Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#1

Post by cohaagen » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon
bloomberg.com

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#2

Post by seiferteric » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

Their prices are not too bad anymore. They usually are about the same as online prices and returns are easier in store, so I have got a few things from Best Buy. Most recently a Macbook for my wife was $50 cheaper in Best Buy vs in the Apple store.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#3

Post by at-fates-hands » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

I worked at the Richfield HQ in 2010 before Joly came in and it was a disaster working there. Environments would go down and stay down for hours or days. I would come in at 8am and not be able to work until 1 or 2pm. They had such a consistent turn over, they would have 3rd party vendors and have no idea who the contact was or what company actually operated large chunks of their network. They essentially had a 70-80% contract workforce so the code was unbearable to deal with. Nobody cared about how bad the code was, they just cared the site looked nice. The amount of hacks I saw were shocking. Writing a 25 line script to indent an H3 title two spaces? Yeah, that was pretty common.

I left after 8 months. Several of my friends stayed on and noticed how different it was when Joly came on. Several years on, things have gotten significantly better. They've modernized a lot of their apps (even through their website is still clunky and old) and are in the process of revamping their site to a far more modern stack. Joly cleaned house and brought in people who want to modernize their software, and from what I know now, the people who stayed on are a lot happier nowadays.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#4

Post by danielhlockard » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

Best Buy was great the day my GPU died and I needed a new one by the evening. Prices were pretty good.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#5

Post by SteveNuts » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #3

I worked at the Richfield HQ in 2010 before Joly came in and it was a disaster working there. Environments would go down and stay down for hours or days. I would come in at 8am and not be able to work until 1 or 2pm. They had such a consistent turn over, they would have 3rd party vendors and have no idea who the contact was or what company actually operated large chunks of their network. They essentially had a 70-80%…

I was almost hired a few years ago to work on OpenStack at BB HQ, any word on how that project went? I've heard through the grapevine that the project was scrapped.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#6

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

When I go in Best Buy, the only people in there are old Boomers and boy do they love Best Buy and talking to the workers there. That generation has nothing but problems with their devices, it's like a mini game for them.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#7

Post by knuththetruth » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 2:25 PM UTC

seiferteric wrote: post #2

Their prices are not too bad anymore. They usually are about the same as online prices and returns are easier in store, so I have got a few things from Best Buy. Most recently a Macbook for my wife was $50 cheaper in Best Buy vs in the Apple store.

They price match anything sold directly by Amazon and you can get some pretty good open box deals if you know what you want (e.g. people buy and immediately return MacBooks all the time)

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#8

Post by giancarlostoro » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 2:27 PM UTC

seiferteric wrote: post #2

Their prices are not too bad anymore. They usually are about the same as online prices and returns are easier in store, so I have got a few things from Best Buy. Most recently a Macbook for my wife was $50 cheaper in Best Buy vs in the Apple store.

Also they do price match Amazon. I went to buy a Surface Book 2 and they lowered what I was going to pay to whatever Amazons price was.

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#9

Post by taeric » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 2:27 PM UTC

Why should it be dead? Poor management and bad money practices of some other competitors does not mean the retail segment is dead. Just that over leveraged companies are risky. No?

Re: Best Buy Is Thriving in the Age of Amazon

#10

Post by kop316 » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

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 my information so I don't feel like I am being tracked.