2007-08-29, 12:14 PM
Sorry for the long post. My point is that Best Buy blatently lies to non tech-savvy customers to sell them useless or horribly over-priced crap. Details below.
I was in Best Buy last night pricing plasmas. There was a couple there who were buying a 37" LCD TV.
Mr. Blueshirt was giving them a very hard sell on a $49.00 HDMI cable. He actually told them that "cheap cables degrade the picture so much that they will not carry them". He also implied that the warranty would not be honored for picture quality problems unless they could prove they had bought high quality cables. At no time did this guy even ask if their STB had an HDMI connection!
I never do this kind of thing but I actually walked over and asked them if they had cable, satellite etc and asked if they knew if they had HDMI available or not. They didn't know. I also told them that I had spent a couple hundred bucks on Monster cables and saw absolutely no difference in picture quality over my old dollar store cables. I told them they could probably get a perfectly fine HDMI cable (if they need one) for $15.00 from Wal-Mart.
Mr. Blueshirt is rolling his eyes like I am some kind of crazy person. The people tell him they are going to wait on the cable and go to pay for their tv. Mr Blueshirt returns with one of the "Magnolia home theater" people. Mr Magnolia tells me I am "disturbing" customers. Tells me I have no right to give advice to anyone and If I am not there to buy something to please leave the store. I tried to have a reasonable conversation with him about the cables. He said that I "didn't know what I was talking about" and outright told me to leave or he would call security.
Last year I saw an old couple buying a laptop for their grandaughter who was starting university. They were practically forced to buy about $400 bucks in useless crap (portable surge protector, headphones, travel mouse, rolling case etc). They were also upsold to a more expensive laptop with a bunch of mumbo jumbo about floating point calculations and hyper threading. These people did not appear to be rich and I have regretted not pulling them aside since.
Best Buy employees are not supposed to be on commision. They must threaten to fire them if they don't push cables.
I was in Best Buy last night pricing plasmas. There was a couple there who were buying a 37" LCD TV.
Mr. Blueshirt was giving them a very hard sell on a $49.00 HDMI cable. He actually told them that "cheap cables degrade the picture so much that they will not carry them". He also implied that the warranty would not be honored for picture quality problems unless they could prove they had bought high quality cables. At no time did this guy even ask if their STB had an HDMI connection!
I never do this kind of thing but I actually walked over and asked them if they had cable, satellite etc and asked if they knew if they had HDMI available or not. They didn't know. I also told them that I had spent a couple hundred bucks on Monster cables and saw absolutely no difference in picture quality over my old dollar store cables. I told them they could probably get a perfectly fine HDMI cable (if they need one) for $15.00 from Wal-Mart.
Mr. Blueshirt is rolling his eyes like I am some kind of crazy person. The people tell him they are going to wait on the cable and go to pay for their tv. Mr Blueshirt returns with one of the "Magnolia home theater" people. Mr Magnolia tells me I am "disturbing" customers. Tells me I have no right to give advice to anyone and If I am not there to buy something to please leave the store. I tried to have a reasonable conversation with him about the cables. He said that I "didn't know what I was talking about" and outright told me to leave or he would call security.
Last year I saw an old couple buying a laptop for their grandaughter who was starting university. They were practically forced to buy about $400 bucks in useless crap (portable surge protector, headphones, travel mouse, rolling case etc). They were also upsold to a more expensive laptop with a bunch of mumbo jumbo about floating point calculations and hyper threading. These people did not appear to be rich and I have regretted not pulling them aside since.
Best Buy employees are not supposed to be on commision. They must threaten to fire them if they don't push cables.
AMD Athlon II 630 on Asus mobo
XP Pro
2 Gigs DDR3
PVR 150
200 g HD (OS and Programs)
1 TB Recordings Drive
Asus Integrated Graphics with HDMI out
Harmony 659 Remote
Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3200 STB dedicated to GBPVR
Schedules Direct EPG Service
XP Pro
2 Gigs DDR3
PVR 150
200 g HD (OS and Programs)
1 TB Recordings Drive
Asus Integrated Graphics with HDMI out
Harmony 659 Remote
Scientific Atlanta Explorer 3200 STB dedicated to GBPVR
Schedules Direct EPG Service