Best Buy’s Secrets for Thriving in the Amazon Age (2017)

In my experience, no other category is so heavily gamed by shady marketplace sellers on Amazon than electronics. Search for wireless headphones on both Amazon and Best Buy and it’s night and day what you see returned. I’m bullish on Best Buy simply because it’s not a free-for-all of cheap foreign knockoffs.<p>Retail of yesteryear might stand a chance because employing buyers who actually curate merchandise to be sold will become a value add again.

Not a fan.<p>Used to work there during college.<p>If we didn’t sell enough PSPs (extended warranties), we were not allowed to leave at our scheduled time.<p>Also, we moved all the laptop inventory to the back of the store, so if a customer wanted to buy a laptop that was in stock, but did not want to purchase an extended warranty, we were instructed to lie to the customer and say it was out-of-stock.<p>Also, the whole incentivized FBI Geek Squad informant deal was a bit immoral, too, IMHO.

Lately I prefer to shop at Best Buy over amazon. I have a couple nearby, so picking something up at the store is more amenable to impulse and instant gratification. It’s also fun to take a lap around a play with some stuff.<p>Besides that, the prices are competitive, not that it matters because they price match. Sometimes you can score a deal on open box items, which are conveniently listed on their site. Returning something to BB has been painless. I recently returned a monitor <i>without</i> the box for a full refund. I’d at least have had to find a box, pack, and ship that at my own expense w&#x2F; amazon which is a huge hassle.<p>Prime’s 2 day shipping on nearly anything is great but more than a few times I’ve had things lost in the mail. Amazon waits 3-5 days PAST the delivery date to consider it lost while you wait in limbo, and then you have to restart the order. It’s really frustrating if you need the thing quickly and it ends up taking more than double what it should to arrive. IME Amazon is not generous in compensating for these inconveniences.

Sometimes you want to actually check something out before you buy it and that&#x27;s the value that a Best Buy can provide that Amazon can&#x27;t.<p>Recently I am needing to replace my failing 15 year old color laser printer and I&#x27;ve been trying to find a local store that has them models I&#x27;m researching in stock (want to print Tabloid for woodworking drawings - so not a large number of stocked options).<p>Both Staples and Office Depot had the printers, but none of them had ink in them and the store managers refused to install ink. This was frustrating because I wasted easily 2 hours between both stores waiting for the manager to even be available.<p>Best Buy had only 1 printer model but it had ink cartridges installed at least, but had no paper. A store associate helped fix that, but apparently the printer wasn&#x27;t printing with black despite showing it had black ink. The associate kept wanting to demonstrate the printer not by printing a nice mixed content page but by copying a sales tag.<p>Needless to say I haven&#x27;t been able to get print samples from any local retail establishment and I&#x27;d pay (reasonably) more than Amazon prices to get an good idea of the output quality before buying plus the instant gratification of being able to take a new printer home immediately. Hell since it&#x27;s an ink jet I&#x27;d probably even buy the PSP&#x2F;Extended Warranty without a fight.<p>All of these retail business are blowing their primary advantage by not having well working demo units available.<p>I may still end up buying from Best Buy or Staples but only because I can return to the store instead of having to ship back and pay for that return shipping like with Amazon.

I worked retail for over 5 years before starting my tech career and I’ve been a big advocate for Best Buy over the last couple of years as I’ve watched their in-store experience improve. At my local store the service is always awesome, they accept returns without a hassle, and I can order stuff online and they usually have it ready in less than hour. Their staff once spent over two hours with me resolving an issue and not once were they jerks about it.<p>I’ve been considering dumping my Prime account and one of the reasons I’d feel confident doing so has been my good experiences with Best Buy as of late.

If Best Buy ever closes, I will be very sad. It&#x27;s one of the last standing bastions where I can go see electronics in person, purchase them, and then return them for an immediate refund (if something is wrong). The fact that they price match Amazon is key. I will pretty much always buy at Best Buy if I can, because I can get the item on the same day, for the same price as Amazon, and still get all of the conveniences offered by a retail store.

I recently wanted a very specific model of TV, and after 15 minutes of price checking I found the it was noticeably cheaper (about 10%) at best buy than anywhere else. Picking it up was a breeze. I&#x27;d suggest price checking at best buy.<p>A few months later I bought a second TV and it was best priced at frys. It&#x27;s funny how these things go.

The article says Best Buy didn&#x27;t have to layoff employees. But why would they ever? Retail has a high turnover rate already. All they had to do was not hire replacements when people left on their own. Or hire a part-time worker when a full-timer quits.<p>Is there any national retailer other than Walmart that has not been forced to reduce their labor budget as a response to Amazon? None that I&#x27;ve looked into.

BestBuy is a step down from frys, which is itself a depressing experience.<p>Poor inventory, mislabeled items, disinterested staff.<p>I happily shop with New Egg simply because of they stood up to patent trolls: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2017&#x2F;07&#x2F;newegg-fought-its-way-through-two-appeals-to-win-fees-from-this-patent-holder&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2017&#x2F;07&#x2F;newegg-fought-it...</a>

The secret to Best Buy is that you can play with things. Unfortunately I think they have kind of dropped the ball on this one. When I visit Best Buy, I often see empty product spaces, demo products that do not work, wires just dangling from a hole. This is not the Best Buy of my childhood where you went and could get your hands on things, really get to play around and know what you’re buying. I would never buy a 52 inch LED TV off of Amazon, but I would definitely buy it at Best Buy because I can actually see it. The secret to Best Buy is that you can play with things. When I visit Best Buy, I often see empty product spaces, demo products that do not work, wires just dangling from a hole. This is not the best spy of my childhood where you went and could get your hands on things, really get to play around and know what you’re buying. I would never buy a 52 inch LED TV off of Amazon, but I would definitely buy it at Best Buy because I can actually see it. They will even put your favorite DVD or Blu-ray if you bring it

BestBuy&#x27;s shipping was far better than Amazon&#x27;s in my experience. BestBuy always used to offer 2 day shipping for me and sometimes even deliver in a day for the same price as Amazon. In the case of Amazon, from 2012 to 2014, they used to ship fast. I place an order, it get shipped within 24 hours and I would get it in 2-3 days. But something changed in 2014. I noticed that my order would stay in &#x27;preparing for shipment&#x27; for upto 5 days before they actually ship it. I assumed either that was Amazon&#x27;s way of pressuring me to get Prime or their algorithms labelled me a low value customer. After 2 bad customer experiences and loss of trust due to the risk of getting fake products, I moved onto other retailers.<p>I once bought a laptop from BestBuy. It was over $2k. I came home, unpacked it and to my horror, there was a scratch. I immediately went back and BestBuy gave me a new one. In the case of Amazon, I ordered a furniture. They shipped the wrong color. Since I didn&#x27;t want to deal with the hazzle of returning, I asked Amazon to give me the price difference (the color I got was cheaper than what I ordered). No. The only option Amazon gave me was return it and order again. Had to wait for another 10 days to get my color.<p>I came back to India and ordered a surge protector from Amazon. The item I got was not only poorly packaged, it looked like Amazon just shipped me something that someone else returned. It still had a previous shipping label (though I couldn&#x27;t read it), was very badly packed with cello tape, and the plastic body had somehow got the green color from the Belkins packing. Thankfully, Amazon refunded me and I found it cheaper in a local store.

I&#x27;ve always preferred Best Buy to Amazon for electronics (and I definitely do my fair share of Amazon purchasing).<p>Recently, I bought my MacBook there. I also purchased a gaming headset from there.<p>I think the main thing is - what if I get my headset out of the box and one ear has no sound - easy fix with Best Buy. Same with the MacBook. In fact - I actually ended up returning my original MacBook to Best Buy within 14 days of purchasing it to get a slightly upgraded model - no questions asked, nothing lost but about an hour of time.<p>As other posters have mentioned, there&#x27;s also the &#x27;knock-off&#x27; chance on Amazon as well (or at least me, the general, uninformed consumer thinks that there is). I can&#x27;t be certain that even Apple-branded products from Amazon are actually Apple products. But at Best Buy, my assumption is they are legit Apple products.

They price match Amazon which is really no secret, it’s just hard to do since they have more overhead.

We buy all our appliances from Best Buy so I&#x27;d hate to lose them like we lost Circuit City. CC&#x27;s decision to ditch appliances was their downfall, IMO. As for buying electronics from BB, it&#x27;s a checkered history for me. I&#x27;ve bought a MacBook Air cheaply there and our current LCD TV was 300$ there. When I last bought a PC laptop there 12 years ago trying to get out of the shop without extended warranty was a nightmare. I eventually &#x27;won&#x27; by saying it was a gift and the new owner will run Linux (to escape the Geek Squad tax). Altogether, BB is not a happy place to buy a Windows laptop although things may have changed but I doubt it.

I&#x27;m on my third year of owning two Tiles: One pre-2018 Mate and one Slim. As usual, it came time to replace them, and Tile&#x27;s reTile program doesn&#x27;t offer a one-mate-plus-one-slim option (the closest is a two-plus-two). So, I got one through reTile, and the other by heading over to Best Buy. I didn&#x27;t even consider buying it on Amazon.<p>Another time, I needed a 3.5mm headphone to Bluetooth transmitter for my Nintendo Switch. I checked Fry&#x27;s, Central Computer, and Best Buy; Best Buy had it, so I got it from there.<p>In both cases, the choice was partially convenience, and partially not wanting another box (or padded envelope) being used up.

I&#x27;ve had no success with Best Buy recently. They never have quite what I want. Here are some recent examples:<p>An HD capable portable radio. (ended up buying Sangean HDR-16 from Amazon)<p>A keyboard synthesizer (I know they carried these in the past).<p>I upgraded three car stereos and they didn&#x27;t have anything I wanted in stock. (Ended up buying one from Amazon and two from Crutchfield).<p>An unlocked Samsung cell phone. They did not have the lower cost &quot;J&quot; ones (this was a year ago- even now on their website I see that only a few stores display them). I think we ended up buying from Microcenter- we are very lucky to live near one.

I actually started going back to Best Buy for the first time in 10 years probably. I was pleasantly surprised at the prices. What is even better was I was allowed to test the mouse, TV, and headphones I wanted to buy!

Bloomberg covered this phenomenon back in 2018. The article generated 446 comments on HN.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17566164" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=17566164</a>

I wonder who buys dvd&#x2F;bluray anymore... after netflix.

I used to be concerned about Best Buy, until I realized they price match amazon, now I just go there if I need (want) something same day.