Amazon Quietly Rolls out Its Own Geek Squad to Set up Gadgets in Your Home

Megalith

Megalith

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Amazon has quietly been hiring an army of in-house gadget experts to offer free Alexa consultations as well as product installations for a fee inside customer homes: the goal is to help people set up smart devices, which are supposedly difficult to set up and integrate with each other. Best Buy has already lost $1 billion in value after the announcement.

While Amazon has a marketplace for third parties to offer home services like TV mounting and plumbing, these new smart-home-related services seem important enough to Amazon that it is hiring its own in-house experts. And perhaps for good reason. Smart-home gadgets make up one of the fastest-growing segments of the consumer electronics industry, but they can be difficult to set up and integrate with each other. That hurdle has led to higher-than-normal return rates, experts say, so Amazon is likely looking at the in-home services as one way to lower that number.
 
I think you have to take in to consideration the sheer amount of old people that do a lot of shopping on Amazon. Now these people can just pay for the install quickly and easily and not worry about bugging a relative or taking it to best buy to be set up. And then there are those that just don't want to deal with setting up a new TV, mounting it, wiring it up with a surround system. Whatever is the least inconvenience to them and this option will sell quite well.

They'll make money on this.
 
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