it was the shity CS and smart customers who knew they were getting screwed over.
 
That will never happen. It'd put them out of business.

They need to lower it to about 5-10% above amazon's price and up the customer service to a level where customers feel that it's worth are paying the extra amount. Toss is really cheap/helpful (HDMI with new tv's, etc) items to go with their product and show them all about what they're actually purchasing and how to use it. Hell, maybe even build upon it and offer that sort of service for an added price (on a as need basis) into their tiered extended warranties.

There's no other way around it. Amazon doesn't have nearly the overhead that best buy has to maintain with their store fronts, employees (along with little things like theft/security).

If the customer walks out of the store feeling like they're a king... they're going to come back.


Winner winner chicken dinner! Great post sir.
 
For all the Best Buy bashing, their customer service isn't what has been sinking them. The market simply changed.
 
I think Best Buy is still a good place to buy TVs if you're not invested in a specific brand. Their Dynex TVs are functional and cheap. No, my eyes may not implode from bells a whistles like in-TV apps or built-in 5.1 surround sound systems, but they're cheap enough for my living room to go with a 2 HDTV attached to 2 Xbox 360s setup that I have.

And I have noticed that they'll have better prices on some TVs than even a Sam's Club can provide. For the rest of the store, burn it down and start over.

Nice and cheap HDTVs eh? I got a 42" GT25(pany plasma) for $750 off Amazon with free white-glove shipping. Even better is that a pany plasma is the best HDTV you can get for gaming. You'd be hard-pressed to beat it's 20ms input lag let alone that you have full post-processing with that input lag. Then you go on to deep blacks, and oh, right, the THX preset which is basically a factory color calibration so you're not stuck with hiring a professional to calibrate your HDTV so it no longer looks oversaturated and you can watch films and play games as they were meant to be viewed. Did I mention it was shipped and setup in my house for free?

What's even better is that the first unit has some color banding on the right, so I had a replacement shipped and the white-glove service setup the new one and took the defective one away. This one had 3 dead pixels, so I had that one replaced as well. No hassles whatsoever. I call AZ up and explain my dismay wondering what their return policy would be like if the 3rd unit had some defect I couldn't stand as well and you know what they did? Instead of BSing me, instead of 'let me talk to my manager' they offered a $50 discount on my purchase assuming I'd keep the 3rd set. It arrived, it some some minor banding issues, but after breaking it in it'd get toned down.

The irony of this story is that I originally bought an HDTV from BB, and to make a long story short, it got returned due to intolerable input lag and my research, aided by the one BB rep that had a clue, led to pany plasmas and the GT25, but, lo and behold BB no longer stocked the GT25, they only had the ST25, which was priced HIGHER than the GT25 on AZ. lololol

So please, don't advise people to buy HDTVs from BB, especially gamers. Only one out of the several BB reps I talked to didn't try to sell me a Samsung or LG, which are arguably the worst displays to buy for gaming.
 
Toss is really cheap/helpful (HDMI with new tv's, etc) items to go with their product... Amazon doesn't have nearly the overhead that best buy has to maintain with their store fronts, employees (along with little things like theft/security).

Those "cheap/helpful items" are high profit items that help make up for the small margins of those major purchases.

15 years ago, you almost had to go to Best Buy or Sears to buy a TV, so Best Buy could charge enough to cover costs. Throwing in an HDMI cable isn't going to get someone to go to Best Buy today when they can go to Walmart or the Internet to buy a TV, with prices that Best Buy can't compete with.

Whole markets that Best Buy served 15 years ago are practically gone, so there's nothing to throw the proverbial HDMI cable that they can toss in. Buy a tower speaker, get speaker cable? Who is buying desktop computers, CDs, etc.? 15 years ago, they were still selling typewriters (actually, dedicated word-processors).
 
Going the way of radio shack lol.

Anyone from San Diego remember ComputerEDGE Magazine?
There was a company called Computer Depot based in Kearny Mesa that literally was a warehouse, you walked in, they had a bunch of PC monitors for you to look at and see the quality, and then you asked the guy to go in the back and grab the PC components you needed.

FREAKING PAINLESS and they were ALWAYS cheaper than: PC Club, Fry's, wal-mart, radio shack, best buy... ANYWHERE.

well they are long gone now, city bought their warehouse out due to imminent domain and never re-opened. But THAT was how you ran a competitive PC business.
 
One thing the Best Buy here in Fort Worth has is the Magnolia Audio substore. I don't know if its the economy or just the way things have changed but there are no more high end home audio stores in Fort Worth and very few in DFW at all anymore.

So if you want some Martin Logan speakers, Magnolia is the place to go....and they do charge normal MSRP on them, which is normal for an item like that.
 
Or when we needed 2 Sony 400 Disc Blu-Ray changers, Magnolia was the only place locally that carried them in stock.
 
Skribblekat i see what you did there. Anyway best buy is trash. If they cant provide a shipping number for something sent to my home it requires police inolvement to get a replacement. What asshats. I hope the store can get better.
 
Do white people provide better service?
yes because they dont use street slang when trying to sell tvs. i want to shop at best buy, not the homeboy shopping network
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