Yeah, I pretty much rolled my eyes when I saw them roll out with the new 3D TV setup sku’s. I even asked the installer who set one up if he had to do anything different with a 3D than a regular one. Of course he said no, it was more or less the same. My only defense for Best Buy is that the 3D TV setups cost no more than the regular ones. The adds are also made months in advance, and the ones the publish the information are usually poorly informed. My assumption was Best Buy rolled out with the special “3D installs” to pre-empt the possibility of needing to do anything special with the 3D TVs, which turned out not to be the case.

Overall I don’t think it’s as bad as hdguru makes it out to be, as the price for a 3D TV setup is no different than a non 3D (though they do have different install skus). At the same rate I do agree it’s horribly deceptive to make up things that would need to be done for a jobs scope of work. I blame it on a lack of actual understanding of the products from the morons who make our ad.

I’ve always liked walking into Best Buy, even if just to browse and see what the new stuff is. A few years back I actually did vow to boycott them and curse their name loudly and oftenly. They’d refused to refund on a scanner I’d bought just days before that didn’t work – it also had a broken piece bouncing around inside of it, and the thing had cost $150. Eventually though, I went back in and bought something again after a while.

As with all retailers, “mileage may vary,” and the folks there are just folks. Last year they worked at maybe Circuit City; before that, Radio Shack, before that, delivering the news, one porch at a time. There are jerks and sweethearts everywhere. Company policies are a bit less forgiveable sometimes, but there aren’t many other stores like Best Buy that offer the specific aura of electronica that they do. Life has tough spots all throughout, but most of the time I’ve noticed that their employees offer reasonable best efforts. I’ve realized I’ll keep eating steaks even if I get a bad one once in a while.

Well said, however, the fact remains that imbellishment is no new tactic. Companies have been doing it for years. Best Buy is well aware that technology scares people some times (obviously no one who comes to this site). So, can you blame them for capitolizing on every possible cent that they can even if it means to play to some people’s fear. I mean come on, I bet the last date most of you single guys have been on you had to invoke some sort of emotional response in order for her to say yes. It’s easy to knock on the top guy I guess.

I recently had a problem like this in a local computer shop. I gave the guy credit for having at least enthusiast knowledge of the new netbooks out there and asked him how he felt the performance of the graphics in the N450 Atom processor based systems were. He immediately told me that the N450 was “evolution instead of revolution” and that is was the same graphics as the previous chips. When I pointed out (kindly in order not to break his ego) that the N450 integrated a graphics core licensed from another company into the CPU core, bypassing the DMI architecture, allowing a wider bus for communications and possibly higher performance RAM access, and that previous versions included either lesser versions of this core, or Intel designed graphics instead, it didn’t seem to matter to him. As far as he was concerned, he was the expert and was right.

I would not have bothered asking him if I wasn’t hoping to educate myself in the process, after all, I spend my days producing the broadcasting hardware used for transmitting these live 3D TV signals. I have a lot of other types of reading and experimentation to do with my own time. Therefore, I depended on the guy at the store to have invested his time in learning the technology. I was highly disappointed. Of course, if he did have the education to understand the specifications of bus architectures, memory access technologies, etc…, I’d imagine he’d have a different job than selling computers.

That being said, $150 for some guy to drive to your house with your TV and Blu-Ray player, then plug it in, setup the channels, hide the cables, etc… is really not a bad deal. Figure the drive costs money and time. Tools cost money, etc… The actual profit from the $150 is probably 50% for best buy when all is said and done, and that’s just business. What is an issue is deceptive business practices. Making things up to make things sound more complicated than they are in order to attract customers that otherwise would have ordered online is misleading and opportunistic.

Best Buy and online retailers have managed to put most other consumer electronic stores out of business, the average consumer such as the ones you were referring to earlier are left with little choice but to go to Best Buy to receive “expert advice” for purchasing their home electronics. Sadly, all these stunts which Best Buy pulls to drum up more business is causing so much bad press that many consumers walk into the store expecting to be screwed but recognize they have no alternatives.

As a Best Buy employee, do you personally feel comfortable with the reputation that Best Buy has been establishing for itself? Instead of defending the organization, and making a fool of yourself “proving your expertise” while spewing made up numbers, wouldn’t it be better to say something like “I don’t do this. When the customer gets to the store, I tell them the truth instead.” or “If someone asks me what ‘syncing the 3D glasses’ means, then I tell them ‘I’m sorry, it was someone in the marketing department who misunderstood something, installing this system really isn’t any more complicated than installing any other one’”.

IP was created for the internet (well technically originally implemented in the ARPANET in its later years), it just happened to work so well that it replaced other protocols, IPX, NetBIOS, LANMan, etc in the intranet or LAN environment.

Now if you’d like we can get into the details of MAN, PAN, WAN, etc….but I don’t think you guys can handle that.