Re: Re: Best Buy gets a bad rap
Originally posted by rjstanford
Why wouldn't you want to know what you were selling if that was your job? Heck, I don't know. But retail outlets -- especially ones like Best Buy that don't pay commission -- don't attract professional sales staff. And when you want to buy something but need "value added service" (ie: don't just walk in with a part number and a credit card), you want a professional sales person. The margins in computer sales (for many stores) are too low to pay them, however. This is one area where the boutique nature (and pricing) of the Apple product allows them to provide the additional service. I wouldn't expect to see anything good happen without their own employees in the stores for this very reason.
-Richard
I stand by what I said about coming across as a moron, but I need to make it more clear. I was placed in the media dept without any real instruction on the product, only on best buy policy as a whole. as a result, i was often clueless when helping people with video games, as I knew less than they did. My comment was related to the fact that it was not entirely my fault i was in a dept where i did not know the answer; there was no specific training on ps2 v xbox v gamecube. everything i knew i learned from grabbing another employee or my supervisor and asking them directly about the issue at hand. They did not offer or provide any furhter information.
Yes, I could have gone home and researched it, but best buy is a part itme job for me, while i completed school and wokred out what comes next. further, if they want to pretend like thier employees are more than just corporate drones (which is how they reward us-they want to see everything according to plan and thats it) they should be doing more to make it so. It wsa not in my nor any other employee's job description to use my own time to research information my workplace did not provide.
So, assuming that my experience is rather standard for an employee, it makes sense that most people on this board are concerned about Best Buy...and I hope to god they keep an Apple person around from open to close.
On the other hand, half the pc's are labelled wrong, plus they only play the same dumbass demos...so the macs might stand out nicely no matter what.
Personally, having spent lots of fun quality time retagging the laptop section, a few ibooks and pbooks over there will be a jolt...i think people will see the ibooks esp as an option, since closed they are 1/2 the thickness of an HP paperweight at around the same price and feature set (dvd-rom/cdrw, etc).
the only non-HUGE laptop we sell is a sony for 1700...and its fugly with a nasty chiclet keyboard. So on the laptop end things might be better than they appear....
--carly
(be nice to best buy employees...they're probably just as disgruntled as you are ;-))
