Apple Pulling iPad 2 from Best Buy?

[Stella]

I remember this crap with Wii - Best Buy would 'sell' out of devices especially before a holiday weekend to ensure they still have stock. Doesn't make for good customer satisfaction.

It stinks - so its great that Apple are taking a stand.

The only good thing about BB is the great returns policy, which keeps me buying from them. Otherwise - whats the point - the sales people know sweet FA.

 

[01civicman]

Is it really a gamble assuming someone will buy an iPad??? I think it's clear demand is far greater than supply right now. I hope you're happy working there b/c it doesn't appear you'll be going too far in life...

And again, you are still hoping that the next guy is the one buying the stuff, which may never happen.

Just an FYI. Its a PT to supplement while my wife is at school, to my full time. If the place closes tomorrow, I don't care, I have a full time with great benefits and solid pay.

I actually like it there, I guess it depends on the managers of the store. All of these "stories" people say I can absolutely say with 100% I have never been a part of.

 

[01civicman]

I personally hope these stories aren't true, because I want to buy one and have been told we've been sold out, but we are getting them. But may be in our store this "plan" wouldn't work, because we only get like 7 every week. 1 iPad sale a day wouldn't do **** for us.

 

[furqan8421]

This isn't surprising

When the wii came out best buy also purposely limited availability, holding some back every time

Just be happy you aren't forced to purchase a bundle including a case etc like some had to when buying the wii

 

[gnasher729]

A while back when I bought my TV there, they seemed so disappointed when I refused to buy any accessories. They tried to push HDMI cables, to which I said "sorry I can get them at bluejean for a tenth the price". They tried to push their service plan, to which I said no. I've never seen employees so disappointed about making a $2000 sale. I'm guessing they must have VERY slim margins on their electronics.

The employee may have a sales target "one HDMI cable or one extended warranty per expensive TV". If you buy that $2,000 TV and no cable, accessories or warranties, that could make the employee miss his target. It is idiotic, but that's the way some stores are run.

 

[Koufax80]

And again, you are still hoping that the next guy is the one buying the stuff, which may never happen.

Just an FYI. Its a PT to supplement while my wife is at school, to my full time. If the place closes tomorrow, I don't care, I have a full time with great benefits and solid pay.

I actually like it there, I guess it depends on the managers of the store. All of these "stories" people say I can absolutely say with 100% I have never been a part of.

I actually respect you a lot more now knowing that you don't plan on being a lifer... good luck to you and your wife.

 

[medelman]

Sure there is a difference, but is it noticable? Is it worth the cost?

A Ferrari costs a lot more than a Ford Fiesta. It's better built and has a lot more power under the hood. But if all you're ever doing is driving at 20 mph, then it doesn't matter, the Fiesta has all the power you need and you'll save a pile of money. Now, you don't want to go rock bottom and buy a junker that might break down, but as long as it runs smoothly at 20 mph, any car will do the job.

You don't want ultra-cheap crappy cables that can develop loose connections or come poorly shielded, as that can cause dropouts. But neither do you need pure silver or oxygen-free shielding or whatever. Any HDMI cable will either fail outright or do the exact same job as any other for the given application.

This is what I was trying to get across in my original post in reference to using reasonably priced monoprice cables and the fact that they are good for most of the population. I was going to get into the whole 1's and 0's argument, but I didn't want to diverge too far from the original topic.

 

[dlewis23]

I guess Apple really does listen to customer complaints. The way BB handled the iPad 2 launch at my local store was a joke. Told people they didn't have White ones, but were selling white ones to other people.

 

[russweb72]

Interesting

When i was at Best Buy on launch day a couple of stock guys walked outside and said they had 200 ipad 2's. When 5pm rolled around the manager came out and said they only had 20. Luckily i was 8th in line at the time.

 

[einmusiker]

This is a victory for all the elitist fanboys who think that Apple products should only be sold in Apple Stores in upscale shopping areas.

Yeah. Who needs best buy when you have toys r us and the shack

 

[txpotato]

Good for Apple

Bestbuy sucks. It is good for Apple to stay away from Bestbuy. I never buy anything from Bestbuy. I use it as a showroom and buy stuff online. Their sales or whatever people working there have no basic knowledge about anything they are selling.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

I remember this crap with Wii - Best Buy would 'sell' out of devices especially before a weekend to ensure they still have stock. Doesn't make for good customer satisfaction.

Or does it? Think about it. If a customer actually has an important job or at least one that requires them to be at work during normal biz hours they literally have no chance if they are all sold at 10p. But if they hold some back for Sun AM when you can stand in line at 8pm then it might make you think better of BB. Plus BB gets more buzz advertising they good stock on Sunday A.M. vs. 6 every other A.M.

Bottomline though is that these are BB's iPads to sell. It's not like BB is a preferred reseller and they big daily shipments and are holding those back. They are getting dribbles like everyone else.

Anyway, this story looks to be 100% B.S. like I always thought as Crunchgear as all but busted the rumor which it started.

 

[01civicman]

I actually respect you a lot more now knowing that you don't plan on being a lifer... good luck to you and your wife.

Appreciate that. You may be seeing me around here more as my life seems to be turning to a Apple products more and more. We just bought a Macbook off a friend, I own an iPhone, and iPod Classic, and iPod Nano. Hopefully an iPad 2 soon.

 

[swarmster]

It's a shame Best Buy doesn't have any more competitors that Apple could reward with all these units.

RIP Computer City, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc.

 

[baleensavage]

This is a typical retail move. Companies hold their stock all the time. It's all about the sales goals.

Unfortunately, the only people who are going to suffer from it are the consumers. Up where I live the nearest Apple store is 4 hours away. As much as I hate Best Buy, it's been really great having a line of Apple products at a store that's within an hour and a half of me. It will be a real shame if Apple starts pulling their products from Best Buy.

 

[kcmac]

I'm still betting on that ad they ran taping the iPad to a keyboard. Extremely bad form. True Colors shining through.

 

[flopticalcube]

This is a victory for all the elitist fanboys who think that Apple products should only be sold in Apple Stores in upscale shopping areas.

Or Walmart...

I bought my iPad 1 from BB but there are plenty of other places to get it where I am.

 

[alhedges]

I do not intend to be rude, but there is a difference in HDMI cables, no matter what the Internet tells you. Conductors, shielding materials/layers and the way the connectors are put together are a few differentiators. An AudioQuest Coffee cable, for example, which is several hundred dollars ($600 I believe for a 1.5m) is made of pure silver starting with the tips and going the length of the cable. This is not the same as a no name $5 dollar HDMI cable from Amazon.

It's not identical, in that it is made of silver. But that's the only difference; it doesn't *work* any better than a $5 cable.

The data is *digital*, and the cables are either in spec or not. The 1's and 0's won't look any better if they come down a silver cable.

Don't believe the hype.

 

[applefan289]

It's not identical, in that it is made of silver. But that's the only difference; it doesn't *work* any better than a $5 cable.

The data is *digital*, and the cables are either in spec or not. The 1's and 0's won't look any better if they come down a silver cable.

Don't believe the hype.

Exactly, if you take a computer networking course, digital is all in binary 0s and 1s. It's either there or it's not.

 

[brayhite]

I wish MacRumors would update their story with the CrunchGear update that only one person has noticed:

http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/04/07/rumor-ipad-2-mishandling-gets-best-buy-blacklisted-by-apple/

UPDATE – The original tipster just got this from Tim Cook:

SL,

My understanding is most of their stores sold all of their initial supply on the first night of the launch and the balance were out by the following day. I am not aware of any units being held.

Tim

Rumor (potentially) smashed.

 

[nipo]

Aren't retail stores in the business of, you know, making sales? Why the F would they artificially limit the sales of a given product? Makes zero sense unless they just wanted to be douchey and keep people returning day after day to drive up foot traffic and hope for other spillover sales foam impulse purchases. But could that be worth all that much?

Reminds me of a true story - went into one of those pre-made sandwich shops because I need to feed a horde unexpectedly, and quickly. I asked for all their stock of three different kinds of sandwich. The woman behind the counter said "but sir what will we sell to other people!".

Bizarre way to run a business.

How is this different than "limit 2 per customer" like Apple currently does buying ipads? 100 happy customers are better for business than 1 or 2.

 

[silentnite]

The reason why Best Buy does things like that is because they feel above all the other retailers. Makes me wonder, I've ask for products in the past and was simply told they were out of stock without even checking. Bad for Business Best Buy.

 

[reputationZed]

When you are as HUGE as best buy, and you are selling a product as huge as the iPad, it makes sense to create a demand. People do this all the time. You can't get it now, so the second it becomes available to you, you buy it in fear that you might have to wait another month. This happens all the time with a lot of products.

Why would BB need to create demand for the iPad2? Demand for the new iPad still far exceeds supply so taking measures to create additional demand is pointless.

 

[registerednerd]

Having once worked for BB, their behavior in this matter does not surprise me. They got what was coming to them.

I also used to work for bby. I was going to say the same thing. Bby managers don't care about ethics, or even the law. If you ask most of them, they'll tell you that they're there to make money, and that they'd be great at it if all those stupid products and services didn't get in the way. In fact, this is almost a direct quote (not in jest) of one of my former managers.

The reason why Best Buy does things like that is because they feel above all the other retailers. Makes me wonder, I've ask for products in the past and was simply told they were out of stock without even checking. Bad for Business Best Buy.

There's a good chance they didn't need to look because each employee onq their floor gets asked at least 20 times per day if they have any iPads. Once they see they don't have any at the beginning of the day, they don't need to look again until after the next shipment.

 

[shervieux]

In a away this is true in the retail world. If you do not meet quota you lose your job, regardless of the reason (out of stock, bad weather, etc). So what happens is, if you are not selling much of anything else, you meet you're quota on the hot selling products. If inventory starts running low; then you hold back saying "we are currently out, however we are expecting a shipment tomorrow (or some other day of the week to make it not seem obvious)"; then the next day you start selling again until you meet quota.

I know someone who owns a retail business in a mall. When the mall was popular, his rent was $10,000 a month. Now, since all the big anchor stores that used to attract upscale high spending crowd are gone - he renegotiated his rent. The mall has stipulations in the agreement that read to the effect of:

"you must meet xxx amount of sales to keep your location"
"If you go over xxx number of sales, we reserve the right access charges as you are now a larger store and could be considered a prime anchor"

He said they look at this books on a daily level - thus why if he spins off into another business, then he has to set it up in a away that it will not show an increase of sales on the mall location.

Retail and quotas are an ugly came. Necessary to some degree; but when they don't include factors such as price, economy, bad weather that shut you down or slowed you for a week, etc. It just hurts people. Some managers )to keep their jobs) has laid off all staff and they are doing all cleaning / janitorial, cashiering, stock, etc all themselves. they do not like it as they are working 16+ hr days (usually salaried as they are manager) - but their books are better allowing them to stay open.

I am not talking about mom and pop type shops. this is at big chain stores also where you have a corp headquarters coming down on you.