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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

#371

Post by gshulegaard »

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 live in the Bay Area...I've had items be very delayed. Used to never have an issue, but recently (last 12 months or so) it seems like every other order has a delay of some sort (1 day or much longer).

My favorite last experience was:

- Amazon saying a package was delivered, it was not since I was at the delivery location...

- Amazon sent me an e-mail the next day saying they were deeply sorry for losing my shipment (unprompted since I didn't report it lost yet) and they needed to contact me regarding refund or re-fufillment...

- Finally a "neighbor" a few streets over came by with my package the next day. So all in all a 4 day delivery experience instead of a 2 day one.

Anyway, I don't know what they changed up about their supply chain, but something is much less reliable than it used to be. My hunch is their move towards more usage of their own "contract driver" model rather than something like FedEx or UPS. But that's just speculation.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#372

Post by acdha »

394549 wrote: post #356
ajross wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. It happens all the time where I live. It's also not uncommon for my Prime packages to get totally lost by Amazon Logistics (I've never had that happen with another courier). At least now they automatically cancel those orders, I previously used to have to call the…

Where is this? It’s been years since that’s happened here in DC and the last time it happened they gave us a pretty generous credit.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#373

Post by btrettel »

alexisnorman wrote: post #295
daphneokeefe wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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 frequently satisfies these rules.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#374

Post by beenBoutIT »

ryneandal wrote: post #325
beenBoutIT wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying someone a gift card is another way of telling them that you're a consumerist idiot who doesn't give a shit about them. "First and foremost, I don't care about you at all. That said, instead of giving you $20 in cash, I'm going to give that same $20 to BestBuy and force you to shop there or forgo my gift in its entirety, because I'm an imbecile." Intelligent people who don't give a shit about a person will alwa…

I'm truly glad I don't see the world in such drastic black and white. Sounds miserable.

Do you know of someone who migrated from binary black and white to whatever schema it is that you use to judge others?

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#375

Post by mnm1 »

mimimihaha wrote: post #232
mnm1 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure why but I just got an email that said that my account might be in violations of their return policy. I stopped using them and a couple of months later, they sent another email saying the account was closed. Whatever I did, it was very typical shopping behavior for a small household and small business. There were a number of returns of fake / broken items. I figured that was Amazon's business. Selling a ton of fake / broken garbage and eating the returns because they are aware of the shitty quality of their merchandise. It literally is most of their business!!! Whatever it was, I never got clarification because Amazon doesn't have an actual return policy that can be violated in this way. They are just a bunch of liars and thieves. They sell fake / broken shit and they steal your prime membership money. Seriously, what kind of shitty company does business this way and treats their paying members this way? Fuck them.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#376

Post by gnicholas »

mgbmtl wrote: post #136
gnicholas wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason Best Buy is still alive is that they effectively price discriminate between online buyers and in-store buyers. I saw a deal for a 48” Vizio TV on bestbuy.com for $206 (in 2016, this was a screaming deal). I ordered for in-store pickup. When I went to the store, I saw the TV was listed for sale at $400 or so, with no indication of a better price online. So Best Buy makes tons of money off folks who wander i…

Oddly, I've had the opposite experience (in Canada): the online price would be the same as on Amazon. I wanted it now, so I went to the store (even though I hate driving to the suburbs/shopping mall), only to see that the item was 10% cheaper in the store. (we always pay taxes for online purchases, so taxes are a non-issue)

How strange! I’d think that anyone who caught onto this pattern would check the in-store price before completing the pickup. If the price is lower in-store, you could just cancel the online order and purchase off the shelf!

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#377

Post by emodendroket »

taeric wrote: post #346
emodendroket wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to a Marathon Sports and wearing shoes their employees recommended after watching my walk has made my knees feel way better and I'm completely willing to pay substantially more for sneakers for it. But I can't speak to anyone else's experience.

I'd be curious to know if they actually tailored their recommendation to you. It is entirely possible that you saw benefits just from getting attention and spending a bit more. Simply stated, I've seen studies showing that paying more does increase the effectiveness of things. Even if there is no difference in the thing. (Sadly, I have not followed up on those claims, so I don't know if that replicated.)

I have gone back several times and seen different people and they shared the same observations about my gait and recommended the same kind of shoes, and what they told me seemed to be corroborated by things I read (though I would not have known what to look for before). More than one person told me that they noticed wearing the sneakers corrected my gait. Also my knees really hurt (as Abe Kobo writes in the Ark Sakura, the knees are the bane of all fat people) and now they rarely do. It is not a double-blind experiment but I am pretty convinced that they know what they are talking about and that it's not just a parlor trick.

Now that I know what I'm looking for, I could go on Amazon and find the exact same shoes for way less, but I consider their expertise a service I'm willing to pay for despite higher prices and smaller selection.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#378

Post by 18pfsmt »

prepend wrote: post #157
bachmeier wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to be that guy, but I have Amazon Prime in my household because my wife uses it just enough to be worthwhile. She makes only a small percentage of her purchases there, and the others in our household make none. The 43% figure is more relevant, and that's 43% of a relatively small share of all consumer spending, with much of it being done by a small group of large Amazon customers. So I don't think it's accurate…

Amazon’s US retail revenue was $318B for 2017 [0]. There are 126M households in the US in census’ 2017 data [1]. Thats $2,500/household. That’s definitely a shitload bought by most people. Comically shitloads are pretty cheap and are $210/ton (a big pickup kid) if you’re in New Hampshire [2]. So pedantically, we’re all buying 10 shitloads. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/15/amazons-us-sales-to-match-wa... [1] https:…

From your link it says,"Though Walmart remains king of sales with $495.8 billion in annual revenue and U.S. sales of $318.5 billion (a 3.5 percent increase year over year) for the fiscal year ended in January, Amazon is growing at a faster pace in the United States."

You are claiming that Walmart's revenue is Amazon's. You misquoted.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#379

Post by emodendroket »

AlexandrB wrote: post #363
maxsilver wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Best Buy doesn’t install anything on the PCs they sell. This isn't necessarily true. Some PCs are Best Buy specific models, with extra bloatware from Best Buy (in addition to the OEM bloatware from Dell / HP / Lenovo). This also affects physical components sometimes. I remember from laptop shopping a few months ago, that the MSI GS63 Stealth laptop ships with a crappier screen specifically for the Best Buy model ,…

Reading something like this I have two thoughts: 1. Why would PC manufacturers de-value their own brand like this!? 2. It almost makes sense why Apple can get away with charging a premium. No mystery meat hardware/crapware regardless of retailer.

Your two observations are connected. They do it because they are paid by the software maker, allowing them to sell the product for less.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#380

Post by swsieber »

gameswithgo wrote: post #86
gzu wrote: 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…

I'm surprised. I went to Lowe's, finally decided on a new dish washer and they got it down so I could stick it in my car. Perhaps refridgerators are a little different though since they don't fit in cars quite as nicely...
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