When I went to price match the customer service for a price match, they first lied to me about not being allowed to price match gift cards. I had a copy of their polices which states they will do so.

After waiting around for 20 minutes they notified me that they could not meet the price match as the price match cost would cause them to lose money.

After some forward and back negotiating they offered me a $285 price cut. I found that unacceptable and decided not to pursue it any further.

Just like a retailer tries to make as much $$$ as they can a consumer has the right to save as much $$$ as we can.

I’m Canadian so I have the Bestbuy and Futureshop sceneros. Same company as BB owns FS. Anyways I wanted a game that was listed in FS as 39.99 but at BB it was 59.99. All I did was bring the game upto the cashier and without proof told her FS price to my amazement I got the price match without any confirmation and walked out with the game even cheaper than FS as BB pm’d 110%.

There is a success story.

Also you can price match online prices in some instances but the price match will include any shipping charges so say an item is

99.99 online w/ 7.99 shipping

now say said item in store is

102.99

the price match will not go through for 99.99 because w/ shipping the total is 106.99 and the instore price is 102.99 already beating the price.

Say insted of the instore price being 102.99 its 119.99 then the price match for 106.99 would be met.

You win some you lose some but arguing about a PM only wastes everyones time

In response to service plans being a huge rip… I work in the Geek Squad and have for years. There is a very different experience customers have with and without the extended plans. My store sells maybe 10-15 notebooks a day. We get about 5-7 broken notebooks a day that are no longer covered under the manufacturers warranty, about half of which do have a plan. Of course, some of them need multiple repairs over their life and most people never have an issue. So when you look at the general case, yes, we do make money on the service plans. However that doesn’t mean it’s still not a value to the customer. That would be the same thing as saying “hey, don’t get duped into buying car insurance or homeowner’s insurance. Those companies exist solely to make money!” Well, no crap. All companies exist to make money. That doesn’t mean they purposefully provide a bad experience. Insurance is about making a small amount of money and providing peace of mind and affordable payments for the ‘what it’.

So, sure, don’t spend the extra money on the service plan for your tv. That’s your choice. In the event that you get a power surge or the circuit board fails, or whatever else may happen just remember you chose to force yourself to buy a new tv. Sure, it won’t happen every time. It won’t even happen most of the time. That’s why the plan isn’t the same cost as the tv. Also, yes there is some pressure put on sales people to OFFER service plans and services. However, they are not on commission and their job and hours are not dependent on selling those (which is why Best Buy got where it did). We are going to coach the employees on selling them though because that is one of the few places where we can marginally increase profits (or get out from a loss on ad-item notebooks). Also despite what all of these websites say, many of those options ARE good for many of our customers.

That’s what irks me most about these dredge articles and the people who post on them is that it’s a bunch of tech geeks out to demonize the industry. Well, like it or not you aren’t our most numerous or our best customers. Of course we will take care of you the best we can, but the customers we get most often are the same customers who find value in our services. That’s the customers we cater too, those that expect extra service. Just remember, if you don’t find value in something it doesn’t mean that it’s worthless.

Last note about the actual pricing of inventory. If you spend a dollar in a retail establishment, that place has to turn around and buy that item, pay the credit card fee, pay the cashier, pay the sales person who helped you find your item, pay the inventory person who stocked and priced it, pay the truck driver who delivered it, pay for the truck itself, pay for the distribution center, pay rent, utilities, supplies, cleaning crew, property tax, etc. In the end a retail store is doing well if they have two pennies to rub together. Three is doing extremely well. Then of course, we turn around and pay tax. Having ‘$300′ profit on a TV, is most certainly NOT $300 all said and done.

Thanks,
-Eric

Oddly enough, I think that the demise of Circuit City has put Best Buy is a position where it’s only competing with itself and it doesn’t really know how to do that very well.

I’ve bought 4 HDTVs from Best Buy in the last 3 months (I’m a TV Geek) and the service was good. Then again, I only came in to buy what I needed and get out.

The last time I went in was over the weekend to pickup a 42V4100 for $799. The sales guy told me at first that it “wasn’t in stock.” What he didn’t realize is that I had already spoken to someone who told me to ask else first who told me that they were. I think these employees just don’t care. They don’t care enough to give good service, they don’t care enough to follow the rules, they don’t care to treat people correctly. Of course, I’m not talking about all of them, but with such a high turnover rate — I’m speak about a lot of them.