It has been announced that Best Buy is closing 50 of its stores in the USA. This has many experts speculating that this is the end of the “Big Box” retail electronics store.
I would like to take this opportunity to give my perspective on what might be going on.
I have observed that Best Buy appears to see their customers as prey, rather than clients. The people who work in the retail space spend a significant amount of time scaring customers into buying warrantees. Seeing a sales person coming at you at Best Buy is akin to your neighborhood Amway rep walking to your door. It makes you wonder what business they are really in.
The service personnel are working their quotas rather than solving problems. I have followed up geek squad service to discover unneeded hardware sold. One such example was a person with a desktop computer sold a wireless adapter when the router was 3 feet from the computer. I have seen computers sold to people who were suffering from malware that could be removed in 90 minutes of a tech’s time.
Best Buy includes junk app-ware on the computers they sell, in an attempt to sell additional unneeded services and products. It is insulting to a customer that has just made a purchase to be pounced upon with more sales pitches.
I make regular purchases at Best Buy in the form of replacement parts and peripherals. There are some things I avoid from Best Buy, because they are sold at unconscionable rates.
Computer power supplies are a good example of this. The desktop power supplies at Best Buy are at least twice the price of the same product online. They can not justify the difference.
An example of the Best Buy Gouge: Visiting my sister recently in Colorado, she had just experienced a power supply failure in her laptop. We went to Best Buy and they offered her a “universal” replacement for $80. I suggested we check online. We went to her car, looked up the supply on her phone, and bought a replacement for $20.
Best Buy has an opportunity in their retail environment to introduce people to new products, and give good information. An informed customer is a good one. Many people still like to look at an item in real life before making a purchase.
Replacement parts at reasonable prices for the products they sell would be a great customer service.
I believe in Emerson’s theories of compensation. Call it karma, or “what goes around comes around” Best Buy’s problems are their own, and not caused by Amazon’s business model advantage.
