BestBuy Apple Representatives

[dukebound85]

i hate best buy reps. i argue with them every time i go there.

please, there are people at Best Buy that may know more than you

who goes to best buy to argue anyways, seriously?

many are just high school/college kids trying to make ends meet and enjoy the culture of tech

last thing they want to do i imagine is have some dude go up and argue on specs of products....

 

[Primejimbo]

The way I look at it, they are trying to make a honest living. IMO they should research more on what they sell, and that would only help them, but at least they are working.

 

[techfreak85]

please, there are people at Best Buy that may know more than you

who goes to best buy to argue anyways, seriously?

many are just high school/college kids trying to make ends meet and enjoy the culture of tech

last thing they want to do i imagine is have some dude go up and argue on specs of products....

ya im a high school student (which is why i cant have a dog in the house) that enjoys the culture of tech, so i do real tech work and work at my school.

 

[dukebound85]

ya im a high school student (which is why i cant have a dog in the house) that enjoys the culture of tech, so i do real tech work and work at my school.

ok then, would you appreciate it if someone came to your work and argued with you just for the sake of it?

thought not

treat others like you want to be treated. karma's a bitch

real tech work? comeon now, why must you slyly demean workers at best buy. i hope you dont feel you are superior to them.....

 

[techfreak85]

ok then, would you appreciate it if someone came to your work and argued with you just for the sake of it?

thought not

treat others like you want to be treated. karma's a bitch

real tech work? comeon now, why must you slyly demean workers at best buy. i hope you dont feel you are superior to them.....

i dont argue with them just to argue with them. i dont just go walk in to best buy just for the heck of it just to argue. if they act retarded i will.

 

[dukebound85]

i hate best buy reps. i argue with them every time i go there.

Do you feel superior to them solely because your interests lie elsewhere? What's the point in provoking argument?

no they are just n00bs. and i like arguing.

i dont argue with them just to argue with them. i dont just go walk in to best buy just for the heck of it just to argue. if they act retarded i will.

sorry, thats just the impression i got from your previous posts.

anyways,im glad you dont argue for the sake of it then

 

[Demosthenes X]

They don't know the whole store, they are assigned to a department. You have TV guys working in the TV department, Computer guys working in the computer department and so on. In most cases when I ask a TV guy a computer question I get "I don't work in this department, let me bring you to a person who does" or something like that.

Have you ever actually worked in retail? Yeah, you have your department. But that doesn't stop customers from asking you questions totally unrelated to where you work, and then you have two options: try and find another employee who does work in the right section (and chances are they're busy), or just answer the question if it's a simple one.

So yeah, departments are no, an employee in retail can't just blindly direct everyone away from themselves to other employees. I've worked in retail for a long time, trust me.

 

[natebookpro]

i dont like best buy reps. i argue with them every time i go there.

I make myself feel good by arguing with $8/hr college students.

 

[urkel]

3 Jobs every teenager should be forced to work before becoming adults:

1) Food services: Fast food/Waiter. Sometimes there's a reason your food took so long.
2) Teaching: Not teaching mom gmail. Real paid teaching where you have to get someones attention
3) Housekeeping: Again, for strangers and for money. Spend 20 minutes scraping gum off the underside of a bench and you'll think twice before doing that again.


Anyway, after reading some of the comments here then I'm considering adding "salesman" to the list. Seriously, what sort of pathetic pleasure do people get by outsmarting a guy and then bragging about it to anonymous internet pseudonyms?

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Hate is a strong word, but it's what I feel about those Best Buy staff. They don't help you at all. My friend tried (note the word 'tried') to buy a Mac there. Best Buy rep kept saying Macs are for stupid people and he should buy this POS Dell junk instead. The sales rep even claimed how the Dell could run Windows 8 (wtf?!?) and how the Macs only ran MS-DOS (again, wtf?!?). He said the Dell had 4 graphic cards working in crossfire mode (they were an old nVidia card, btw) and how the Mac used an ARM processor for a GPU. That guy was a high school dropout.

 

[dukebound85]

Hate is a strong word, but it's what I feel about those Best Buy staff. They don't help you at all. My friend tried (note the word 'tried') to buy a Mac there. Best Buy rep kept saying Macs are for stupid people and he should buy this POS Dell junk instead. The sales rep even claimed how the Dell could run Windows 8 (wtf?!?) and how the Macs only ran MS-DOS (again, wtf?!?). He said the Dell had 4 graphic cards working in crossfire mode (they were an old nVidia card, btw) and how the Mac used an ARM processor for a GPU. That guy was a high school dropout.

because everyone working at best buy is an idiot right?

there are knowleable people and not knwoledgeable people no matter where you go....even the apple store for example

 

[mikelong622]

I am coming up on a year of working at Best Buy and I actually DO have to work the whole store, mostly TV's and macs, but if I ever have to back up a busy department it is a bitch. I do my best to answer customers questions and if I don't know something I get one of you old, rich pricks who come in just to prove you are better than a 21 year old college kid. Good job *******, you could have just grabbed the router yourself, but instead you had to make someone feel inferior about themselves as well.

I could rant forever but I guess to get back to the OP, our store has an actual Apple employee, paid by apple, hired by apple, etc who is extremely knowledgeable about what he sells.

 

[tdgrn]

Honestly, I don't understand the purpose of this thread. Sure, if somebody is giving you wrong information, walk off, or ask to speak to somebody else. Just about everybody in this forum acts like they have never talked to somebody who knows anything about anything in a retail situation. Considering I am in college, and Best Buy is paying my way through it, I try and take a lot of pride in my job. I work all over the store as well, so I can answer pretty detailed questions about MacBooks or "What's the difference between LCD and Plasma?" If I had a penny for every time I was asked a totally stupid question, I would be rich. ("Uh, where are your cameras?" Me - "Under the sign that says Digital Cameras and Camcorders.)

All I am saying is that you can't expect somebody who knows everything there is to know about the panels in a MacBook to get help from somebody who works retail, Apple or Best Buy. We are there to help people who don't have a clue about anything. There are several people who come into the store I work at and specifically ask for me, just because they know I will give them the right answer, or I will tell them I don't know, if I don't know the answer to the question.

And trust me, it is no fun to talk to you guys who come into the store and ask stupid questions about panels in a MB vs MBA, yeah, you know who you are, and let me tell you that I have a special place in my heart for you.

 

[mikelong622]

because everyone working at best buy is an idiot right?

there are knowleable people and not knwoledgeable people no matter where you go....even the apple store for example

To go off what you said, I have never gone into an Apple store and been anything but disgusted by their knowledge of Apple products. I remember going in to buy a new Macbook back in the Winter of 07 the day they got updated and asking the guy if these were the macbooks with the new processors. He replied with, "uh...i don't know, probably."

 

[dukebound85]

I am coming up on a year of working at Best Buy and I actually DO have to work the whole store, mostly TV's and macs, but if I ever have to back up a busy department it is a bitch. I do my best to answer customers questions and if I don't know something I get one of you old, rich pricks who come in just to prove you are better than a 21 year old college kid. Good job *******, you could have just grabbed the router yourself, but instead you had to make someone feel inferior about themselves as well.

I could rant forever but I guess to get back to the OP, our store has an actual Apple employee, paid by apple, hired by apple, etc who is extremely knowledgeable about what he sells.

i know what you mean. i experienced the same thing when i worked retail. people treat you like crap for no reason other than the fact you work there. if you help them, there's no thanks or any resemblance of courtesy 99% of the time, yet they expect you to treat them as nice as can be

 

[mikelong622]

Honestly, I don't understand the purpose of this thread. Sure, if somebody is giving you wrong information, walk off, or ask to speak to somebody else. Just about everybody in this forum acts like they have never talked to somebody who knows anything about anything in a retail situation. Considering I am in college, and Best Buy is paying my way through it, I try and take a lot of pride in my job. I work all over the store as well, so I can answer pretty detailed questions about MacBooks or "What's the difference between LCD and Plasma?" If I had a penny for every time I was asked a totally stupid question, I would be rich. ("Uh, where are your cameras?" Me - "Under the sign that says Digital Cameras and Camcorders.)

All I am saying is that you can't expect somebody who knows everything there is to know about the panels in a MacBook to get help from somebody who works retail, Apple or Best Buy. We are there to help people who don't have a clue about anything. There are several people who come into the store I work at and specifically ask for me, just because they know I will give them the right answer, or I will tell them I don't know, if I don't know the answer to the question.

And trust me, it is no fun to talk to you guys who come into the store and ask stupid questions about panels in a MB vs MBA, yeah, you know who you are, and let me tell you that I have a special place in my heart for you.

Very well said. /thread

 

[GoKyu]

Honestly, I don't understand the purpose of this thread. Sure, if somebody is giving you wrong information, walk off, or ask to speak to somebody else. Just about everybody in this forum acts like they have never talked to somebody who knows anything about anything in a retail situation. Considering I am in college, and Best Buy is paying my way through it, I try and take a lot of pride in my job. I work all over the store as well, so I can answer pretty detailed questions about MacBooks or "What's the difference between LCD and Plasma?" If I had a penny for every time I was asked a totally stupid question, I would be rich. ("Uh, where are your cameras?" Me - "Under the sign that says Digital Cameras and Camcorders.)

All I am saying is that you can't expect somebody who knows everything there is to know about the panels in a MacBook to get help from somebody who works retail, Apple or Best Buy. We are there to help people who don't have a clue about anything. There are several people who come into the store I work at and specifically ask for me, just because they know I will give them the right answer, or I will tell them I don't know, if I don't know the answer to the question.

And trust me, it is no fun to talk to you guys who come into the store and ask stupid questions about panels in a MB vs MBA, yeah, you know who you are, and let me tell you that I have a special place in my heart for you.

I don't work at Best Buy, but I'm also in retail over at Office Depot (Tech department), and you're 100% spot on, especially the part about "we are there to help people who don't have a clue about anything."

I've had plenty of nice technical discussions about anything from setting up routers to having return customers come ask me about Macs (and we don't even sell them!)

But the most common questions I get begin with "Uh...I don't know much about technology, can you help me pick out a <whatever>."

You get people who call the tower a "hard drive", or they ask for "one of those portable thingies" and then you need to figure out what the hell they're talking about.

And with regard to customer asking questions outside of our departments - we have to try to help if possible, and we do have at least limited knowledge of things outside of technology. When possible though, I do try to hand someone off to a fellow employee who's more knowledgeable about, say....pens or furniture....than I am. And they send me the technical questions that they're unable to answer.

Retail is NOT easy and wages should be higher for the kind of things customers put us through, whether the customer really knows what's going on or not.

 

[sn00pie]

Try to put yourself in the shoes of those BB reps. They're just doing their job. I realize that most employees are indeed clueless when it comes to Mac in general, but its not a big deal.

The purpose of this thread is quite bland to be honest. By the way those Apple reps are in most cases employed by Apple itself. If the employee is in a regular blue shirt, then they're employed by BBY.

 

[brop52]

At BB or the Apple store these people are just doing their jobs. They may not be as obsessed with the products they sell as you are. When they go home they probably are not browsing the MR forums all night and comparing computer specs. They are human and many of them are just trying to pay their tuition or bills. Maybe the problem is that you haven't had a bill to pay in your life and probably need a job to occupy your time. Show a little humility because their is always someone smarter than you that could humiliate you if they want to. There is no reason to do it to someone else.

 

[Primejimbo]

Have you ever actually worked in retail? Yeah, you have your department. But that doesn't stop customers from asking you questions totally unrelated to where you work, and then you have two options: try and find another employee who does work in the right section (and chances are they're busy), or just answer the question if it's a simple one.

So yeah, departments are no, an employee in retail can't just blindly direct everyone away from themselves to other employees. I've worked in retail for a long time, trust me.

Yes I have, I was just saying how a BB worker doesn't know the whole store and in most casses they do try to direct you to a person who can help you.
it's not a perfect world and I think we all need to be in the shoes of the worker.

 

[PhilaScott]

Actually, there is usually an Apple (who is employed by Apple, gets a paycheck from Apple) rep (sales person) at Best Buy stores that sell Apple computers, but normal Best Buy employees sell them as well, and are the only people to do so when the Apple paid person is not.

Yes, when I bought my MBP in Wilmington, DE, the rep was an Apple employee, not a Best Buy employee. He also gave me his Apple business card and invited me to contact him with any issues whatsoever.

 

[notjustjay]

it's not a perfect world and I think we all need to be in the shoes of the worker.

Been there, done that. I've posted about my experiences in other threads so I won't rehash.

Bottom line: the stores don't care about how much you know or don't know going in, because their minimum standard is that you know the basic facts they provide in their training materials, and that's it. Steve Jobs himself could walk into Best Buy and ask for a job in the Apple section, but if their need is to fill a shift selling vacuum cleaners, that's where he gets put. Sometimes you get lucky and the Mac expert does get put into the Mac department, or the "generic sales kid" takes a real interest in his job and learns all he can about the products he has been assigned to represent. But not always!

Also, customers have totally unrealistic expectations of minimum wage sales staff. To save stress on yourself and on the sales kid, you should only ever expect to ask the following questions to a sales associate:

1. *point at flyer* Where do I find this product?
2. *hand them a box* Can you tell me the price of this?
3. *point at empty shelf* Do you have any more of these?

For EVERYTHING ELSE, Google it yourself. You'll get better information, faster. You can even use the display computers, there is usually a live WiFi connection in the store.

 

[PhilaScott]

If one wants to ask serious questions, certainly go to an Apple store. ....

I've had to correct Apple Store reps, too, when I overheard them making claims that just weren't true... and they (the reps) walked away, verified what I said correcting them and came back and apologized to the customers to whom they were giving their spiel... There are no guarantees just on the basis of where you buy your hardware.

Bottom line: Do your homework before purchasing.

 

[VPrime]

I worked at a futureshop (Same company as Best buy, but on commission) and I am pretty knowledgeable in computers ( I was in the computer department). I have taken A+ certification classes (IMO every one should have to take this course), currently in college for computer programming, and will be getting my buisness technology diploma in a few months. So pretty sure I have a decent understanding in computers and technology.

Any ways, when dealing with customers you have to make sure they understand what they want, and what you are trying to explain to them.. Some times this makes the employee look dumber(to an advanced computer user) but in the end it helps the not so tech friendly customers learn with out being thrown a million pieces of information and confusing them even more.

Also, you always get the customer who *THINKS* they know more.. Often we just try to educate them but they cant get off their high horse and accept they are wrong (usually it is old people, or high school kids who took a couple computer classes). So we just let them go on and agreeing witht hem as there was no way we are going to change their minds.

Then there are people who just dont believe a word you are saying. They think a)you are just a stupid retail idiot and dont know what you are talking about or b) Just trying to make a sale and will say any thing to get it.

Sure there are sucky retail workers, but you cant always blame them! Think of all the people they deal with, and how they have to act not knowing your skill level. Until you give them a chance (and they give you a chance) and find out each others knowledge you are not going to get any where.

 

[habubauza]

Well it seems this thread has touched off a nerve or two. I would just like to remind those of you who are irate that this thread was specifically aimed at some of the "Apple Representatives of BestBuy" and not BestBuy employees in general. I like many others are sympathetic to the "College Student" trying to get by, I was once one of them. However, there is no excuse not to know your product, at least to a level of proficiency as to help a veteran Mac user make the next logical step in a purchase. This is not business as usual or pointing someone in the right direction, this is trying to acquire the right information to make the right purchasing decision. We are not talking about a $100 boom box, or the latest stand alone gaming system. Computers are a highly personal and intricate part of our lives and if you have made the decision to purchase an Apple Computer you have made the decision to spend possibly thousands of dollars on your equipment. That is your hard earned money and when you choose to spend it on an item you certainly don't want to deal with a sales person with half a$$ knowledge of what you are trying to buy. You don't want to go into an Apple retailer where the clever Mac Rep decides to disable iphoto or iMovie to prevent "unwanted use". You want to go in there to be educated on the things you don't know and were unable to find out through your own research. Is that too much to ask for? If it is, then selling computers may not be your game.

I have no problem with a sales rep who may not have all the information I am looking for as long as he or she fesses up and either points me in the right direction for the information or we look it up together. But don't try to "act" like you know what you are talking about when you clearly don't. There is no shame in saying, "I don't know, but I will find out" Even people who are not as familiar with computers or first time users will be able to sniff out a person who isn't as knowledgeable as they purport to be, and believe me, at that point you are losing credibility by the second. However, I for one don't take that opportunity to demean or try to embarrass anyone and anyone who does should be ashamed of themselves. It is better to just walk away and find the information you are looking for through other means.

For those of you who believe this thread is a waste, I'm sorry that I didn't reach your level of forum standards. I won't cry if you decide to skip over it.