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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

#401

Post by [deleted] »

mgleason_3 wrote: post #255
tyu100 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is a small miracle. They stock everything, it comes right to your door, the prices are competitive in general and with Subscribe and Save you are doing even better. E-books are also incredible and with Prime you get Instant Video thrown in for free. I'm sure bad experiences happen but compared to driving to the big box suburban wasteland to browse through a limited selection, Amazon is a godesend.

In my experience, Best Buy’s return policy and process has been awful. Granted it’s been years because it was so bad. Literally the worst of any store I’ve ever shopped at. Last time I bought a router from them it was defective. I had to stand in line for over an hour. The clerk was surly and didn’t believe it was defective. Kept opening the box, pulling everything out, looking at all the pieces. Putting it all back.…

[deleted]

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#402

Post by taeric »

emodendroket wrote: post #392
taeric wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question I have is essentially if the shoes you are wearing are better for most everyone. Most shoes are bought for fashion, not any sort of fit. As such, if someone is complaining about knees or any other walking pain, it is not impossible that the same shoe would help. That make sense? It could be that you just finally got ergonomic shoes. Consider people that have RSI and similar pains move to ergonomic keyboa…

Looking up "pronation" would probably be enough to convince you the answer to your question is no. To stick with your RSI analogy, you're proposing that everyone with RSI could be cured by having a fixed desk with the monitor, chair, and keyboard tray at exactly the same height.

Not the same height. But I'd wager a large number of folks don't get heavily tailored solutions.

The question is ultimately if shoes are more like ergonomic keyboards, or like eyeglasses. My hunch is the former, since it doesn't take professional training to find stuff like pronation. (Which, yes, I already knew.)

Don't get me wrong, help staff can be good. I've yet to have a shoe associate give me any detail I didn't already know, though. Eye doctor? Yeah, I don't have the equipment to test my eyes.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#403

Post by chrisseaton »

ajross wrote: post #353
kop316 wrote: 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…

> vs. Amazon's "two day shipping" that regularly turned into three or four days Where are you that this is true? This is directly opposite of my experience. I genuinely can't remember the last time a Prime/2-day shipment was delayed. In fact, I'll routinely and deliberately pay a premium to purchase something via Amazon Prime (both within Amazon and across internet vendors) precisely because of the confidence I have…

I pay for basic Prime delivery, don't live in a city, let alone a major city, and Amazon usually gets parcels to me within about twelve hours now.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#404

Post by twinkletwinkle »

tjr wrote: post #177
dropfrog wrote: post #172

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…

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

Technically, there might have been N>2 parties involved in the switcheroo.

Someone expecting the antenna received shirts, someone expecting X received the antenna, someone expecting shirts received X, ....

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#405

Post by emodendroket »

taeric wrote: post #402
emodendroket wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking up "pronation" would probably be enough to convince you the answer to your question is no. To stick with your RSI analogy, you're proposing that everyone with RSI could be cured by having a fixed desk with the monitor, chair, and keyboard tray at exactly the same height.

Not the same height. But I'd wager a large number of folks don't get heavily tailored solutions. The question is ultimately if shoes are more like ergonomic keyboards, or like eyeglasses. My hunch is the former, since it doesn't take professional training to find stuff like pronation. (Which, yes, I already knew.) Don't get me wrong, help staff can be good. I've yet to have a shoe associate give me any detail I didn'…

If you are willing to do all the research yourself figuring out what type of step you have and what type of shoe is good for it and then what kind of options there are in that style then I suppose you don't need anyone's help. If you don't want to do that you can visit a professional who knows what they're talking about and be done with it in minutes.

I don't see that this is very different from any other service. If you're willing to figure out what parts you need and do the work, you can save money -- way more than you'll ever save on sneakers -- by doing auto repairs yourself. Most people would rather hire a mechanic who already knows how to do it in a fraction of the time. If you have RSI and seek occupational or physical therapy the therapist is "just" going to tell you a series of exercises that are good for your injury that you have to do yourself; given enough time and energy you could probably develop your own exercise plan.

Either way, I feel like this is straying pretty substantially from the theory you started with, where I just liked the shoes because I spent more money on them.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#406

Post by kop316 »

sokoloff wrote: post #348
kop316 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did that for me a couple of times, but what started to happen is packages were mark delivered, then not be there. I complained to Amazon, who gave me the run around (and kept it open), so when it came a day later, there was all the sudden no issue.

Write them anyway. I’ve had that BS, usually from USPS or UPS Mail Innovations (which is horrific service), and a quick email to CS gets me the credit (money or a month of Prime).

At this point I already cancelled my prime with Amazon, and generally try to buy things from other sites if possible. The counterfeit issue alone makes me avoid them whenever possible.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#407

Post by kop316 »

btrettel wrote: post #373
alexisnorman wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had so many of these "free one-month extensions" from late Prime packages that I currently have six months of Prime membership credits applied to my account. I've been joking lately that if I were to actually pay for 2 day shipping, I'd get my package on-time.

I cancelled Prime because far too many orders would not come in on time. They kept giving me free months of Prime, but eventually I started thinking I could do better than free months of bad service. I rarely ever buy anything from Amazon now unless I don't mind when the product comes in, the price is competitive, and the product is not the sort of thing which is often counterfeited. Their Amazon Basics brand frequen…

Part of me wonders if they allow the counterfeiting for exactly that reason, so you know the Amazon basics will not be, then they can make yet more money off of you.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#408

Post by windexh8er »

mgleason_3 wrote: post #255
tyu100 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is a small miracle. They stock everything, it comes right to your door, the prices are competitive in general and with Subscribe and Save you are doing even better. E-books are also incredible and with Prime you get Instant Video thrown in for free. I'm sure bad experiences happen but compared to driving to the big box suburban wasteland to browse through a limited selection, Amazon is a godesend.

In my experience, Best Buy’s return policy and process has been awful. Granted it’s been years because it was so bad. Literally the worst of any store I’ve ever shopped at. Last time I bought a router from them it was defective. I had to stand in line for over an hour. The clerk was surly and didn’t believe it was defective. Kept opening the box, pulling everything out, looking at all the pieces. Putting it all back.…

This. While Best Buy can be convenient in a pinch the company, in terms of after-purchase-support is a joke. Case in point I ordered a washer/dryer set from them a couple months ago. Overall it saved about $50 but I felt like I was helping a local company as Best Buy HQ is here. Never again. Not only did they not show up with my delivery 3 times they had the nerve to show up over 90 minutes late the delivery day and had excuse after excuse after excuse. The moved me between two different escalation support people (out of TX) because of the first misstep and never provided me an easy path to contact anyone directly in the process. On top of all that ordering on .com means anyone local is 100% useless. I emailed the Best Buy CEO spam inbox and ended up negotiating $250 back after they ended up wasting well over 16 hours of my personal time waiting on no-shows and on the phone. I won't spend another dime with them after the Geek Squad manager who came out on delivery day as a "premium convenience to make sure everything went smoothly" drove back and forth in front of my house for an hour because he clearly knew the delivery was, yet again, late and he didn't acknowledge or apologize for the failure to deliver as promised. When I called him out on it he flat out lied to me. Best Buy seems to be a lot of internally segmented groups, none of which are empowered to solve a customer problem.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#409

Post by nilleo »

daphneokeefe wrote: post #203
duxup wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a lot of "two day" Amazon shipping turn into 3 or 4... the arrival date even on Amazon will show in the past for a few days. What used to be a sure thing from Amazon, I now just think of as "maybe". Having said that the crazy mess (tiny isles and disorganized) and $20 USB cables were Best Buy stores made me give up on them a long time ago. I've visited a few times recently to hopefully get a look at some lap…

If you are a Prime buyer and your package is not delivered by the promised date, you can request and receive a free one-month extension of your Prime membership. I have done this several times. For obvious reasons, Amazon doesn't publicize this much.

I noticed this with past issues, but recently I was offered a best case scenario of a $10 credit on my next order that is "sold and shipped by Amazon".

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#410

Post by pteredactyl »

mgleason_3 wrote: post #255
tyu100 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is a small miracle. They stock everything, it comes right to your door, the prices are competitive in general and with Subscribe and Save you are doing even better. E-books are also incredible and with Prime you get Instant Video thrown in for free. I'm sure bad experiences happen but compared to driving to the big box suburban wasteland to browse through a limited selection, Amazon is a godesend.

In my experience, Best Buy’s return policy and process has been awful. Granted it’s been years because it was so bad. Literally the worst of any store I’ve ever shopped at. Last time I bought a router from them it was defective. I had to stand in line for over an hour. The clerk was surly and didn’t believe it was defective. Kept opening the box, pulling everything out, looking at all the pieces. Putting it all back.…

Hmm I had a great experience last week in San Francisco.

Took 10 minutes. And even though I returned the opened XBox controller a few days after their return window, they gave me store credit.

I was a happy customer.

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