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Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

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Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#231
post #10

I can't speak for the Geek Squad (as I have never needed to use them), but they price match to Amazon (and several other online stores), and will generally have what I am looking for (at least for consumer electronics). I know that I will get it that day (vs. Amazon's "two day shipping" that regularly turned into three or four days) at an Amazon price, it will certainly NOT be a counterfeit, and I don't have to give…

Best Buy also has a much nicer return experience if you have an issue with your purchase.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#232
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly i’ve bought and returned plenty of stuff from Amazon. I never deal with their shit when something comes to me less than par. When I pay for prime, I expect to be paying for any mishandling of my items as well. Nearly every item i’ve wanted to return i’ve been told to just keep and i’ve never had any trouble with them. I always tell them i’m more than happy to send it back but they always refuse and just tell…

I have no doubt you'll get flagged at some point. I felt the same way before I even knew they would close my account. It didn't matter that the account was created in the 90's or early 2000's or that I had been a prime member for years or that I was spending around $10k a year there. They even kept my prime payment and didn't refund it. It's just a game of chance with their systems. You simply will never know what yo…

Yikes. That sucks. I’ve heard once your account is flagged there is literally nothing you can do to use Amazon anymore. Can you elaborate on how it happened to you and when? I am pretty liberal when it comes to returns but I don’t use the system unless necessary.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#234
post #12

You really can't beat going into a physical store for a large ticket item purchase. No waiting for shipping, easy to return, viewing the product in store. Recently purchased a MBP from Bestbuy. The first one I received had noticeable back light bleeding near a screen corner. Walked back in the store the next day to return. The process from an online retailer would have taken weeks.

A while back we had a refrigerator die, and I was like "no problem, I'll run to home depot and get one". they could NOT handle it. Everyone seemed annoyed that I wanted to do this. They have refrigerators on the floor but only a few are for sale, and they can do delivery in theory but they didn't seem to know if their delivery guys were available or not. I went over to Lowes next door and it was the same deal. I was…

Just an FYI, Best Buy sells appliances as well. Not sure if every store lets you take them home right there though.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#235
post #10

I can't speak for the Geek Squad (as I have never needed to use them), but they price match to Amazon (and several other online stores), and will generally have what I am looking for (at least for consumer electronics). I know that I will get it that day (vs. Amazon's "two day shipping" that regularly turned into three or four days) at an Amazon price, it will certainly NOT be a counterfeit, and I don't have to give…

Best Buy also has a much nicer return experience if you have an issue with your purchase.

I haven't had a bad return experience with Amazon either though. Way more pleasant and hassle-free than other online retailers

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#236
post #25

Like most Americans I order a shitload from Amazon. However the last item I bought from Best Buy was a TV (my old LG just ... died). Ordered online, chose to pick up in store. Drive 35 min to store Pickup process takes 10-15 min Drive 35 min home. Left after dinner, was watching it that evening. The only condition that would have prevented me from using this model would be traffic, as it could extend the trip by 60-9…

I ordered a TV from Amazon. They use a third party service that schedules delivery with you. Two dudes came out with TV, unboxed and set it up (put on stand, plugged in power to verify its working). A few days after delivery I noticed a red line running along the top of the screen. Contacted Amazon about replacement. There was some issue with doing a direct replacement so they had me purchase another TV and then refu…

Ordered a TV from Amazon the same way. The dudes said it was not their job to actually put it on the stand despite paying for and ordering white glove delivery. Had to do it myself with a friend later as it was too big to put up alone. This was about ten years ago. In retrospect, I should have known better who I was dealing with, but like most people here, I was ignorant of what Amazon was really like. This is minor compared to all their other shit.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#237
post #10

I can't speak for the Geek Squad (as I have never needed to use them), but they price match to Amazon (and several other online stores), and will generally have what I am looking for (at least for consumer electronics). I know that I will get it that day (vs. Amazon's "two day shipping" that regularly turned into three or four days) at an Amazon price, it will certainly NOT be a counterfeit, and I don't have to give…

"I don't have to give my information so I don't feel like I am being tracked." Uhhh, you for sure will. First - BB is very aggressive on getting this stuff from you cleanly, i.e. name, addy, phone number - so they can 'track you'. Second - VISA/MC transactions will absolutely be used for that and they'll try to match up their in-store with online experiences. FYI - Visa/MC/Amex will literally sell your transaction da…

You always have the option to pay with cash at Best Buy, don't you?

I assume all credit card transactions are sold to third parties no matter the retailer. The only exceptions are large enough companies like Amazon/Google who are in enough categories that they can make more money using your information first party than they can by selling it. It's not that Amazon/Google respect your privacy more than other retailers, they're just sharing it with other departments instead of other orgs.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you should definitely return those things. I've never heard of them firing their customers. I don't think Amazon got to where they are by offering a terrible service. And even if they do ban you, you can always go to a indie book store and there's plenty of other places online that sell books.

> I've never heard of them firing their customers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/banned-from-amazon-the-shoppers... https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/mar/18/banned-by-amaz... As for terrible customer service, see the below for my reasons for cutting off Prime: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16937290 In particular: • Prime shipping is no longer certain to be two days. • Those which are assured to arrive with…

I have been meaning to get into the FBA business and I downloaded the Helium10 extension for this. It allows you to see the inventory status of an item you are viewing on Amazon.

It is shocking how many times something that says `sold by Sony` or `Amazon` yet I press `inventory` on the menu that the extension injects into the product page and surprise, surprise, most of the stock is coming from FBA sellers.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#239

But that call-in "customer support" is a deal killer. I made an online purchase, a cheap antenna (thank goodness). It arrived in a box with my address taped on it but with customized shirts inside. Boxes were damaged during shipping and when put back together, someone got my stuff and I got theirs. UPS - "it's not on us, contact Best Buy". So I decided to use this to test Best Buy's customer support. I call. Foreign…

I've had similar issues with Verizon support reps. What I've started doing is if I get the feeling they're not helping, I just hang up and call again. At least with Verizon I'd say 50% of agents know what they're talking about, so usually that works.

I know this is a shitty solution (and to be honest, I've never had to do the same with Amazon) but it does help.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#240
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So somewhere, perhaps, somebody who was expecting a box of customized shirts received a cheap antenna?

That's exactly what happened - makes me smile. And that someone also received their customized shirts (if all went as planned) because I noticed the shirts had a local company name imprinted. I gave the box with the shirts back to UPS, let them know what had gone down, and hopefully they took care of business.

From my experience with UPS, they probably burned the shirts.
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