Best Buy selling Apple Products

[MacGuy283]

I was at Best Buy today and I saw one of the employees looking at an apple product guide and I asked him if they are gonna be carrying them and he said yup. They are going to start getting them in on monday but dosent go on the ad till later in the month. He said its in the chicagoland area only and only a few stores will be selling them for 3 months and they will see what happens then. Hopefully they have 0% for a year or something on them.

[MacRumors]

More reports indicate that previous rumors of Apple sales at Best Buy will materialize soon.

BestBuy will utilize fulltime Apple Reps to provide sales support for Apple items. The current plan is to deploy this plan to a select number of Best Buys, so not every store will carry the Apple products initially.

While the official launch date remains in August, some stores may start to sell Apple items as early as Monday.

[katatak]

Originally Posted by Macrumors

More reports indicate that previous rumors of Apple sales at Best Buy will materialize soon.

BestBuy will utilize fulltime Apple Reps to provide sales support for Apple items. The current plan is to deploy this plan to a select number of Best Buys, so not every store will carry the Apple products initially.

While the official launch date remains in August, some stores may start to sell Apple items as early as Monday.

Best Buy recently bought the Canadian Big Box Electronics retailer Future Shop. Future Shop is a long standing Apple dealer obtained when they bought out one the earilest Apple Dealerships (they sold Apple II's) in Vancouver, Canada. Is this the source of their dealership agreement with Apple?

[tntoak]

Originally Posted by katatak

Best Buy recently bought the Canadian Big Box Electronics retailer Future Shop. Future Shop is a long standing Apple dealer obtained when they bought out one the earilest Apple Dealerships (they sold Apple II's) in Vancouver, Canada. Is this the source of their dealership agreement with Apple?

Actually, Best Buy has owned Future Shop since at least 2001. Best Buy did carry Apple for a while when the iMac first hit big, but they ended that program after Apple wanted what BBY felt was too much control over their sales floor. From what I have seen and read, the decision to reintroduce Apple has nothing to do with Future Shop as much as BBYs push towards convergenge in electronics (what Apple has been doing with iLife for years)

[applemacdude]

Cool, maybe Bestbuy will lower prices on the mac? Or maybe not. I hope that they arnt like compusa. tommorow ima go to the bestbuy and ask if they are going to carry apples products...

[Powerbook G5]

I remember Best Buy and Sears both used to sell iMacs when they first came out, whatever happened to that? Is this any different?

[arn]

Originally posted by applemacdude
Cool, maybe Bestbuy will lower prices on the mac? Or maybe not. I hope that they arnt like compusa. tommorow ima go to the bestbuy and ask if they are going to carry apples products...

Apple has pretty strict Minimum prices requirements of resellers. So, I don't think you're going to be seeing lower retail prices.

arn

[Opteron]

Originally Posted by arn

Apple has pretty strict Minimum prices requirements of resellers. So, I don't think you're going to be seeing lower retail prices.

However given the right non-english speaking sales rep, cash works wonders.

[pourhadi]

Cool, I live in the Chicagoland area and there is a Best Buy 3 minutes from my house.

[e-coli]

Originally posted by pourhadi
Cool, I live in the Chicagoland area and there is a Best Buy 3 minutes from my house.

Unlikely that the Chicagoland Best Buys will get Apple products first, seeing as there's two Apple stores, a Microcenter, and numerous CompUSA locations that sell Apple merchandise.

[P-Worm]

I wonder if my Best Buy will get them. The cosest Apple store to me is about a 6 hour drive.

P-Worm

[simX]

Originally posted by Powerbook G5
I remember Best Buy and Sears both used to sell iMacs when they first came out, whatever happened to that? Is this any different?

Well, Apple let Best Buy manage the selling of Apple's products, which was a disaster. Even CompUSA managed to sell the iMac like hotcakes, but Best Buy managed to not make it sell well at all. Initially, they panicked and slashed the price to $999 for the original iMac, even though they weren't supposed to go the MSRP of $1299. Needless to say, it didn't work that well.

Here's to hoping that the CompUSA store within a store idea works out for Best Buy, but I'm not holding my breath.

[Powerbook G5]

I hope it works better than CompUSA...when I go to the Apple section at the CompUSA in Jacksonville it basically goes as follows: "Uh...where is the Apple tech? I have a question" "Umm...I don't know, he should be there" "I've been waiting for him for 35 minutes, he's been paged 3 times, do you know where he could be?" "Uh...I don't know, what do you need? "I need help with a question on using this printer with OS X" "Um...I don't know...you should really ask the Apple tech guy that, he'd know" "I know, that's why I have been waiting for 40 minutes for him" "Oh...we'll page him then..."

[MacGuy283]

The best buy i went to is in the chicagoland area, dont wanna say the city would feel bad if anyone got in trouble, but its near an apple store and he said that they would be getting them in.

[cuneglasus]

So what will they carry? The same out of date consumer items the Apple store has?

[MacGuy283]

Originally posted by cuneglasus
So what will they carry? The same out of date consumer items the Apple store has?

He said pretty much everything including software and acc, he didnt tell me exactlly what.

[MrMacMan]

Wow decent news because the more places have apple products the greater the chance for people to buy them...

[dguisinger]

Hopefully it will include the minneapolis area. Best Buy HQ is in Bloomington, MN (largest suburb), and Maple Grove (another suburb) where I am is the Best Buy test store for the area. They just recently remodled, setting up mini home theaters (couches and everything), plus the computer section was reorginized with more high end items (24-inch lcds, etc), on small round tables setup to demo systems and accessories. They even have a table setup for video editing demonstration.

[Mudbug]

so does anyone have a listing of candidate /pilot stores? I'd like to see their rollout plan, seeing as how this could cost quite a bit of $$ to implement, not to mention time to setup a store-within-a-store setup like CompUSA, if that's how they'll do it.

[moshingkow]

yess! ive been waiting for this for a long while.

the reason you ask?

price matching.
I bought my ipod at best buy and i brought with me the educational price lists (the pdfs) for the ipod from apples website and they matched it for me, so i got like 30 bucks off, and i had the opportunity to get theyre 4 year product replacement plan, which will let you upgrade to the better ipods when they are released.

so now im just gonna go to bestbuy and show them the newly cheapened price lists for the 12" g4 alumbook and get 200 bucks off, and get a 4 year service plan. (the only downside is tax, but you cant win em all...)

[netboy]

First time poster, w00t! :-D

Anyways, this idea of BestBuy selling Apple products is kinda cool. I mean, alot of the stuck up Windows people would never set foot in a Mac store of some kind, so maybe they might stumble across the Apple section at their local BestBuy while looking for the latest Windows product.

Also, maybe this will be the break us young Mac users need to get jobs selling the machines we love! I don't know what your feelings are, but CompUSA has really given me the shaft; I guess it's expected from them! :-P


--/--
Netboy

[merman637]

Originally Posted by netboy

First time poster, w00t! :-D

Anyways, this idea of BestBuy selling Apple products is kinda cool. I mean, alot of the stuck up Windows people would never set foot in a Mac store of some kind, so maybe they might stumble across the Apple section at their local BestBuy while looking for the latest Windows product.

Also, maybe this will be the break us young Mac users need to get jobs selling the machines we love! I don't know what your feelings are, but CompUSA has really given me the shaft; I guess it's expected from them! :-P


--/--
Netboy

I feel your pain man...compusa is the ONLYplace nearby that sells apple, and they think they are GOD'S gift to computer stores...however the mac guy at this store IS pretty knowledgable...even if they did try to sell me a broken laptop for $100 less than retail....Sheesh...
anyway...good to see an okie in here...
MERman -moore ok

[Mudbug]

what I'm hoping for more than anything is a mac software section. Right now the offerings for software off the shelf from anywhere near me is quite slim - usually cross-platform titles by companies nice enough to do that...

And not even Photoshop and Quark on the shelf (although that would be nice) but to have regular consumer-level mac apps for sale would be great. It would at least make my wife happy...

[elo]

My CompUSA is wonderful. They've been good on a number of occasions in various ways. As an aside, I was once browsing Windows notebook computers. The rep came up, asked me what I did and what I needed the machine for, then suggested that I might be happier with an Apple notebook. This employee was *not* the store's Apple representative, so his appraisal was honest, not self-serving.

Needless to say, I went back to that same store when I was ready to buy.

elo

[itsa]

Originally Posted by elo

My CompUSA is wonderful. They've been good on a number of occasions in various ways. As an aside, I was once browsing Windows notebook computers. The rep came up, asked me what I did and what I needed the machine for, then suggested that I might be happier with an Apple notebook. This employee was *not* the store's Apple representative, so his appraisal was honest, not self-serving.

Needless to say, I went back to that same store when I was ready to buy.

elo

I've sold about 10 Mac's at CompUSA and I don't even work there... (never have). I know it sounds like I'm a nerd but, when I lived in St Louis I would go into CompUSA and just stand around until someone asked the people that worked there something about Macs... and I would jump in and correct them. I got a kick out of helping people make the right buy... and even bigger kick making the Comp guys look like idiots.