Best Buy Chairman and Founder Resigns Ahead of Schedule 322
lightbox32 writes with the news as carried by MSNBC that "Best Buy's chairman and founder Richard Schulze has announced his resignation from the board of directors Thursday a year ahead of the planned transition at the helm of the struggling retailer. The resignation of Dunn and Schulze come after Best Buy reported a quarterly loss of $1.7 billion after same-store sales dropped 5 percent." This sounds like a bad omen for people who get their electronic fix there. For all its imperfections and limited range, when I'm looking for computer stuff new, at retail, and in person — meaning it's not at the Goodwill and I need it right now — I'm usually glad to be near a Fry's location. What brick-and-mortar stores make sense where you live?
Micro Center (Score:5, Informative)
One good one (Score:4, Informative)
What brick-and-mortar stores make sense where you live?
Not many honestly. We don’t have Fry’s here in Nova Scotia (Atlantic Canada). A basic rundown of the geeky stores in my area:
- The source (basically circuit city/radio shack) go there if you want to have a teenager try to sell you a big screen TV or a high end power cord made by monster cable.
- Future shop (basically best buy but the employees are on commission which makes shopping their support annoying). They are basically the place to go for cables (they have monster cable too... but they also have reasonably priced stuff), memory sticks, or if you really need a hard drive.
Those are the “mainstream” ones. We also have some smaller local shops:
- Greenlyph / robotnik ... small hole in the wall computer shop. Very shallow inventory. Rarely have what you want in stock.. so they have to order it for you. Sometimes worth it to get a case or other heavy item through them.. but for the most part may as well buy online. Greenlyph is also really bad when it comes to getting back to you on parts coming in. They actually lost my business because of this. Very annoying to call for an estimate on when something might be in and finding out it’s been sitting there for 3 days.
- Jentronics – This is the one positive one on the list. Local electronics (resistors, diodes) shop. Great people who know their stuff. More expensive than digikey or mouser... but I still tend to shop their first. This is how you compete with the big online guys. By accepting you can’t beat the prices or selection and focusing on the service. They don’t try to up-sell me there... in fact they’ve down sold me a few times (“that’s overkill.. this would work”). I go there because I _enjoy_ the experience of browsing the isles and talking to the staff there. I avoid future shop because I can’t walk down an isle without 3 commission hungry kids attacking me (and then when I find something.. they want me to check it out immediately so they get credit for it..).
Frys/Microcenter/TigerDirect, **PLEASE** expand... (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Nashville, TN, and the only physical stores we have are Best Buy and Radio Shack. Our former CompUSA franchise was the high-water mark of sophistication before it went under.
Last week my brother and I traveled to San Diego on vacation, and since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to stop by Fry's and see what the hubbub was about. It's the frickin' geek Promised Land. I felt like a 10 year old kid wandering around the starship Enterprise.
Why can't we have nice things too? Atlanta has *2* Fry's, *2* Microcenters, and a TigerDirect. Nashville has precisely bupkis (BestBuy equals zero for any value you plug into it).
MBA's love to cluster because they assume their competitor sees gold in them thar hills and it's harder to be blamed for a bad decision when your competitor is doing it too. But doesn't it make sense to open a store somewhere else, someplace where you would *BE* the market?
Re:I don't go to Fry's often due to their return p (Score:2, Informative)
You only got a refund because the store decided not to fight the chargeback.
Visa, MC, Discover, and Amex rules say a store can have a "no returns" policy as long as a sign is clearly posted.
You were supposed to return the item to the manufacturer.
Re:Geeksquad protection + credit cards (Score:5, Informative)
I did a holiday stint at clothing retailer last year for the discount and to make some holiday cash. Cashier's were required to finagle 11 new emails - that's new, never before collected emails, and 2 approved credit cards per shift. Those that made the goal got to stay on permanently. Those that did not were not offered a permanent position. The store was going to try again with the next batch of temp workers around easter, than again during back to school.
Customer survey scores only mattered if you routinely got negative scores. Bagging well didn't matter. Speed at the register didn't matter, in fact you were encouraged to slow down the line and were trained with all kinds of "countering" sales lines to say to people that declined the credit offer. Going slower gave you more time to work them over. You were supposed to keep trying until the customer firmly said no (basically when they reached the point of being pissed). They even had little charts and tables taped to the cash register so you could quickly estimate they 15/20/25% off so you could tell the customer that even just applying for the store credit card would save them 'x' amount of dollars right now on this purchase. The store talked a lot about advancement opporunity and growth through store provided training, but it was all just sales hype videos.
So don't get mad when they hound you at the register.... their job depends on it. Even if it is exactly the opposite of what you actually want in a retail experience.