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Every time I go to a Best Buy these days the shelves are barely stocked. I went in to find a coax cable and splitter, but the best they could do was offer to order it online for me. Why bother with their inflated pricing if I still have to wait for shipping?
Sucks that the employees are loosing their jobs though.
They seem to be in the same situation as Fry's Electronics. I worked with them the year before they closed and it was exactly as you describe. The shelves were barely stocked, there weren't enough people, the quality of products went way down.
It's sad because Best Buy is basically the only place to go to see things in person before buying them. It's important for TVs, Monitors, Laptops, Keyboards, and more.
It wouldn't surprise me if they close down for good within a decade.
Aww man rip Fry's. What a great company. Only place to get real Hi-Fi gear. They have a militant pricing policy if they label it a price they sell it. Once bought a pair of $800 reference speakers for $300 because someone accidentally put the price of the smaller model on it. Was ready to pay $800 but the manager went to the aisle and came back and was like "yep it's the wrong model price but we put it there" and approved the $500 discount lmao. What a hero.
The opposite is true as well. A couple years ago I got an alert for a sale on Dualsenses and I pounced on it in the morning. I ordered it in the morning and was expecting to receive it within the next week or two. It arrived in LESS THAN 4 HOURS. I ordered it on my lunch hour and it arrived before I got off work.
I'm not sure if they used some other gig service like DoorDash or Uber Eats or if they just had some store employee deliver it? I don't mind receiving things that quickly, but I certainly don't want to force someone to piss in a jug to get me my dumb little consumer electronics faster.
It depends on your market but Bestbuy does partner with Instacart, Shipt, and other partners to do same-day, sometimes for free even. My personal funniest story was buying a friend a tv and her asking where did it come from, because a skinny teen in a small sedan just dropped it off on her porch (Walmart purchase).
I haven't been to Best Buy in years, but that sounds like how Fry's looked when it was in its death throes. Which somehow lasted like 10 years
Idk about elsewhere, but dear lord, the BestBuy near me has so many employees it's hard to fit into the store. Literally every 2 steps a different employee asks if I need help, it's actually insane.
Chiming in here from NYC, every BestBuy in the metro area you have to literally make a scene to get an employee. One of my last visits I spent literally 15 minutes at an empty checkout with a staffed door, and all I could think was they can pay a guy at the door all day but no checkout people, why don’t I just steal my purchase? Thats what they consider important, no? Additional info, I usually go “early” (think noon) to these stores, but still seems sad.
As a German I would hate that from the bottom of my heart. Why is this necessary? When I go shopping in a supermarket here I'm lucky if I find an employee I can ask and outside the checkout they're always busy stocking the shelves. But that's not a bad thing, you can usually find everything quickly yourself and I prefer to have my peace when shopping. It's already enough for me that the store is full of other people who are also shopping.
I'm not entirely sure. Any time I go there is just full of huge groups of employees just hanging out chatting with eachother, then they swarm you as soon as they see a customer walked in.
My best guess is that because the demographics in this city skew way older, they need a lot of staff to help a lot of non-tech-savvy customers? That, or the owner isn't very concerned about spending money on staffing for whatever reason.
Honestly, while it does make me uncomfortable to go there, I'm overall in favor of it because it means more local jobs, which is always (well, almost always) a good thing. Like, it seems like a really chill job that pays above minimum wage, so I say those employees should milk it for all it's worth, haha.
Remember when Best Buy was actually great? Music, computers, TV/audio, some computer parts, decent enough prices. They kind of cornered the market bringing electronics to the masses, and managed to squander it. Who do they think they are, Sears?
They were still the best store in my area for blurays up until recently, and then they stopped selling them too. My local store hasn't even done anything with the space either, just empty floor where blurays used to be.
Microcenter kicks the shit out of Best Buy any day of the week.
Up North, Canada Computers also kicks the shit out of Best Buy.
The last time I went to buy components from Best Buy, I ended up with a shitty power supply that literally shot sparks out the back. Never again have I cheaped out on a PSU or bought serious components from Best Buy.
MicroCenter is more narrow in what they offer. Like, I don’t think they even have TVs, right?
Microcenter does sell tvs:
I only went in there to buy Blu-rays and then I'd buy other things after I got in the door. Getting rid of discs was incredibly stupid.
Yeah it's tanking the market too. I wonder if one of the remaining disc manufacturers closed recently.
Walmart still has a reliable supply of steelbooks thankfully. I know that the disc market overall is quite dead, but it seems like 4k steelbooks always sell out
I used to go to Best Buy weekly to see what new movies and games were out.
Since they stopped selling them, I stopped having a reason to go. Yeah, I know, technically they still sell games, but man, their heart isn't in it. It doesn't help that Microsoft is actively trying to kill physical game sales.
Best buy is still a thing? I haven't been inside one in 10 or 15 years.