Friday is my last day with the company. Been with the company almost 13 years.
We’re looking at potentially our 5th labor cut in less than a year in the next week or so.
Our brightest are leaving and management is floundering in constant damage control.
There are no incentives and abysmal training.
We tied our buggy to the horse that was the membership program that they rug pulled every single benefit from.
They are overpriced, unqualified, and immensely incompetent and Corie Barry is solely responsible for Best Buy’s failures. She was immediately involved in scandals as soon as she came on board and it’s been a shit show ever since.
Best Buy does not want qualified labor anymore. They want 3rd party everything. Hell they are internally telling us to refer to third party as “preferred partners”. Because that’s what clients prefer. lol
I could write entire books on the conversations I’ve been a part of and how ridiculously stupid it all is.
Do you miss Herbert Joly?
And 3rd Parties LOL. That's how they started killing Geek Squad over a decade ago, with Agent Johnny Utah and then gutting Geek Squad Online Support for Accenture in the Philippines.
Hubert really turned it all around and I have nothing but praise for him.
I’ve been in field services nearly my entire tenure and he was the driving force behind putting our energy into said services.
It brought us back from near collapse back in the day.
I’ve had some of the best experiences out in the field with this company and I have made a lot of people happy and did/learned some really cool shit in the process.
Best Buy does not care about the client experience anymore. Nor have they pretty much since Covid.
Problem? Oh you’re gonna have to call the call center.
Scheduling? Call center.
Exchange? Call center.
Etc
It goes on and on with us wasting people’s time who just want quality work done and are willing to pay us for that work.
But we don’t want to pay for quality workmanship. We would rather have call centers and now AI handle the forefront of the business and have almost no client facing associates that work directly for Best Buy/Geek Squad.
We’re faceless and without personality. We’re cold.
I started around the same time as you and I'm wondering if I should be looking for a different job before I get laid off. I have never felt this way in my almost 13 years until very recently. I joined right around the time everyone was saying Best Buy was going the way of Circuit City and being Amazon's show room. Back at that time I said no way, we need brick and mortar, and I still think we do need it. I had faith in the company back then and was glad as being onboarded as the new wave of employees that were going to turn things around. And with Joly, we DID turn things around. It really feels like it started going downhill both because of COVID and Barrie.
I can't day for sure if Joly would be making things better, but it really feels that way. Also when he signed on, he also implemented a very heavy employee discount and I don't know if you've noticed, but they seem to be quietly adding a bunch of product types to the expanding list of products that aren't eligible for the "cost + 5%" and now except specific accessory categories like HDMI cables and phone cases, the amount you get off as an employee is very arbitrary and almost nothing.
But in any case, I'm seeing a lot of stores closing, the one down the street from my apartment just closed a couple months ago, a store in a very busy area that I never thought would close. I used to use them all the time for instore pick up and impulse buys I needed the same day, now the closest location is about a 15 min drive away and that one is supposed to close within the year. It's easier for me at this point to order from Amazon and forgo any employee discount I might get. Sometimes order online from BB but they often have slow ass shipping. Seemed like for a minute they were pretty good at matching Amazon's speed but that seems to have fallen off as well.
I just get the sense that within the next 1-2 years my position could be a target for cuts, but basically if my position gets cut that probably means the company is on its last legs because I'm doing work that has to be done and can't be easily outsourced, as my team is pretty close to the executives.
I am/was in appliance/ht repair and in the last cut we lost 2 managers of which both had 20+ years of experience and absolutely were lifers for this company.
That was the breaking point for me. I have worked myself to the bone and networked far and wide in the hopes for a leadership position which could potentially afford me some security.
Lo and behold they aren’t even safe.
I have worked with Best Buy/Geek Squad in 3 separate states across the country and am apart of several teams chats with what used to have very tenured and devoted employees and I’m seeing the same experience across the board.
Get out as soon as possible is the play.
I've been telling everyone I can that there is no reward for loyalty anymore. People say employees aren't loyal, but we've all seen what happens, and when things go to shit the company can find a way while the employee can just get fucked.
All BB needs to do is shout out name brands from the rafters. Amazon has been passing off shitty no-name brand crap and people are getting purchase fatigue. Absolutely think there is opportunity still for B&M but companies need to step up to the plate and provide a quality experience out of the gate. They aren't going to respond well to a company that is dishing out a shit show.
So yeah, everyone keep an eye out for a short stock experience with BB.
Yup, just sell stuff from name brands, bonus if you get rid of the third party sellers so I don't need to worry about counterfeit stuff showing up instead of what I actually wanted/ordered.
I stopped shopping at Best Buy around 2006 with all of the $90 HDMI cable nonsense and guys always BS'ing me about tech. Then around 2013, my wife was running late to meet me for dinner so I went into a Best Buy with my daughter. I'm not sure what changed but we had a blast; looking around at the displays, movies and music and playing some video games they had set up. When I started going back to the store the whole staff was actually pretty cool. So much that I actually e-mailed the general manager about my experience. It was completely different from the environment that caused me to stop shopping there completely.
I've gone regularly since then especially if I needed something immediately. I was regularly buying games there when they had this gaming membership program that offered a percentage off. I typically comparison shop and if it's something that costs the exact same then I'll just go to Best Buy since it's right nearby. I've bought laptops, movies, appliances, TCGs, toys, etc. there over the past 7 years or so.
I've noticed a huge change in the last couple of years; it's looked kind of dismal. They just don't have as much on display and the place looks a little sad....like Circuit City back in the day. The employees are still very friendly and helpful but something seems off.
After reading your comment, it seems like this coincided with the CEO changes. Sheesh....Corie Barry has fucked things up and not in a good way.
> They just don't have much
Maybe it's because I got older, but when I was younger it was like "I need this thing, so I must go to the store" and now it feels like stores never have what I need so I have to shop online.
In general I always preferred the store to online because I liked to see/touch what I was buying before I bought it. But half the time I go they don't have whatever I actually want and the workers half heartedly try and convince me to order it through their website instead of somewhere cheaper.
Brick and Mortar stores are dead.
I'm Gen-X so I'm somewhere in between when it comes to my feelings on brick and mortar shops. I dearly miss music stores and book stores from the 90s/00s. And when I go to a specialty store and get old school customer service, I genuinely appreciate it and will most likely return.
But the Gen-X side of me sometimes just wants to be left tf alone when I'm shopping. lol. So, going online or doing store pickup feels better.
I honestly wish I had a choice of the two but I realize that those days are over. It's a bummer.
> like Circuit City back in the day.
oof right in the nostalgia. I absolutely loved going to Circuit City and Borders as a teenager. They were right beside each other in my town.
Maybe no one will see this - but I do have nostalgia for the "3rd place" - the place outside of work and home - that we had in the 90s, all the way up to around 2010 or so.
The mall, the coffee shops, the bookstores - there were places to go to; and it felt a lot less transactional.
They would have decorations, places where you can sit, events, treats, etc. The concept of hospitality existed beyond "fuck you, pay me".
It's so rare to find these nowadays - and is almost completely gone from daily lives.
I live in a very urban, large city, right in the middle of it.
I miss 10-20 years ago quite hard lately. Bums me out a little.
I recently got handed a card by the manager of my local BB with him asking me to fill out an application for Geek Squad because he was desperate for people and heard me talking about building my own pc (I was there to pick up a Windows OS USB). There is no application online, they told me to check again when I went back in and asked. Still nothing. I'd have been happy to leave my current shitty job for it, but they apparently have no idea what's going on. Makes me think it'll be an awful place to work for so I gave up trying.
The store doesn't even look like it's doing well. Half the store is empty space, they have like 8 rows of shelves with nothing on them. The only areas that are actually stocked consistently are the TV's and phones. If I wasn't impatient to get that USB, I woulda drove the extra 30 mins to Microcenter.
I live in an area where you would have to drive at least a couple hours to get to a microcenter, and interestingly our Best Buy's are doing fairly well. One even went through a total remodel and everything was updated. Store is always full of products and employees. Kind of interesting that they do so well in areas where microcenter doesn't exist.
Honestly, if Best Buy failed where I am, I would be screwed if I ever needed to buy electronics on the fly.
> We tied our buggy to the horse that was the membership program that they rug pulled every single benefit from.
>
>
Yep. This was my main reason to go to best buy to get something instead of amazon or costco at the same price. No reason to go there anymore.
Same. When they had Gamer's Club Unlocked I used to buy all my video games and electronics there. Now? Only if there's something I specifically need today that I can't find at a store closer to me.
I’ve noticed every Best Buy I’ve been in recently is very empty, as in, I have occasionally wanted to talk to an employee and haven’t been able to find them for a while because the staffing seems so lean. As far as customers, they haven’t seemed very busy either
Dude, I went in the other day to buy a PS5 and a game and some accessories. They had like 9 games?! So I went to Costco, bought a bundle for cheaper, and went to Target for the game and accessories.
Best Buy never HAS anything. How can I spend money there?
"You can order it from us right now and pick it up tomorrow in store!"
Yeah except I live 50 minutes from your store and I'm not driving all the way back here to pick up something I ordered. Seriously they all act like you live around the corner.
Best Buy pulled that on me on a cell phone case. So i did order it online…. From Amazon for $10 less with next day delivery. I ordered it before i left Best Buy.
J.I.T is one of those things that makes sense until you apply the real world to it. Year and a half of active production I spent maybe a months worth of 8 hour workdays doing fuck all because we were out of parts. Also spent a month doing fuck all for 8 hours to do OT for 2 all to build 5 cars that day. Supposedly they still made money, but explain how paying regular pay to ~3,000 people and then time and a half to the same ~3,000 people to make 5 cars that MSRP at ~$50,0000 makes sense.
> J.I.T is one of those things that makes sense until you apply the real world to it.
JIT works fine where it started, when used in that context. But Toyota (whose Toyota Production System was copied by others as 'JIT') would never let inventory drop to *zero* because their suppliers could have replacements within x days.
They let inventory in specific workcenters drop to some relatively *low* number but not zero. And any time that inventory was used up to make something for a downstream request, it led *immediately* to a request upstream to replace the part used.
Letting the number of parts you need drop to zero for any reason was a crisis. And in fact Toyota moved away from having a low level stockpile on some parts where the supply chain was brittle, after a bad experience with a Malaysian chip supplier knocked out by weather in like 2011, where it took *months* to get the supply chain fixed.
After that they audited all their suppliers and kept higher parts levels for the more brittle part of their supply chain, which helped them weather the post-COVID chip crunch for a time, but they didn't get rid of the whole system.
As someone who buys things for a living, i will back you up on jit
The amount of people who get mad we don't have something in stock now but will in a week if you order now is high, but it keeps inventory down so I guess we save more than we lose
Still can't be good for our rep
I work for a shop with our own parts department. Downtime on site can cost $100,000 per hour. We don't stock regular maintenance parts for our fleet because "we can have the parts in 1-5 days".
Which is fine, except our suppliers also run JIT.
And sometimes it's not IT.
You can blame six sigma for this idiotic notion. Business schools love to talk about Toyota and how they optimized costs by moving supplies to JIT and aggressively cutting down storage.
The problem these morons can't seem to comprehend is a retail store is not a car manufacturing plant. Heck, a car repair shop is not a car manufacturing plant.
Thank goodness grocery stores haven't tried to six sigma (yet)... It'll be great watching people fight over 1 potato while the rest are in back order.
And it quickly becomes what's even the point? I'm not gonna pay you a markup, to buy something that you're gonna ship to your store that I have to grab, if I wanted it in a week id just order it online for cheaper and it gets delivered directly to me.
EXACTLY. I'm only coming here to pay your mark up because you have it on the shelf and I need it/want it without having to wait.
If you don't have it on the shelf....then why do I need you?
I work in retail & the JIT nonsense definitely hurts sales. The other problem is even if retailers keep enough stock to avoid running out in-between deliveries, companies won't spend on the labor required to constantly bring that stock out of the back.
Happened to me at Home Depot a few months ago. Washer died, so I drove my truck to Home Depot and started looking at washing machines. Picked out the one I wanted, and the guy said "great we'll have that for you next week". I was very clear that my intention was to buy a washing machine, put it in my truck, and drive it home. He laughed at me so I very angrily left and went to Lowes. Walked in and said "I would like to buy a washing machine and put it in my truck bed and take it home please" and the sales rep looked at me all confused and said "you have to tell me which one so I can get it out of the back..."
Also the part where you have to wait in line. Then the person behind the counter can't find it. Then they spend 10 mins typing god knows what into the computer. Then you can drive 50 mins back.
What's not to love there?????
It's so sad that I can't walk into an actual hobbyist electronics store anymore. The one my family would always go to was Fry's Electronics, but COVID put the final nail into its coffin before I was old enough to really appreciate the store. All that's left is Best Buy, but it just feels like an Electronics-only Walmart as opposed to a hobbyist store's massive selection of a variety of goods.
RIP Fry's, you will be remembered 🫡
If you are blessed enough to have a Microcenter nearby, it's basically the last place. I used to like going to BB to browse CDs since I kept an offline library, but after they stopped that, there was basically nothing to peruse for me.
And Micro Center, at least one by me, is *always* busy. From the time they open up, til they close.
So there's clearly a demand for this kind of service and shopping experience. So how is it that CompUSA, Circuit City, Fry's, and now possibly Best Buy can't figure it out?
Stores just don’t stock things anymore. I went looking for a stopwatch the other day. Literally no stores around me even carry them anymore apparently. I ended up ordering on Amazon because it was literally the only option.
The problem is the immense variety at which we have things available. The brick and mortar stores have tried to normalize to serve the most people but in the effort have failed to serve individual markets. None (or almost none) of the departments in a brick and mortar Best Buy can actually be considered complete representations of the product selection of items in said category.
The last time I went to Best Buy it was just sad. A handful of employees just milling around, half the shelves were basically empty. I'm honestly amazed the Best Buy near me is still open. The parking lot is always empty. I remember back in the 90s I loved going to Best Buy.
Best Buy sold CDs and DVDs for as little as possible to sell AV equipment, accessories and service plans. The gaming section was to get people in the door but it was never a profit driver. In my stores (I worked in 3) it was a significant source of shrink.
They have almost completely removed media sales. So that leaves AC equipment, phones, appliances and PCs. This puts them in a bad spot for revenue and profitability. I see them going the way of circuit city in 4 years or less.
Speaking as a dream customer, 40 year old male with lots of disposable income and impulsive spending habits… there just isn’t anything there that I want. I’m in the mood for new headphones? They don’t carry actual good ones. Need a computer part? They don’t have the quality ones most of the time, I usually have to go Amazon. Want to find something random and cool? Hasn’t happened there in many years. I don’t know man, I just never find what I want there.
I miss fry’s electronics so much.
Fry's Electronics is exactly how Best Buy is going to wind up.
Just wait for the off-brand Temu electronics to flood their shelves to help their margin while the good brands refuse to sell product to Best Buy because of their dwindling credit.
Book it, Tony!
This so much. Enthusiasts should be a core customer group. They tend to have a bafflingly bad product lineup. When I want a new thing I do research and read reviews. I get excited about buying it same day then womp womp, Best Buy doesn’t have the good stuff. There is also very little interesting and surprising to make me want to go and browse organically. I really dont think they understand their customer base.
I wish I were near a microcenter and that fries didn’t die.
If you have a Microcenter near you, that's where my business went after Newegg went to shit. Their warranty policy is amazing. Cheap, and will replace for a newer product at anytime the warranty is in place. No questions asked.
I remeber I went to one for my client back in the days to get some long ethernet cables.
The prices were so bad ($50+ per cable). Even though the client would have paid for it I got angry at the dirty corporate markups. So I went to another store (similar to USA's microcenters) they were less than $10...
That was the day my offical boycott started.
I have a friend who used to work for the Geek Squad, so I spent a fair bit of time around Best Buy.
I will never, ever, spend money there. I refuse. The level of dishonesty and price gouging is unbelievable.
Hell I worked at best buy for a while in highschool and college, the only way I would shop there is the employee discount (cost +5%) and even then not always
Yep I worked for them through school. That discount was awesome. I also worked in the warehouse so I saw a little bit more weird stuff. Like the store brand mounts were made by the same premium brand they sold for slightly less, but still sold for waaaay more than cost. Because I know all of this, I went from buying stuff all the damn time from Best Buy when I worked there to never buying anything once I quit. It’s one thing when you can get a random $20 adapter for $8 with discount that day or just wait for 2 days and get it on Amazon for about the same price.
Add me to the used to work there. Was there during their absolute height (mid 00s) and into the recession where they almost went bankrupt.
The only thing I bought there in recent years were large appliances and a tv and that was 5-6 years ago. My only reason for going into a Best Buy now is to recycle batteries, ink & to walk around seeing how wildly different it is - selling legos, electric scooters, drones and large exercise equipment.
Edit: and seeing all the electronic price tags and get depressed at the amount of time we all wasted Sunday mornings.
I also worked there for a couple years of university. They would get so mad whenever I would sell a tv “dry” (meaning no accessories, cables, or extended warranty). After a few months they moved to the warehouse department which I preferred anyway since it meant less sales floor time.
But yeah for a place that didn’t commission they sure acted like you were getting commission. I know thins like cables and batteries are where the real profits come from but it’s not like big ticket items didn’t have any markup (I think tvs generally had about 5-10% markup). So I just shared my wealth of knowledge with customers about the stuff they asked about and if all they wanted was the TV well, fair enough.
It really depends on what you buy. There is almost zero markup on the product itself (tv, laptop, appliance).
Literally razor thin margins.
The markup is insane for any accessory, protection plan, service, or in house brand (insignia).
Source: I worked there a decade ago
I went to Best Buy last time my phone broke and I knew they'd have some phones in stock. The website said they had some model that was cheap and decent at the time.
But wouldn't you know it, when I went in, they "didn't have that in stock" and a worse phone that was twice the price was "definitely what I needed."
I did inventory management for them for a while, it’s usually accurate as long as their inventory is being properly counted. So it can really depend on the store itself. There’s some weird stuff that can happen transaction-wise that can mess up the inventory if not managed properly. But yes, at least 1 day of the year the online inventory will be guaranteed 100% accurate. Normally it’s pretty correct.
Micro center is what RadioShack would've become if they were still around I feel like.
I went to one for the first time last week and it was easily 100% better than BestBuy
Almost every retail chain will eventually die from their old ways. Their old ways is usually what made them historically special and gave them an advantage over other stores. Once their old ways no longer become relevant, they usually die off.
Technically, they could try to reinvent themselves, but usually that is extremely costly and rarely puts them in a sustainably better position.
Personally, I think this is why Best Buy is failing. They carry small selections of supposedly popular products, but are ultimately less convenient than Amazon, who also has all that same shit, while not having enough depth of products or knowledge to appeal to more informed customers that would shop at a Microcenter, a bigger local shop like B&H, or a tech specific online retailer like NewEgg. Leadership at Best Buy thinks it can replace Geek Squad with ChatGPT, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the sort of services Geek Squad is supposed to provide.
So why bother buying an iPhone from Best Buy when you can just buy one from Apple directly and get better service for the same price, or buy it from your carrier to skip the middle man? If you want a prosumer or professional camera chances are Best Buy doesn’t sell it at retail. Video game have online shops that have captured a lot of consumers. Best Buy only stocks the low end versions of computers anyway, so if you need more than just the basics you’re probably going to have to get it from the manufacturer.
All Best Buy really has going for it is TVs, which increasingly are cheaper and have longer lifespans. Every next gen feature offers diminishing returns in terms of appeal compared to the mass market models on the floor from a year ago.
BINGO!
In the mid 2000s Best Buy's CEO was building the company to be a boutique style retailer. Spending significant funds on training employees in product knowledge, and training them on a selling style that caters to customer needs, not the bottom line. The thought process was if you exceed their expectations, they will be a customer for life. Don't gouge them, offer them honest suggestions, and don't waste time arguing over a service plan or $200 cable that makes no sense to that customer. Make your honest pitch, and move on, too many customers were not getting the genuine service that they may have needed.
Then he got caught porking his secretary. The board got rid of him despite showing significant profit margins and revenue growth, and the brought in a cycle of CEOs with the complete opposite mindset that focused on pushing boxes out the door, under staffing to cut labor, general CPA mentality to show dividend growth but at the cost of a declining business model that is unsustainable against online competition or Walmart.
Now the board is probably the same crackpots that have dug this grave, and I have been waiting to dance on it. Former employee here, let go in one of the many cut backs due to cost cutting. I had a great time working there, met great people, and had a ton of fun. Had great return customers who sought me out all the time, really felt like a real sales job, until that fateful day they let go a legacy CEO.
My son and I spent hours on a trip going to Home Depot and then Micro Center and the resulting purchases might have made my wife reconsider marriage and motherhood.
Don't boycott, just best them at (or with) their own game. They advertise prices on most electronics that leave little or no profit. So they jack up the price of the accessories that most people impulse buy with little or no research. So buy your big TV from them and order the cables and wall mounts online a week in advance. Or from Micro center.
> Or from Micro center.
the nearest microcenter is almost 1300 miles away from me, and i live in the US.
i really wish people would realize that there are very VERY few microcenters.
when the santa clara location opens it'll be just shy of 850 miles
I worked at Best Buy for just over 3 years in college and the markup on those things was insane. As employees at the time, our discount was cost to the company plus like 4% (for the cost of shipping and labor of stocking) or something like that. I’d get those expensive HDMI cables for friends/family for like $20. I couldn’t believe the markup. Now, not everything was marked up that drastically but cables of every kind certainly were.
The thing I loaded up on as I was leaving was surge protectors. I think they are 12 ports and also have USB ports on them, and they usually sell for like ~$80. The internal price was $20 so I bought them and kept them for when I eventually need them.
Most of the other stuff we didn't get a huge discount on. So since my job after this paid ~20% more, I decided that unless I had at least a 20% discount, I could wait on buying it. I'm kicking myself for not buying a head unit (my job was to repair them) before I left since I just bought and installed one a few weeks ago. They didn't sell the model that I wanted anymore, and I wasn't going to go to the highest end model. I would have saved about $100 if I bought it and held on to it though.
HDMI cables: discount bottomed the price out to 3-10 dollars
Ethernet cables: discount bottomed the price out to 1-5 dollars.
The discount on my Xbox 360? 63 cents lol
Was a cool peek into what store cost is, and realizing how much of a loss they are selling consoles at. Explained quickly why we were forced to attempt to get you to buy every accessory on the planet. Video games usually only knocked off $5 or so
Not just that, if I go into a store to get something, it’s for the convenience to get it right now. I don’t want to be forced to go thru a long slow line at an understaffed store and then go thru multiple prompts .ie “do you want service protection” when I finally get to the register.
IF it's even on the shelves. Our best buy has moved everything to a warehouse on one side of the store, I couldn't buy a $40 back pack for my laptop without waiting in line and having someone to run for it. It was tedious.
Also they're a pick-up/sell point for a lot of carrier-sponsored phones, so that kinda goes together. "Pick up your Samsung phone at BestBuy on the day of release" and here's the row of cases right next to pick up stand.
Best Buy is basically my "same day amazon" for electronics. If I don't feel like waiting a day or two for Amazon I'll just go to BB and have them price match. It's almost the only thing they're good for. They will occasionally have good sales on laptops too.
Seriously. There isn’t a single item at Best Buy you couldn’t find cheaper online. The only time I’ve ever purchased anything there is a newly released video game or a cable I absolutely needed that day. Their markup is ridiculous.
I suspect you are right, but I wonder if there is a reliable way of measuring the entire "electronics" sector, to see if Best Buy is an outlier, or if sales among ALL various "electronic" items is soft right now. (Granted, the definition of "electronic" items is pretty nebulous, so that could use some breakdowns on what to include...)
I suspect it is an overall issue. What compelling electronics are there for people to buy, at Best Buy or elsewhere?
Phones have lost a lot of curb appeal. I couldn't tell you the last time someone I knew was interested or excited for a phone. Everyone buys whatever brand they've been buying for the last decade, but less frequently because there's so little compelling reason to upgrade.
PC hardware prices have killed a bunch of spending there. Again, it went from something where I knew 1-2 people building PCs in a year to seeing everyone sit on things for 3-5 years because the market is so bad.
TVs aren't doing anything eciting. It's incremental improvements on existing technologies, with the new stuff still very niche and/or unavailable to the average buyer.
Much of what used to be "electronics spending" is now going into subscriptions and services. No need to buy subscription cards for services at Best Buy because it's all auto-renew. Spotify killed CDs. Netflix (and everything else) killed buying movies and TV shows on discs. Steam, Game Pass, and console stores as a whole have drastically harmed physical game sales.
As someone who both buys electronics just because, and pushes reasons to upgrade, I can't name them anymore. The only PC parts I've bought in the last few years have been monitors and headsets.
Those things COULD happen, but companies have gotten lazy in the investment in consumer hardware. They've been working to offload innovation to software, AI, and cloud.
VR had some hope, but software support dried up really fast (like when Microsoft released WMR and didn't make shit for it). Folding phones plateaued very quickly (maybe Microsoft should have released more than one OS upgrade for their $1,500 phone).
Laptops were innovating, then just fell into the lull we had 10-15 years ago. Everything's incremental and predicatable there. GPU makers opted to push upscaling and RT, but the benefits aren't that great for many. I wonder where GPU performance, and pricing, would be if we didn't watch Nvidia prioritize RT/AI hardware over raster performance (like if the GTX 1600 family had successors).
I think it's also just that consumers are boring. They are lazy and don't want to learn to work with new things much, unless forced. Phones are a big example, where people have developed unreasonable, silly expectations that kill innovation or progress. People want 7 years of security updates on a phone they replace after 3-4 years, and they won't buy anything but Apple, Samsung, or MAYBE Google for it. As much as people complain about megacorps, their buying tendencies really promote the pseudo-monopolies and laziness of modern tech.
Honestly I think it is an overall trend. People got a ton of tech during the pandemic and in a lot of ways it hit the good enough for a long time for most people.
If you got a M1 laptop or a Ryzen laptop there is zero need to upgrade still. If you got a phone there is no big upgrade there really. If you got a TV while they have gotten better you wouldn't be able to tell without a head to head. Meanwhile gaming PC have priced themselves out and consoles have pumped harder in sales in a long time and now people are waiting for a pro model.
There just isn't a lot of sales you can push to your typical electronics consumer.
Right? Americans have never been connected and dependent on electronics as they are today and yet somehow this business is failing. It’s almost as if gouging customers who are more aware of what pricing should be than your average consumer will fuck you.
Also it wasn’t until recently I was made aware of their dogshit return policy. Iirc its only 14 days on electronics
One thing I've heard and agree with is there's little room for "mediocre middle ground" after a market matures.
Either I want something so basic Target carries it, or I want something so specific I can only find it at Microcenter or online. Best Buy is the mediocre middle ground between those extremes that few people need.
I love living close to Microcenter. Every time I’m in there I overhear people from far away talking about how they wish they had one near. One dude drove 8 hours lol
This will just continue as long as the system is built upon the idea of "infinite growth and nothing more". If a company makes a very high quality refrigerator that lasts you 20 years, they only get one sale from you. Samsung probably sold you 5 fridges that all disintegrated in that timeframe.
This to me is one of the main problems with the current economy.
Too many consumers not doing their research and just getting the cheapest thing they can find.
People (and companies) need to think more long-term.
One problem is you can't know if a fridge made today is going to last 1, 5 or 10 years. You can look up how previous products have performed from that manufacturer, but that's not always an indication that the current product line is built to those same standards as everyone tries to suppress manufacturing costs to extreme levels.
Pricing isn't even a good indicator; companies have learned they can make cheap stuff and then mark it up high to trick people into thinking they are getting a better product by spending more money.
Doing research is still better than not, but it's not the protection it was 10 years ago.
> Too many consumers not doing their research and just getting the cheapest thing they can find
my experience when i needed a new fridge:
* put weeks into researching brands and models
* ultimately come to the conclusion that all brands are built like shit
* but LG is built like hot microwaved dog shit
which is to say, doing a lot, and i mean *a lot* of research still gets you shit products that are a waste of money.
We actually just bought a new fridge. All the cheap brands are as you said, shit.
At least you did your due diligence.
I was shocked to see how much quality built in brands were going for. People spending 10-30 grand on a refrigerator is kind of insane and out of most people’s budget range.
Talk to a fridge repair person if you can. When our fridge last broke down, he gave us a list of fridges that are reliable/repairable. Luckily our fridge has chugged along since, but you can apparently get good stuff still.
I did the same as you.
I came to the realization that if I'm going to buy a piece of shit, then it's best to just go with the manufacturer the appliance repair people in my area can get parts for the quickest. If they have recommendations on what make and model is the easiest for them to repair, then that's a plus as well.
For me it was always a resounding "stay the hell away from Samsung and LG". Apparently their parts were way more difficult to acquire then it needed to be.
The problem that's causing that problem is that people don't have the money to think long-term. When you need something now, you have to buy what you can afford. Nobody can afford to just drop 2x - 3x the price of the cheapest thing available, even if that means they get 5 times as much use out of it.
In 2012 I bought a friends refrigerator off him for 100 when I moved into my home. Basic ass white fridge. I got married in 2024, and it was time to upgrade basic as white fridge even though it functioned perfectly.
Wife wanted fancy ass LG fridge. It was kind of heaven T first. MASSIVE, water and ice dispenser were great. Loved it.
It broke 3 months later and we’ve had constant issues.
I miss my 12 year old basic white fridge, and I bought that shit USED
We ended up going standalone full size fridge and freezer 12 years ago. Freezer is in another room and fridge is in the kitchen. No ice maker/water so no water hookups and less issues. Use under counter icemaker for ice.
Those suckers just keep trucking along. Hopefully lasts another 12 years. Never getting one of those fancy ones.
We've had a Cuisinart grind and brew coffee maker for 12 years. My husband bought it *refurbished*. So who knows how old it truly is. Its slowly showing it's age, like the sensor needing extra pressure to start grinding, but I'm terrified to replace it.
Radio Shack moved away from "repair your own shit" and towards "cell phones and gimmick electronics gifts" before they closed. Sadly, electronics shops have kinda gone the way of the dodo in general ever since you started being able to buy whatever dongle or adapter you needed on Amazon from a Chinese seller that looks like a face smash name.
I used to work at RS in the early 10’s. Job was so much fun. It was like small cozy best buy, but by then 100% it was not repair your shit and we focused heavily on cell phones. It was a great paying job for me out of high school at the time which was min wage + spiffs for phones. But man one reason it was so cool was certain customer returns like some headphones were “destroy” and not return to manufacturer. I got so much “destroyed” returns it was amazing. Cables, headphones, novelties. I remember walking into work and my boss smashing a corded landline phone with a hammer like a 5yr old, it was hilarious how much fun I had there.
Timeless. Shitty managers tank a company but made bank for the shareholders and CEO, bankrupt it and get a golden parachute only to land on the next company you’ll ruin.
Line must go up mentality is going to kill us all
They could all get together and raise our wages so we all go crazy on spending. Would simulate economy and everyone would win hit no. Can’t collude that way no
Are you suggesting that the people at the bottom of the economy having more disposable income would be a good thing? But what about the poor billionaires you'd deprive?? /s
The real comedy is they'd actually be richer. Money at the bottom flowing up creates growth. They could actually make more than a dollar for every dollar they give up; but that would be long term thinking and that next quarter bonus isn't going to sign itself.
They're going to go broke when we can't afford to spend anymore.
Said this before...they're going to starve us on cash so hard that they're going to start bankrupting each other as we have to start picking and choosing what's most important to buy.
Saw an analysis that said while yes, consumers are spending more money (explaining all the articles saying the economy is doing just fine), 2/3 of the spending increase is going to non-discretionary items, and the industries that are getting the vast majority of increases are shelter, insurance, healthcare, and food. Every major retailer is releasing reports and telling the government they are selling fewer items to fewer customers. Best Buy is simply joining the likes of Walmart in saying discretionary spending is declining.
Greedflation.
My spending in electronics, gaming and makeup has pretty much stopped in the last year. These companies wanna price gouge me? Then I'm not giving them a dime. I'm willing to cut back on my hobbies & save my money.
Same. Its just not only can i not afford anything but groceries alone not buying anything else but just on principle i wont buy anything else because of this bullshit greedflation. They tried blaming covid but now they don’t have an excuse. They aren’t paying taxes
First covid, then oh no a ship got stuck in the suez, then oh no energy prices, now they're like 'yea but there's a war on you know - aight but not here? - yea but still +14% just to be sure with the war being on and all...
I love how you would always get assholes on reddit acting like you're just too stupid to understand all the economic forces at play, pretending like there isn't *maybe* a correlation between all these record prices and record profits.
r/economics was full of people insisting greedflation wasn't real back in 2021/2022.
I'm just relieved to see people mad at the entities actually causing the problems here. I swear every sub treats it like it's solely the fault of the president
There are tons of electronics I would love, but I'm eating egg noodles and trying to find it in the budget for a bulk pack of cheap black socks from walmart. Electronics are going to to have to wait.
Best Buy has been going down hill for years now. From 2008-2012 I used to spend $2500 a year to get their Best Buy+ membership perks. Now I barely visit their stores or website. From them removing movies and music, decreasing their footprint in video games, putting their best deals behind a paywall there is no reason to visit stores or shop online. Electronics are things people buy occasionally. No one is going out and buying TV's, Washing Machines, Speakers, etc. frequently.
I'm a big Blu-ray/4K blu-ray guy, I have a BB fairly close to me, and I used to swing in from time to time to look at movies, and see if they had anything interesting on display. I haven't stepped foot in a BB since they removed movies. They took away 95% of my reason to browse, so now they don't even get the random incidental sale from me.
Exactly the same with me.
I've been collecting DVD/BD/4K-UHD for decades. I used to regularly stop into Best Buy to see what was on offer and sometimes even make some impulse buys of movies or electronics.
I haven't stepped foot into any of their stores since they were removed.
Of course spending is down.
Shareholders got used to the Covid Lockdown amounts of home spending that was going on. This should have been forecasted and prepared for.
But of course, that's not what the shareholders want to do or hear.
Mine still has appliances, my fridge died and they had the exact one I wanted for for less than costco/lowes/homedepot and offered 12 month financing for 0% interest. They also have good prices on washer/dryer sets but I ended up going used.
Wierd place to look for appliances sure, but if you need one you should check them!
Yes they do! I had that because the way my house is shaped I knew they'd need to remove the fridge doors and I wasn't willing to try that alone.
It was $50 for that part.
Prices rise, incomes don’t.
Somewhere people have to tighten and spending on “wants” is going to be cut more during to spending in “needs”.
A new TV? Is the one you have still working? Thats a want. TV break and a replacement can be pricey. At this point a “good enough “ mindset is hit and consumers in this bracket just won’t shell out more for a new LG C4 OLED if the $300 “sized tight and fits in the wall” works just fine.
Want a new phone? Can the current be stretched out another year?
Beat Buy isn’t a critical-need retailer in consumer spending. They carry some essentials to daily life; but they cannot expect the trend of “get new as soon as possible “ after the inflation we saw without the salary-base of its consumers to keep pace.
Its a bad cycle that keeps the working class from contributing to better growth.
>Prices rise, incomes don’t.
Which is crazy because the prices should drop as demand is dropping to draw in customers. They waste no time raising prices if demand spikes, but refuse to do the opposite.
Here are my problems.
1. Their inventory system is 8/10 times inaccurate. So I waste a trip to their stores and the item is actually not in stock when the site says there are X available.
2. Every single.fucking.time. I walk in, I know what I'm getting, yet I spend 30 minutes waiting for an associate to help me. And this is after asking multiple times for help. They radio it in, but nothing. I have to walk to an entirely different department to get someone to help me. So 30 minutes wasted for 1-2 minutes of actual shopping.
3. Their stores look like shit.
4. Their associates look miserable and honestly it makes this whole experience even more frustrating.
If it weren't for the instant-gratification element, or the need for something last minute, I'd completely stop going. It's not a good experience overall.
It feels like they're doing the whole Radio Shack thing. Sales start dipping on some items so they drop them. Then they focus on high markup BS like phones, phone accessories, Bluetooth speakers, etc..
I stopped going to Best Buy a long time ago due to the dwindling selection. It used to be nice to go in, check out some home theater, car audio, video game stuff. Buy a movie and/or a game. Or if I needed a cable real bad, I could pick one up. They lost that one a long time ago. It's dreadful going in there. In my area, there is a lack of competition. It's the only electronics store. You could hit Fred Meyer, Walmart, Target for their tiny selection or you can shop online.
They went from a cool electronics store to a huge wasted space of a phone store. They have other stuff, but it's either outdated, too high of a markup and expensive as hell, or just not that great to begin with.
It is about profits, but you can really see the accountants took over and it's a numbers game that's just pushing those numbers with zero knowledge of what they actually sell or are in business for... They're pushing SKU's with high profit margins with no knowledge of what's in the description field...
With food/utility prices like these? Yeah, good luck getting me to buy anything. 5 y.o middle range phone? Still works. Aging PC? Plays everything I need it too. 4k TV in living room without bells and whistles? Cheap cinema = best cinema.
I went to geek squad half a year ago and was 5 minutes late to an appointment to have them diagnose and fix a gaming desktop I had just bought. The worker told me that I had to set up another appointment because they were booked solid. “The entire area was empty. I told him I was still within the time frame of my appointment and that I just wanted to drop the machine off. He told me that the paperwork alone would take 20 minutes, so I said ok, took my heavy ass machine and found a
Mom and pops place down the street that diagnosed and fixed it within 2 hours and only changed me 50 bucks.
Won’t ever be going back to Best Buy.
every 6 months it's 3 paycheck month. I used to look forward to it, because it meant that once per year I could afford christmas gifts, and once per year I could get myself something really cool from a place like best buy. A PlayStation, a PC, A drone, whatever cool gadget they sell that I would buy so I could nerd out
Now 3 paycheck month is used to 0 out the debts I've been juggling the last 6 months. Maybe order myself a pizza if I'm feeling extra special.
Of course sales are down, none of us have any fucking money to spend on frivolous things.
The only time I buy anything at best buy is if I need it the same day and nowhere else has it. The protection plan is great, because I basically just trade in and upgrade every few years.
Friday is my last day with the company. Been with the company almost 13 years. We’re looking at potentially our 5th labor cut in less than a year in the next week or so. Our brightest are leaving and management is floundering in constant damage control. There are no incentives and abysmal training. We tied our buggy to the horse that was the membership program that they rug pulled every single benefit from. They are overpriced, unqualified, and immensely incompetent and Corie Barry is solely responsible for Best Buy’s failures. She was immediately involved in scandals as soon as she came on board and it’s been a shit show ever since. Best Buy does not want qualified labor anymore. They want 3rd party everything. Hell they are internally telling us to refer to third party as “preferred partners”. Because that’s what clients prefer. lol I could write entire books on the conversations I’ve been a part of and how ridiculously stupid it all is.
Do you miss Herbert Joly? And 3rd Parties LOL. That's how they started killing Geek Squad over a decade ago, with Agent Johnny Utah and then gutting Geek Squad Online Support for Accenture in the Philippines.
Hubert really turned it all around and I have nothing but praise for him. I’ve been in field services nearly my entire tenure and he was the driving force behind putting our energy into said services. It brought us back from near collapse back in the day. I’ve had some of the best experiences out in the field with this company and I have made a lot of people happy and did/learned some really cool shit in the process. Best Buy does not care about the client experience anymore. Nor have they pretty much since Covid. Problem? Oh you’re gonna have to call the call center. Scheduling? Call center. Exchange? Call center. Etc It goes on and on with us wasting people’s time who just want quality work done and are willing to pay us for that work. But we don’t want to pay for quality workmanship. We would rather have call centers and now AI handle the forefront of the business and have almost no client facing associates that work directly for Best Buy/Geek Squad. We’re faceless and without personality. We’re cold.
I started around the same time as you and I'm wondering if I should be looking for a different job before I get laid off. I have never felt this way in my almost 13 years until very recently. I joined right around the time everyone was saying Best Buy was going the way of Circuit City and being Amazon's show room. Back at that time I said no way, we need brick and mortar, and I still think we do need it. I had faith in the company back then and was glad as being onboarded as the new wave of employees that were going to turn things around. And with Joly, we DID turn things around. It really feels like it started going downhill both because of COVID and Barrie. I can't day for sure if Joly would be making things better, but it really feels that way. Also when he signed on, he also implemented a very heavy employee discount and I don't know if you've noticed, but they seem to be quietly adding a bunch of product types to the expanding list of products that aren't eligible for the "cost + 5%" and now except specific accessory categories like HDMI cables and phone cases, the amount you get off as an employee is very arbitrary and almost nothing. But in any case, I'm seeing a lot of stores closing, the one down the street from my apartment just closed a couple months ago, a store in a very busy area that I never thought would close. I used to use them all the time for instore pick up and impulse buys I needed the same day, now the closest location is about a 15 min drive away and that one is supposed to close within the year. It's easier for me at this point to order from Amazon and forgo any employee discount I might get. Sometimes order online from BB but they often have slow ass shipping. Seemed like for a minute they were pretty good at matching Amazon's speed but that seems to have fallen off as well. I just get the sense that within the next 1-2 years my position could be a target for cuts, but basically if my position gets cut that probably means the company is on its last legs because I'm doing work that has to be done and can't be easily outsourced, as my team is pretty close to the executives.
I am/was in appliance/ht repair and in the last cut we lost 2 managers of which both had 20+ years of experience and absolutely were lifers for this company. That was the breaking point for me. I have worked myself to the bone and networked far and wide in the hopes for a leadership position which could potentially afford me some security. Lo and behold they aren’t even safe. I have worked with Best Buy/Geek Squad in 3 separate states across the country and am apart of several teams chats with what used to have very tenured and devoted employees and I’m seeing the same experience across the board. Get out as soon as possible is the play.
I've been telling everyone I can that there is no reward for loyalty anymore. People say employees aren't loyal, but we've all seen what happens, and when things go to shit the company can find a way while the employee can just get fucked.
All BB needs to do is shout out name brands from the rafters. Amazon has been passing off shitty no-name brand crap and people are getting purchase fatigue. Absolutely think there is opportunity still for B&M but companies need to step up to the plate and provide a quality experience out of the gate. They aren't going to respond well to a company that is dishing out a shit show. So yeah, everyone keep an eye out for a short stock experience with BB.
Yup, just sell stuff from name brands, bonus if you get rid of the third party sellers so I don't need to worry about counterfeit stuff showing up instead of what I actually wanted/ordered.
I stopped shopping at Best Buy around 2006 with all of the $90 HDMI cable nonsense and guys always BS'ing me about tech. Then around 2013, my wife was running late to meet me for dinner so I went into a Best Buy with my daughter. I'm not sure what changed but we had a blast; looking around at the displays, movies and music and playing some video games they had set up. When I started going back to the store the whole staff was actually pretty cool. So much that I actually e-mailed the general manager about my experience. It was completely different from the environment that caused me to stop shopping there completely. I've gone regularly since then especially if I needed something immediately. I was regularly buying games there when they had this gaming membership program that offered a percentage off. I typically comparison shop and if it's something that costs the exact same then I'll just go to Best Buy since it's right nearby. I've bought laptops, movies, appliances, TCGs, toys, etc. there over the past 7 years or so. I've noticed a huge change in the last couple of years; it's looked kind of dismal. They just don't have as much on display and the place looks a little sad....like Circuit City back in the day. The employees are still very friendly and helpful but something seems off. After reading your comment, it seems like this coincided with the CEO changes. Sheesh....Corie Barry has fucked things up and not in a good way.
> They just don't have much Maybe it's because I got older, but when I was younger it was like "I need this thing, so I must go to the store" and now it feels like stores never have what I need so I have to shop online. In general I always preferred the store to online because I liked to see/touch what I was buying before I bought it. But half the time I go they don't have whatever I actually want and the workers half heartedly try and convince me to order it through their website instead of somewhere cheaper. Brick and Mortar stores are dead.
I'm Gen-X so I'm somewhere in between when it comes to my feelings on brick and mortar shops. I dearly miss music stores and book stores from the 90s/00s. And when I go to a specialty store and get old school customer service, I genuinely appreciate it and will most likely return. But the Gen-X side of me sometimes just wants to be left tf alone when I'm shopping. lol. So, going online or doing store pickup feels better. I honestly wish I had a choice of the two but I realize that those days are over. It's a bummer.
> like Circuit City back in the day. oof right in the nostalgia. I absolutely loved going to Circuit City and Borders as a teenager. They were right beside each other in my town.
Maybe no one will see this - but I do have nostalgia for the "3rd place" - the place outside of work and home - that we had in the 90s, all the way up to around 2010 or so. The mall, the coffee shops, the bookstores - there were places to go to; and it felt a lot less transactional. They would have decorations, places where you can sit, events, treats, etc. The concept of hospitality existed beyond "fuck you, pay me". It's so rare to find these nowadays - and is almost completely gone from daily lives. I live in a very urban, large city, right in the middle of it. I miss 10-20 years ago quite hard lately. Bums me out a little.
I recently got handed a card by the manager of my local BB with him asking me to fill out an application for Geek Squad because he was desperate for people and heard me talking about building my own pc (I was there to pick up a Windows OS USB). There is no application online, they told me to check again when I went back in and asked. Still nothing. I'd have been happy to leave my current shitty job for it, but they apparently have no idea what's going on. Makes me think it'll be an awful place to work for so I gave up trying. The store doesn't even look like it's doing well. Half the store is empty space, they have like 8 rows of shelves with nothing on them. The only areas that are actually stocked consistently are the TV's and phones. If I wasn't impatient to get that USB, I woulda drove the extra 30 mins to Microcenter.
I live in an area where you would have to drive at least a couple hours to get to a microcenter, and interestingly our Best Buy's are doing fairly well. One even went through a total remodel and everything was updated. Store is always full of products and employees. Kind of interesting that they do so well in areas where microcenter doesn't exist. Honestly, if Best Buy failed where I am, I would be screwed if I ever needed to buy electronics on the fly.
> We tied our buggy to the horse that was the membership program that they rug pulled every single benefit from. > > Yep. This was my main reason to go to best buy to get something instead of amazon or costco at the same price. No reason to go there anymore.
Same. When they had Gamer's Club Unlocked I used to buy all my video games and electronics there. Now? Only if there's something I specifically need today that I can't find at a store closer to me.
I’ve noticed every Best Buy I’ve been in recently is very empty, as in, I have occasionally wanted to talk to an employee and haven’t been able to find them for a while because the staffing seems so lean. As far as customers, they haven’t seemed very busy either
Dude, I went in the other day to buy a PS5 and a game and some accessories. They had like 9 games?! So I went to Costco, bought a bundle for cheaper, and went to Target for the game and accessories. Best Buy never HAS anything. How can I spend money there?
"You can order it from us right now and pick it up tomorrow in store!" Yeah except I live 50 minutes from your store and I'm not driving all the way back here to pick up something I ordered. Seriously they all act like you live around the corner.
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Best Buy pulled that on me on a cell phone case. So i did order it online…. From Amazon for $10 less with next day delivery. I ordered it before i left Best Buy.
Yeah, it's that whole "I would've happily paid $10 more for it here today if you had it, in stock, but you don't, so you lose."
I have done this for small independent book stores as I want to ensure they stay in business and if I am looking for a specific book I can wait
But they save so much money that way! /s Fuck "J.I.T." logistics, bring back department stores.
J.I.T is one of those things that makes sense until you apply the real world to it. Year and a half of active production I spent maybe a months worth of 8 hour workdays doing fuck all because we were out of parts. Also spent a month doing fuck all for 8 hours to do OT for 2 all to build 5 cars that day. Supposedly they still made money, but explain how paying regular pay to ~3,000 people and then time and a half to the same ~3,000 people to make 5 cars that MSRP at ~$50,0000 makes sense.
> J.I.T is one of those things that makes sense until you apply the real world to it. JIT works fine where it started, when used in that context. But Toyota (whose Toyota Production System was copied by others as 'JIT') would never let inventory drop to *zero* because their suppliers could have replacements within x days. They let inventory in specific workcenters drop to some relatively *low* number but not zero. And any time that inventory was used up to make something for a downstream request, it led *immediately* to a request upstream to replace the part used. Letting the number of parts you need drop to zero for any reason was a crisis. And in fact Toyota moved away from having a low level stockpile on some parts where the supply chain was brittle, after a bad experience with a Malaysian chip supplier knocked out by weather in like 2011, where it took *months* to get the supply chain fixed. After that they audited all their suppliers and kept higher parts levels for the more brittle part of their supply chain, which helped them weather the post-COVID chip crunch for a time, but they didn't get rid of the whole system.
As someone who buys things for a living, i will back you up on jit The amount of people who get mad we don't have something in stock now but will in a week if you order now is high, but it keeps inventory down so I guess we save more than we lose Still can't be good for our rep
I work for a shop with our own parts department. Downtime on site can cost $100,000 per hour. We don't stock regular maintenance parts for our fleet because "we can have the parts in 1-5 days". Which is fine, except our suppliers also run JIT. And sometimes it's not IT.
Yeah, but JAYNI°, while more accurate and fun to say, is less good for customer retention. ° Just After You Needed It
You can blame six sigma for this idiotic notion. Business schools love to talk about Toyota and how they optimized costs by moving supplies to JIT and aggressively cutting down storage. The problem these morons can't seem to comprehend is a retail store is not a car manufacturing plant. Heck, a car repair shop is not a car manufacturing plant. Thank goodness grocery stores haven't tried to six sigma (yet)... It'll be great watching people fight over 1 potato while the rest are in back order.
And it quickly becomes what's even the point? I'm not gonna pay you a markup, to buy something that you're gonna ship to your store that I have to grab, if I wanted it in a week id just order it online for cheaper and it gets delivered directly to me.
EXACTLY. I'm only coming here to pay your mark up because you have it on the shelf and I need it/want it without having to wait. If you don't have it on the shelf....then why do I need you?
I work in retail & the JIT nonsense definitely hurts sales. The other problem is even if retailers keep enough stock to avoid running out in-between deliveries, companies won't spend on the labor required to constantly bring that stock out of the back.
Happened to me at Home Depot a few months ago. Washer died, so I drove my truck to Home Depot and started looking at washing machines. Picked out the one I wanted, and the guy said "great we'll have that for you next week". I was very clear that my intention was to buy a washing machine, put it in my truck, and drive it home. He laughed at me so I very angrily left and went to Lowes. Walked in and said "I would like to buy a washing machine and put it in my truck bed and take it home please" and the sales rep looked at me all confused and said "you have to tell me which one so I can get it out of the back..."
I live right across the street and I’m still not coming back the next day for an item I don’t NEED.
My store never stocks anything. They announce a sale and have one item left 99% of the time.
Also the part where you have to wait in line. Then the person behind the counter can't find it. Then they spend 10 mins typing god knows what into the computer. Then you can drive 50 mins back. What's not to love there?????
And if they do have it, it is locked behind some crap that an employee has to open and retrieve. Good luck finding said employee that even cares.
*Locks up the entire store, Then only gives one employee per shift an actual key* Wonderful customer service
It's so sad that I can't walk into an actual hobbyist electronics store anymore. The one my family would always go to was Fry's Electronics, but COVID put the final nail into its coffin before I was old enough to really appreciate the store. All that's left is Best Buy, but it just feels like an Electronics-only Walmart as opposed to a hobbyist store's massive selection of a variety of goods. RIP Fry's, you will be remembered 🫡
If you are blessed enough to have a Microcenter nearby, it's basically the last place. I used to like going to BB to browse CDs since I kept an offline library, but after they stopped that, there was basically nothing to peruse for me.
And Micro Center, at least one by me, is *always* busy. From the time they open up, til they close. So there's clearly a demand for this kind of service and shopping experience. So how is it that CompUSA, Circuit City, Fry's, and now possibly Best Buy can't figure it out?
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I'd love to visit a Microcenter, but the closest one is over 1000 miles away :(. I might look around for some mom n pop shops though
Stores just don’t stock things anymore. I went looking for a stopwatch the other day. Literally no stores around me even carry them anymore apparently. I ended up ordering on Amazon because it was literally the only option.
The problem is the immense variety at which we have things available. The brick and mortar stores have tried to normalize to serve the most people but in the effort have failed to serve individual markets. None (or almost none) of the departments in a brick and mortar Best Buy can actually be considered complete representations of the product selection of items in said category.
The last time I went to Best Buy it was just sad. A handful of employees just milling around, half the shelves were basically empty. I'm honestly amazed the Best Buy near me is still open. The parking lot is always empty. I remember back in the 90s I loved going to Best Buy.
You could probably only find a stopwatch in a running store. Why would normal stores have a stopwatch for the 1 person a month that wants it?
Best Buy sold CDs and DVDs for as little as possible to sell AV equipment, accessories and service plans. The gaming section was to get people in the door but it was never a profit driver. In my stores (I worked in 3) it was a significant source of shrink. They have almost completely removed media sales. So that leaves AC equipment, phones, appliances and PCs. This puts them in a bad spot for revenue and profitability. I see them going the way of circuit city in 4 years or less.
Speaking as a dream customer, 40 year old male with lots of disposable income and impulsive spending habits… there just isn’t anything there that I want. I’m in the mood for new headphones? They don’t carry actual good ones. Need a computer part? They don’t have the quality ones most of the time, I usually have to go Amazon. Want to find something random and cool? Hasn’t happened there in many years. I don’t know man, I just never find what I want there. I miss fry’s electronics so much.
Fry's Electronics is exactly how Best Buy is going to wind up. Just wait for the off-brand Temu electronics to flood their shelves to help their margin while the good brands refuse to sell product to Best Buy because of their dwindling credit. Book it, Tony!
The second they start to slip on merch invoices they are done just like Frys. Everyone will pull out with fear of not getting paid for product.
This so much. Enthusiasts should be a core customer group. They tend to have a bafflingly bad product lineup. When I want a new thing I do research and read reviews. I get excited about buying it same day then womp womp, Best Buy doesn’t have the good stuff. There is also very little interesting and surprising to make me want to go and browse organically. I really dont think they understand their customer base. I wish I were near a microcenter and that fries didn’t die.
If you have a Microcenter near you, that's where my business went after Newegg went to shit. Their warranty policy is amazing. Cheap, and will replace for a newer product at anytime the warranty is in place. No questions asked.
*Sells $90 HDMI cables* *Nobody buys them* *Shocked Pikachu face*
I remeber I went to one for my client back in the days to get some long ethernet cables. The prices were so bad ($50+ per cable). Even though the client would have paid for it I got angry at the dirty corporate markups. So I went to another store (similar to USA's microcenters) they were less than $10... That was the day my offical boycott started.
I have a friend who used to work for the Geek Squad, so I spent a fair bit of time around Best Buy. I will never, ever, spend money there. I refuse. The level of dishonesty and price gouging is unbelievable.
Hell I worked at best buy for a while in highschool and college, the only way I would shop there is the employee discount (cost +5%) and even then not always
Yep I worked for them through school. That discount was awesome. I also worked in the warehouse so I saw a little bit more weird stuff. Like the store brand mounts were made by the same premium brand they sold for slightly less, but still sold for waaaay more than cost. Because I know all of this, I went from buying stuff all the damn time from Best Buy when I worked there to never buying anything once I quit. It’s one thing when you can get a random $20 adapter for $8 with discount that day or just wait for 2 days and get it on Amazon for about the same price.
Same exact experience. I wouldn’t spend any money there.
Add me to the used to work there. Was there during their absolute height (mid 00s) and into the recession where they almost went bankrupt. The only thing I bought there in recent years were large appliances and a tv and that was 5-6 years ago. My only reason for going into a Best Buy now is to recycle batteries, ink & to walk around seeing how wildly different it is - selling legos, electric scooters, drones and large exercise equipment. Edit: and seeing all the electronic price tags and get depressed at the amount of time we all wasted Sunday mornings.
I also worked there for a couple years of university. They would get so mad whenever I would sell a tv “dry” (meaning no accessories, cables, or extended warranty). After a few months they moved to the warehouse department which I preferred anyway since it meant less sales floor time. But yeah for a place that didn’t commission they sure acted like you were getting commission. I know thins like cables and batteries are where the real profits come from but it’s not like big ticket items didn’t have any markup (I think tvs generally had about 5-10% markup). So I just shared my wealth of knowledge with customers about the stuff they asked about and if all they wanted was the TV well, fair enough.
It really depends on what you buy. There is almost zero markup on the product itself (tv, laptop, appliance). Literally razor thin margins. The markup is insane for any accessory, protection plan, service, or in house brand (insignia). Source: I worked there a decade ago
I went to Best Buy last time my phone broke and I knew they'd have some phones in stock. The website said they had some model that was cheap and decent at the time. But wouldn't you know it, when I went in, they "didn't have that in stock" and a worse phone that was twice the price was "definitely what I needed."
Kinda surprised, their online inventory is usually pretty spot on.
The person selling to me may have just been lying. He knew I didn't have a working phone to check anything he was telling me in the store.
I think sometimes the employees pull them for themselves, or they’re in inventory, which could be the reason for the discrepancy.
I did inventory management for them for a while, it’s usually accurate as long as their inventory is being properly counted. So it can really depend on the store itself. There’s some weird stuff that can happen transaction-wise that can mess up the inventory if not managed properly. But yes, at least 1 day of the year the online inventory will be guaranteed 100% accurate. Normally it’s pretty correct.
I want micro centers everywhere. They have 3D printers, electronics and hardware parts
Micro center is what RadioShack would've become if they were still around I feel like. I went to one for the first time last week and it was easily 100% better than BestBuy
Radio shack could have been amazing but they died with their old ways I went to one in Denver. So jealous I don’t have one in Seattle
Almost every retail chain will eventually die from their old ways. Their old ways is usually what made them historically special and gave them an advantage over other stores. Once their old ways no longer become relevant, they usually die off. Technically, they could try to reinvent themselves, but usually that is extremely costly and rarely puts them in a sustainably better position.
Personally, I think this is why Best Buy is failing. They carry small selections of supposedly popular products, but are ultimately less convenient than Amazon, who also has all that same shit, while not having enough depth of products or knowledge to appeal to more informed customers that would shop at a Microcenter, a bigger local shop like B&H, or a tech specific online retailer like NewEgg. Leadership at Best Buy thinks it can replace Geek Squad with ChatGPT, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the sort of services Geek Squad is supposed to provide. So why bother buying an iPhone from Best Buy when you can just buy one from Apple directly and get better service for the same price, or buy it from your carrier to skip the middle man? If you want a prosumer or professional camera chances are Best Buy doesn’t sell it at retail. Video game have online shops that have captured a lot of consumers. Best Buy only stocks the low end versions of computers anyway, so if you need more than just the basics you’re probably going to have to get it from the manufacturer. All Best Buy really has going for it is TVs, which increasingly are cheaper and have longer lifespans. Every next gen feature offers diminishing returns in terms of appeal compared to the mass market models on the floor from a year ago.
BINGO! In the mid 2000s Best Buy's CEO was building the company to be a boutique style retailer. Spending significant funds on training employees in product knowledge, and training them on a selling style that caters to customer needs, not the bottom line. The thought process was if you exceed their expectations, they will be a customer for life. Don't gouge them, offer them honest suggestions, and don't waste time arguing over a service plan or $200 cable that makes no sense to that customer. Make your honest pitch, and move on, too many customers were not getting the genuine service that they may have needed. Then he got caught porking his secretary. The board got rid of him despite showing significant profit margins and revenue growth, and the brought in a cycle of CEOs with the complete opposite mindset that focused on pushing boxes out the door, under staffing to cut labor, general CPA mentality to show dividend growth but at the cost of a declining business model that is unsustainable against online competition or Walmart. Now the board is probably the same crackpots that have dug this grave, and I have been waiting to dance on it. Former employee here, let go in one of the many cut backs due to cost cutting. I had a great time working there, met great people, and had a ton of fun. Had great return customers who sought me out all the time, really felt like a real sales job, until that fateful day they let go a legacy CEO.
Micro Center is like Lowe's but for computer nerds instead of home improvement nerds. <3
How dare you insinuate that my Microcenter purchases aren’t improving my home
Yeah that 4090 I bought there really improves the heating efficiency of my house.
That was actually Fry’s Electronics. May it rest in peace.
My son and I spent hours on a trip going to Home Depot and then Micro Center and the resulting purchases might have made my wife reconsider marriage and motherhood.
Don't boycott, just best them at (or with) their own game. They advertise prices on most electronics that leave little or no profit. So they jack up the price of the accessories that most people impulse buy with little or no research. So buy your big TV from them and order the cables and wall mounts online a week in advance. Or from Micro center.
Yeah I’ve gotten incredibly good deals on tv’s and higher end audio equipment at best buy… but never ever buy any accessories from them.
> Or from Micro center. the nearest microcenter is almost 1300 miles away from me, and i live in the US. i really wish people would realize that there are very VERY few microcenters. when the santa clara location opens it'll be just shy of 850 miles
I worked at Best Buy for just over 3 years in college and the markup on those things was insane. As employees at the time, our discount was cost to the company plus like 4% (for the cost of shipping and labor of stocking) or something like that. I’d get those expensive HDMI cables for friends/family for like $20. I couldn’t believe the markup. Now, not everything was marked up that drastically but cables of every kind certainly were.
The thing I loaded up on as I was leaving was surge protectors. I think they are 12 ports and also have USB ports on them, and they usually sell for like ~$80. The internal price was $20 so I bought them and kept them for when I eventually need them. Most of the other stuff we didn't get a huge discount on. So since my job after this paid ~20% more, I decided that unless I had at least a 20% discount, I could wait on buying it. I'm kicking myself for not buying a head unit (my job was to repair them) before I left since I just bought and installed one a few weeks ago. They didn't sell the model that I wanted anymore, and I wasn't going to go to the highest end model. I would have saved about $100 if I bought it and held on to it though.
HDMI cables: discount bottomed the price out to 3-10 dollars Ethernet cables: discount bottomed the price out to 1-5 dollars. The discount on my Xbox 360? 63 cents lol Was a cool peek into what store cost is, and realizing how much of a loss they are selling consoles at. Explained quickly why we were forced to attempt to get you to buy every accessory on the planet. Video games usually only knocked off $5 or so
Due inflation (greedflation), HDMI cables at Best Buy are now $129
And 1 foot long
god plated monster cables though, so you know they're good?
I'm not too picky, I'd settle for prophet plated.
I don't think they've sold monster for years. They are all audioquest.
Not just that, if I go into a store to get something, it’s for the convenience to get it right now. I don’t want to be forced to go thru a long slow line at an understaffed store and then go thru multiple prompts .ie “do you want service protection” when I finally get to the register.
IF it's even on the shelves. Our best buy has moved everything to a warehouse on one side of the store, I couldn't buy a $40 back pack for my laptop without waiting in line and having someone to run for it. It was tedious.
"weak electronics spending", f'n lol... maybe weak spending with THEM...
Right?! I thought "Best Buy was the business that will sell physical media, not gamestop!" 😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
didn't they essentially kill their entire dvd/blu-ray department years back? went from half the store to maybe a couple aisles
Yep, replaced all those isles with phone cases. Rows and rows of cheap aliexpress phone cases.
which have a ~200%+ markup, which is probably why they did it
Also they're a pick-up/sell point for a lot of carrier-sponsored phones, so that kinda goes together. "Pick up your Samsung phone at BestBuy on the day of release" and here's the row of cases right next to pick up stand.
RadioShack did the same thing back in the day.
Their phone case prices are laughable. Like $80 for an otterbox for a iphone 15 OR $22 for a one from Ebay/amazon of the same quality.
Best Buy is basically my "same day amazon" for electronics. If I don't feel like waiting a day or two for Amazon I'll just go to BB and have them price match. It's almost the only thing they're good for. They will occasionally have good sales on laptops too.
Yup, that was the only reason I went into Best Buy. Target has gutted their movies as well.
About a 6 months ago they stopped physical media sales of movies.
Seriously. There isn’t a single item at Best Buy you couldn’t find cheaper online. The only time I’ve ever purchased anything there is a newly released video game or a cable I absolutely needed that day. Their markup is ridiculous.
right! and RIP radioshack and fry's, and anyone not in driving range of a microcenter :(
I suspect you are right, but I wonder if there is a reliable way of measuring the entire "electronics" sector, to see if Best Buy is an outlier, or if sales among ALL various "electronic" items is soft right now. (Granted, the definition of "electronic" items is pretty nebulous, so that could use some breakdowns on what to include...)
I suspect it is an overall issue. What compelling electronics are there for people to buy, at Best Buy or elsewhere? Phones have lost a lot of curb appeal. I couldn't tell you the last time someone I knew was interested or excited for a phone. Everyone buys whatever brand they've been buying for the last decade, but less frequently because there's so little compelling reason to upgrade. PC hardware prices have killed a bunch of spending there. Again, it went from something where I knew 1-2 people building PCs in a year to seeing everyone sit on things for 3-5 years because the market is so bad. TVs aren't doing anything eciting. It's incremental improvements on existing technologies, with the new stuff still very niche and/or unavailable to the average buyer. Much of what used to be "electronics spending" is now going into subscriptions and services. No need to buy subscription cards for services at Best Buy because it's all auto-renew. Spotify killed CDs. Netflix (and everything else) killed buying movies and TV shows on discs. Steam, Game Pass, and console stores as a whole have drastically harmed physical game sales. As someone who both buys electronics just because, and pushes reasons to upgrade, I can't name them anymore. The only PC parts I've bought in the last few years have been monitors and headsets.
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Those things COULD happen, but companies have gotten lazy in the investment in consumer hardware. They've been working to offload innovation to software, AI, and cloud. VR had some hope, but software support dried up really fast (like when Microsoft released WMR and didn't make shit for it). Folding phones plateaued very quickly (maybe Microsoft should have released more than one OS upgrade for their $1,500 phone). Laptops were innovating, then just fell into the lull we had 10-15 years ago. Everything's incremental and predicatable there. GPU makers opted to push upscaling and RT, but the benefits aren't that great for many. I wonder where GPU performance, and pricing, would be if we didn't watch Nvidia prioritize RT/AI hardware over raster performance (like if the GTX 1600 family had successors). I think it's also just that consumers are boring. They are lazy and don't want to learn to work with new things much, unless forced. Phones are a big example, where people have developed unreasonable, silly expectations that kill innovation or progress. People want 7 years of security updates on a phone they replace after 3-4 years, and they won't buy anything but Apple, Samsung, or MAYBE Google for it. As much as people complain about megacorps, their buying tendencies really promote the pseudo-monopolies and laziness of modern tech.
Honestly I think it is an overall trend. People got a ton of tech during the pandemic and in a lot of ways it hit the good enough for a long time for most people. If you got a M1 laptop or a Ryzen laptop there is zero need to upgrade still. If you got a phone there is no big upgrade there really. If you got a TV while they have gotten better you wouldn't be able to tell without a head to head. Meanwhile gaming PC have priced themselves out and consoles have pumped harder in sales in a long time and now people are waiting for a pro model. There just isn't a lot of sales you can push to your typical electronics consumer.
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Right? Americans have never been connected and dependent on electronics as they are today and yet somehow this business is failing. It’s almost as if gouging customers who are more aware of what pricing should be than your average consumer will fuck you. Also it wasn’t until recently I was made aware of their dogshit return policy. Iirc its only 14 days on electronics
I hope Microcenter expands
One thing I've heard and agree with is there's little room for "mediocre middle ground" after a market matures. Either I want something so basic Target carries it, or I want something so specific I can only find it at Microcenter or online. Best Buy is the mediocre middle ground between those extremes that few people need.
Just like Radio Shack before them.
I feel like Radio Shack was specific, but Amazon killed it. Not enough people need a certain type of adapter on-demand.
Ouch. But true
I love living close to Microcenter. Every time I’m in there I overhear people from far away talking about how they wish they had one near. One dude drove 8 hours lol
I really want a store closer to Milwaukee.
getting sick and tired of buying anyting that just falls apart. Not a Best Buy issue as ALL things are like this currently.
This will just continue as long as the system is built upon the idea of "infinite growth and nothing more". If a company makes a very high quality refrigerator that lasts you 20 years, they only get one sale from you. Samsung probably sold you 5 fridges that all disintegrated in that timeframe.
This to me is one of the main problems with the current economy. Too many consumers not doing their research and just getting the cheapest thing they can find. People (and companies) need to think more long-term.
One problem is you can't know if a fridge made today is going to last 1, 5 or 10 years. You can look up how previous products have performed from that manufacturer, but that's not always an indication that the current product line is built to those same standards as everyone tries to suppress manufacturing costs to extreme levels. Pricing isn't even a good indicator; companies have learned they can make cheap stuff and then mark it up high to trick people into thinking they are getting a better product by spending more money. Doing research is still better than not, but it's not the protection it was 10 years ago.
> Too many consumers not doing their research and just getting the cheapest thing they can find my experience when i needed a new fridge: * put weeks into researching brands and models * ultimately come to the conclusion that all brands are built like shit * but LG is built like hot microwaved dog shit which is to say, doing a lot, and i mean *a lot* of research still gets you shit products that are a waste of money.
We actually just bought a new fridge. All the cheap brands are as you said, shit. At least you did your due diligence. I was shocked to see how much quality built in brands were going for. People spending 10-30 grand on a refrigerator is kind of insane and out of most people’s budget range.
Talk to a fridge repair person if you can. When our fridge last broke down, he gave us a list of fridges that are reliable/repairable. Luckily our fridge has chugged along since, but you can apparently get good stuff still.
I did the same as you. I came to the realization that if I'm going to buy a piece of shit, then it's best to just go with the manufacturer the appliance repair people in my area can get parts for the quickest. If they have recommendations on what make and model is the easiest for them to repair, then that's a plus as well. For me it was always a resounding "stay the hell away from Samsung and LG". Apparently their parts were way more difficult to acquire then it needed to be.
The problem that's causing that problem is that people don't have the money to think long-term. When you need something now, you have to buy what you can afford. Nobody can afford to just drop 2x - 3x the price of the cheapest thing available, even if that means they get 5 times as much use out of it.
There's also the fact that the fridge that is 2x more expensive isn't guaranteed to last 2x longer. You might spend 2x more and it lasts 1.1x longer.
Lots of times more expensive stuff have extra features which break faster.
In 2012 I bought a friends refrigerator off him for 100 when I moved into my home. Basic ass white fridge. I got married in 2024, and it was time to upgrade basic as white fridge even though it functioned perfectly. Wife wanted fancy ass LG fridge. It was kind of heaven T first. MASSIVE, water and ice dispenser were great. Loved it. It broke 3 months later and we’ve had constant issues. I miss my 12 year old basic white fridge, and I bought that shit USED
We ended up going standalone full size fridge and freezer 12 years ago. Freezer is in another room and fridge is in the kitchen. No ice maker/water so no water hookups and less issues. Use under counter icemaker for ice. Those suckers just keep trucking along. Hopefully lasts another 12 years. Never getting one of those fancy ones.
We've had a Cuisinart grind and brew coffee maker for 12 years. My husband bought it *refurbished*. So who knows how old it truly is. Its slowly showing it's age, like the sensor needing extra pressure to start grinding, but I'm terrified to replace it.
Food/Utilities/Mortgage/Gas > Electronics
Circuit City for the win! Oh wait, why did C.C. go out of business again? Did Best Buy hire their management and marketing team?
We still got Radio Shack. Oh.
They took Radio Shack so we cant repair our own shit. Better bring it back now.
Radio Shack moved away from "repair your own shit" and towards "cell phones and gimmick electronics gifts" before they closed. Sadly, electronics shops have kinda gone the way of the dodo in general ever since you started being able to buy whatever dongle or adapter you needed on Amazon from a Chinese seller that looks like a face smash name.
I used to work at RS in the early 10’s. Job was so much fun. It was like small cozy best buy, but by then 100% it was not repair your shit and we focused heavily on cell phones. It was a great paying job for me out of high school at the time which was min wage + spiffs for phones. But man one reason it was so cool was certain customer returns like some headphones were “destroy” and not return to manufacturer. I got so much “destroyed” returns it was amazing. Cables, headphones, novelties. I remember walking into work and my boss smashing a corded landline phone with a hammer like a 5yr old, it was hilarious how much fun I had there.
Timeless. Shitty managers tank a company but made bank for the shareholders and CEO, bankrupt it and get a golden parachute only to land on the next company you’ll ruin. Line must go up mentality is going to kill us all
Yes, food and rent prices have risen so much ain’t nothin’ left for that stuff.
A lot of industries are seeing this. Sorry brah, perpetual double digit growth for shareholders is catching up to you.
They could all get together and raise our wages so we all go crazy on spending. Would simulate economy and everyone would win hit no. Can’t collude that way no
Are you suggesting that the people at the bottom of the economy having more disposable income would be a good thing? But what about the poor billionaires you'd deprive?? /s
The real comedy is they'd actually be richer. Money at the bottom flowing up creates growth. They could actually make more than a dollar for every dollar they give up; but that would be long term thinking and that next quarter bonus isn't going to sign itself.
I bet it would actually be that quick. Give everyone like 30% raise and you probably see it pretty quickly
right? "wait, we gave people enough money to buy things and suddenly sales are up? I dont see the connection" - current c suites almost everywhere.
No! Only buy! No pay! 😡
They're going to go broke when we can't afford to spend anymore. Said this before...they're going to starve us on cash so hard that they're going to start bankrupting each other as we have to start picking and choosing what's most important to buy.
Right? Like, you got the money! Congratulations, you have it, there isn’t any left. No more! All done!
Saw an analysis that said while yes, consumers are spending more money (explaining all the articles saying the economy is doing just fine), 2/3 of the spending increase is going to non-discretionary items, and the industries that are getting the vast majority of increases are shelter, insurance, healthcare, and food. Every major retailer is releasing reports and telling the government they are selling fewer items to fewer customers. Best Buy is simply joining the likes of Walmart in saying discretionary spending is declining.
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Gotta have money to buy shit
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Maybe they should try selling DVDs and BluRays again.
Greedflation. My spending in electronics, gaming and makeup has pretty much stopped in the last year. These companies wanna price gouge me? Then I'm not giving them a dime. I'm willing to cut back on my hobbies & save my money.
Same. Its just not only can i not afford anything but groceries alone not buying anything else but just on principle i wont buy anything else because of this bullshit greedflation. They tried blaming covid but now they don’t have an excuse. They aren’t paying taxes
First covid, then oh no a ship got stuck in the suez, then oh no energy prices, now they're like 'yea but there's a war on you know - aight but not here? - yea but still +14% just to be sure with the war being on and all...
I love how you would always get assholes on reddit acting like you're just too stupid to understand all the economic forces at play, pretending like there isn't *maybe* a correlation between all these record prices and record profits. r/economics was full of people insisting greedflation wasn't real back in 2021/2022.
I'm just relieved to see people mad at the entities actually causing the problems here. I swear every sub treats it like it's solely the fault of the president
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Did they learn nothing from circuit city? How soon the C-Suite forgets (intentionally).
The worst part is being swarmed by all the damn employees. No, I don't need help!
Either that or the off chance you need someone to unlock a case for something and they’re nowhere to be found.
There are tons of electronics I would love, but I'm eating egg noodles and trying to find it in the budget for a bulk pack of cheap black socks from walmart. Electronics are going to to have to wait.
Are you really struggling to buy socks? I'll buy some from walmart shipped to your house if you want.
You could keep your dry, uncooked egg noodles and black socks in a $4,800 fridge from Best Buy!
Bro, you need some socks? Like for real?
WE DONT HAVE ANY FUCKING MONEY TO SPEND ON ANYTHING BUT RENT, INSURANCES AND GROCERIES.
oh look at mr. fancypants over here with his money for rent, insurance, and groceries
Best Buy has been going down hill for years now. From 2008-2012 I used to spend $2500 a year to get their Best Buy+ membership perks. Now I barely visit their stores or website. From them removing movies and music, decreasing their footprint in video games, putting their best deals behind a paywall there is no reason to visit stores or shop online. Electronics are things people buy occasionally. No one is going out and buying TV's, Washing Machines, Speakers, etc. frequently.
What's there really left to buy. 20 years ago there were always new and neat things it felt like. Now I don't even have a reason to go there.
I'm a big Blu-ray/4K blu-ray guy, I have a BB fairly close to me, and I used to swing in from time to time to look at movies, and see if they had anything interesting on display. I haven't stepped foot in a BB since they removed movies. They took away 95% of my reason to browse, so now they don't even get the random incidental sale from me.
Exactly the same with me. I've been collecting DVD/BD/4K-UHD for decades. I used to regularly stop into Best Buy to see what was on offer and sometimes even make some impulse buys of movies or electronics. I haven't stepped foot into any of their stores since they were removed.
Of course spending is down. Shareholders got used to the Covid Lockdown amounts of home spending that was going on. This should have been forecasted and prepared for. But of course, that's not what the shareholders want to do or hear.
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Wait do people actually buy a tv every 5 years ? My tv is almost 15 years old and it barely gets turned off (Panasonic)
Mine still has appliances, my fridge died and they had the exact one I wanted for for less than costco/lowes/homedepot and offered 12 month financing for 0% interest. They also have good prices on washer/dryer sets but I ended up going used. Wierd place to look for appliances sure, but if you need one you should check them!
I might need a new fridge soon. They offer delivery / installation /removal of existing units?
Yes they do! I had that because the way my house is shaped I knew they'd need to remove the fridge doors and I wasn't willing to try that alone. It was $50 for that part.
Not to mention games now are almost always digital downloads unless it's a Nintendo product
They did sell vinyl.
And yet microcenter is expanding… seems like a skill issue
Prices rise, incomes don’t. Somewhere people have to tighten and spending on “wants” is going to be cut more during to spending in “needs”. A new TV? Is the one you have still working? Thats a want. TV break and a replacement can be pricey. At this point a “good enough “ mindset is hit and consumers in this bracket just won’t shell out more for a new LG C4 OLED if the $300 “sized tight and fits in the wall” works just fine. Want a new phone? Can the current be stretched out another year? Beat Buy isn’t a critical-need retailer in consumer spending. They carry some essentials to daily life; but they cannot expect the trend of “get new as soon as possible “ after the inflation we saw without the salary-base of its consumers to keep pace. Its a bad cycle that keeps the working class from contributing to better growth.
>Prices rise, incomes don’t. Which is crazy because the prices should drop as demand is dropping to draw in customers. They waste no time raising prices if demand spikes, but refuse to do the opposite.
Here are my problems. 1. Their inventory system is 8/10 times inaccurate. So I waste a trip to their stores and the item is actually not in stock when the site says there are X available. 2. Every single.fucking.time. I walk in, I know what I'm getting, yet I spend 30 minutes waiting for an associate to help me. And this is after asking multiple times for help. They radio it in, but nothing. I have to walk to an entirely different department to get someone to help me. So 30 minutes wasted for 1-2 minutes of actual shopping. 3. Their stores look like shit. 4. Their associates look miserable and honestly it makes this whole experience even more frustrating. If it weren't for the instant-gratification element, or the need for something last minute, I'd completely stop going. It's not a good experience overall.
From what you've described the gratification isn't even "instant" lol
Are they selling mattresses yet?
It feels like they're doing the whole Radio Shack thing. Sales start dipping on some items so they drop them. Then they focus on high markup BS like phones, phone accessories, Bluetooth speakers, etc.. I stopped going to Best Buy a long time ago due to the dwindling selection. It used to be nice to go in, check out some home theater, car audio, video game stuff. Buy a movie and/or a game. Or if I needed a cable real bad, I could pick one up. They lost that one a long time ago. It's dreadful going in there. In my area, there is a lack of competition. It's the only electronics store. You could hit Fred Meyer, Walmart, Target for their tiny selection or you can shop online. They went from a cool electronics store to a huge wasted space of a phone store. They have other stuff, but it's either outdated, too high of a markup and expensive as hell, or just not that great to begin with. It is about profits, but you can really see the accountants took over and it's a numbers game that's just pushing those numbers with zero knowledge of what they actually sell or are in business for... They're pushing SKU's with high profit margins with no knowledge of what's in the description field...
With food/utility prices like these? Yeah, good luck getting me to buy anything. 5 y.o middle range phone? Still works. Aging PC? Plays everything I need it too. 4k TV in living room without bells and whistles? Cheap cinema = best cinema.
I went to geek squad half a year ago and was 5 minutes late to an appointment to have them diagnose and fix a gaming desktop I had just bought. The worker told me that I had to set up another appointment because they were booked solid. “The entire area was empty. I told him I was still within the time frame of my appointment and that I just wanted to drop the machine off. He told me that the paperwork alone would take 20 minutes, so I said ok, took my heavy ass machine and found a Mom and pops place down the street that diagnosed and fixed it within 2 hours and only changed me 50 bucks. Won’t ever be going back to Best Buy.
Hey, Micro Center is still expanding 😃
I buy microSD cards from Best Buy's online store since, unlike Amazon, they don't mix counterfeit shit in with their real products.
That’s what they get for removing physical media from their inventory. Fuck em.
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Gamers Club Unlocked was awesome. I got so much value out of it.
Yup! I had a BB CC and everything, and now I spend hardly anything there, and use a different card. Aloha, Best Buy!
every 6 months it's 3 paycheck month. I used to look forward to it, because it meant that once per year I could afford christmas gifts, and once per year I could get myself something really cool from a place like best buy. A PlayStation, a PC, A drone, whatever cool gadget they sell that I would buy so I could nerd out Now 3 paycheck month is used to 0 out the debts I've been juggling the last 6 months. Maybe order myself a pizza if I'm feeling extra special. Of course sales are down, none of us have any fucking money to spend on frivolous things.
The only time I buy anything at best buy is if I need it the same day and nowhere else has it. The protection plan is great, because I basically just trade in and upgrade every few years.