DJariya

Serious question. Do you guys just go to Best Buy to look for BDs? If so, you're wasting your time.

I know now they are primarily catering to those who want new tablets, phones. computers, laptops, TVs, gaming consoles when they have them and some household appliances.

There is really no point going in there these days to look for movies or even the limited number of games they still have. You need to buy big stuff that you're going to likely put on credit and pay off in 18 months.

Keeping this on topic, I went to Best Buy a month or so ago for ink, and yes it's slow.

PhantomStranger

Personally, I'm visiting Best Buy less and less these days. During its heyday, I'd probably swing by Best Buy every Tuesday for music and movie releases.

milo bloom

Are COVID #s still high in your area? I have FB friends in the Ozarks and they're getting high numbers from the Delta variant. The greeter might be asking to help you get in and out quicker without dawdling.

I did go in for King Kong 1976 Special Edition, I'd heard some were finding it there and I wanted a good looking slipcover and I found that. But yeah, the selection is getting pretty slim there.

Bluelitespecial

I'm in Kansas and I'm hours away from the Ozarks so I haven't had to deal with that.

Quote:

Serious question. Do you guys just go to Best Buy to look for BDs? If so, you're wasting your time.

If I buy any new release movies on blu-ray my purchases usually come from Target or Walmart. They have a better selection than Best Buy.

Troy Stiffler

Best Buy is still good for TVs and I’ve bought several computers there. Computers are too fragile to trust one being tossed around by UPS inside a box with air pillows. Plus video game hardware is price controlled and there’s no point in buying online.

I also shop there because I like financing at close to 0%. I have a local furniture store that does the same thing. So I always go back.

Maybe they are one of those businesses that are so built up they can’t fail with proper money management. Like for some businesses they’re so well vested that product sales are only part of their business model.

TomOpus

tonyc3742

I ran into Best Buy twice over the past couple weeks.
Once to dump a busted printer into their electronics recycling bin, and I took a quick lap around the store.
Second time, I was window shopping for TVs. Not ready to buy yet, just getting an idea. (It was funny - they had two TVs on the wall, one was maybe 43", the other 50". At about the same time my wife said "I can't really tell a difference", I said, "Man, what a difference".)
Anyway - the store wasn't packed, but it did have a number of customers. As far as I could tell their physical media was three kiosks - one with new releases in the front of the store and two with other stuff, including one side of anime, in the middle. They may have had a dump bin or two of cheap stuff. I didn't even see the video game section. It was definitely very different. TVs, tablets, phone accessories, and appliances were most of the inventory. And there was a lot of room in the aisles between the shelves - which is nice from a customer perspective but probably not from a 'making money' perspective.
I'm not buying physical media that much anymore, but they sure aren't offering much either.
The last things I bought there were a Harmony remote, Xbox GamePass cards, and a phone charger cable because I was on a business trip and mine broke. And that was right before COVID happened.

BobO'Link

Ours closed due to the mall it was in being hit by a tornado and damaging their area significantly. They decided to close rather than reopen. Supposedly they're looking for a stand alone location but I don't see it happening.

cultshock

I used to go there all the time to check out movies and such, but haven't set foot inside one for almost a couple years (but I have ordered from their website a couple times over the last year). But the occasional time I need to buy an appliance or electronics I'll go to Best Buy first, my uncle works there and can usually swing me a deal.

MLBFan24

I have a couple Best Buys near me, but I've avoided the closest one near me after it was looted during the daily riots last June 2020. I rarely go to BB in general, but the last time I went a month ago, I went the extra 10 minutes to another BB that wasn't looted.

It's probably just me being stupid, but I just imagine the looted BB having trashed / thrown-around items still on the store shelves, even though the items were never taken during the riots / looting.

milo bloom

Yeah, I guarantee those stores were cleaned up inside a week or so. You really don’t have to worry about stores not being available to sell things to customers again despite the social issues at the root of the riots still not being addressed.

Abob Teff

Last thing I bought was at the holidays. They had an open box item advertised at a price I was willing to pay. I went in to the store to pick it up and was told I needed to go back outside and call them to bring it out to me. You were free to look around the store and make purchases just like normal, but if you wanted your online purchase ...

They brought it out to me about a half-hour later and it was NOT in the condition they advertised. I went back into the store and was treated like total dogshit. I called corporate and got the "we can't do anything" bit. So ... THE LAST THING I BOUGHT from Best Buy. I've never been a BB fan, but that was enough to finish me off. They don't have anything I can't get somewhere else.

Then there was the pathetic joke of their former CEO all over the media this past spring talking about how magical Best Buy is and how they need to "rethink corporate culture and put people first." Aren't they renowned for doing just the opposite, much under his leadership? Oh wait, he had a book come out this past spring so let's sing all the business bullshit with gusto -- prick.

tonyc3742

Oh yeah... and wasn't that the same guy who said something like "In order to respond to our customer's wants, we're going to do away with every pro-customer program that we have"? (I'm only slightly paraphrasing).
Kinda surprising they're still in business at all....

Josh-da-man

Hate to break it to you, but the stuff in stores is already regularly thrown around and dropped by regular customers, employees, warehouse workers, and shippers.

kahuna

When did Best Buy start having using other carriers to deliver their orders besides USPS, UPS, & Fed-Ex? My Snl placed
a order at Best Buy on Friday. Today about 1pm, I just happen to look out my bedroom window & I see someone just dressed
in regular clothes holding a box. He was walking back & forth at the front gate. I went outside & he asked me if I knew so
& so & I said yes. He gave me the box. I noticed it was from BB. I also notice he had a lot of boxes in his Nissan Van. This
is a first for me.

TheBang

I think the first reports of that kind of stuff started last fall around Black Friday. If you go to the Best Buy or Black Friday thread around then, you'll see some reports about BB using either gig economy delivery services or maybe even their own employees to deliver orders from local store inventory to customers. I don't remember it happening here in Hawaii before though.

kahuna

If it was a BB employee maybe they should of worn a BB shirt. It was just the first time this happen to me. I know Amazon does this on the mainland. Also the box the items came in was different. It was not the type of box where you just tape the bottom & top. It was a different type of box. Hard to explain. But who ever taped the box used used paper tape & covered all the edges of the whole box. It was like a professional had done it. Plus they put plenty of packaging in the box to prevent the items from moving around.

fujishig

Maybe these are being fulfilled by the local store(s). I know Gamestop and Target do this and the packaging varies wildly between items.

kahuna

Yes this was fulfilled by a local BB. I had other items shipped from local BB but they were not in packing like this.
Samsung.com is one of the worst companies. They ship their expensive Tablets (S7 (x2) & S7+) in boxes 2/5 times bigger than the tablet box & no packing to protect the tablet and
just tape the bottom & top of the box. By the time arrives by Fed-X the box is squashed to hell and you can see inside the box from all the corners. But when they shipped the
Galaxy Bud Pros they shipped it the right side box with tons packing inside.

DJariya

https://cordcuttersnews.com/best-buy...-of-employees/

The original source is the WSJ blocked by a paywall.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/best-bu...nline-4623b4b3

Best Buy is laying off hundreds in their physical stores.

Josh-da-man

For the last several years it seems like Best Buy carries nothing but appliances and stuff like cell phone cases and chargers. Refrigerators and washing machines on the left side of the store, big screen tvs on the back all, space rented out to Apple and cell phone carriers in the middle, and the rest of the store is seven million different phone cases and accessories.

In some ways, it's been resembling those empty Fry's stores.

I'm not surprised if they're going to start focusing more on e-commerce.

rduncan

I've been reading posts on the Best Buy employee subreddit and folks aren't happy, to say the least. Between them and the Staples folks apparently, retail jobs are not the place to look for a happy and fulfilling work place.

TomOpus

I'll always remember going to the one by me in San Diego on new release day and hitting the tables of new movies.

Alan Smithee

I saw that Reddit discussion on Friday. I was just updating my disc shelving and looking at a bunch of crap Madacy discs like Ultimate Space Experience that I bought the first day our local Best Buy opened. Those were the days- they opened right next to Virgin Megastore, killed them on pricing putting them out of business, and then deciding they didn’t really want to sell movies anyways. I don’t even bother going in that store anymore, ironically the last thing I bought there was an NVidia Shield which almost makes me never need to buy another disc and Best Buy not getting any more of my money.

cultshock

Who woulda guessed?