So I was shopping with my wife today and I said “oh let’s see if my membership helps out.” So we went and added the same item to each of our carts, and to our surprise, the total was the same! So what is it exactly that I’m paying for in this membership if the items “original price” is higher for me than it is for regular shoppers?
Ya.
I worked there when they launched a membership thing, and it was points to gift cards that got printed on receipt paper in hopes the barcode on the carbon paper would fade before you tried to scan it, not any actual price reduction.
Kind of like how there was all that fine print in the 200 dollar service plan that made it sound like you got more, but it was always just the manufacturer warantee, so if your device qualified for manufacturer warentee, geek squad would give you the cheap out fix, and get the preemo replacements and put them into stock. If the manufacturer warantee didn’t cover it, you were fucked.
Sounds like that was soon after I worked there, Geek Squad agent myself, back in the “Tech Support” days. Always a pain to explain to customers. “No, tech support is only software” “No, black tie protection is only hardware”. But then you hear how sales people are trained to sell it and they’re essentially told to lie, make the sale no matter the cost. Then managers come over and complain that when people talk to me they don’t want to buy it. Yeah, because I tell them what the actual plan covers and what it doesn’t.
I gave them 5 years, they were a great 5 years, I met a ton of friends, it wasn’t a terribly hard job, and I liked the tech. I left about a year after Hubert came in to run the shop, and things went from the lowest stock price to the highest in my tenure thanks to him. It kills me how much corporate has ruined the company, so out of touch with the stores. They were always out of touch, but for a brief time it was nice.
Yup.
I was in the computer sales department.
We were flat out told what the lies were, and how to make them more convincing.
The service contracts were non-refundable, so it didn’t matter.
When a manager caught me helping a retiree get a cheap setup to email her grandkids instead of getting them on a line of credit for a top of the line gaming pc, they didn’t even fire me. They just stopped scheduling me hours and told me to keep coming in to get my schedule.
Picked up a blank schedule for 5 weeks before I stopped going in and I’m sure they filed no call no show paperwork when I didn’t show up for my 1 hour 3 weeks later.
Fuck best buy.
Oh my fuck that stupid fucking horrible credit card. So so so many people they wanted me to push it on who were definitely NOT in the position to have one. If you’re struggling to put together $400 for your kid’s college laptop the last thing you need is some high pressure manager telling you that this credit card will save everything. Just ignore the 29% APR and different ways to try to get you to forego payments and rack up interest as long as possible.
I did sales to start for the first couple of years. For a while I had the best sales in my department. They asked me what I did in a meeting. I told them, I’m honest with people. If someone works in tech, why should I push geek squad services? Get to know them, find out they have a baby, maybe they need accidental instead. Buying a new printer? Fuck the HP, get the brother and an extra ream of paper or something. You’re a single woman living alone, steady job, just want a second computer? Why do you need accidental, but maybe tech support if you willingly tell me you have gotten a lot of viruses before. I sold them what I thought would be most useful to them. Of course you know how that meeting went. “Wait, you aren’t selling cOmPlEtE PaCkAgEz?!” But my sales remained steady so they couldn’t do anything, and then I transferred to geek squad shortly after.
I’m not surprised at all they couldn’t even get the balls together to just fire you, they chickened out.
My first breaking point was the millionth time I was in the printer aisle before open on a Saturday with a manager laying into me for a half hour about how to “squeeze the last of the juice” out of people, and they dropped the “tell them you are an un-comissioned salesperson so you have no reason to take advantage of them, it disarms them, makes them trust you, you can load anything into their cart after you make them believe that” and I had a moment of clarity, and instead of going “Uh huh. Yes sir” I thought “No. I am an un-comissioned salesperson so I have no reason to take advantage of them. End of sentence.”
Genuinely, Best Buy is one of the worst companies on planet earth.
FYI you can claim unemployment when businesses do this to you if you previously been working consistent hours.
My memory is I checked with no intention to actually file, first job lost and all, and Arizona + part time = no unemployment.
Gotta be over 40 a week to qualify.
That’s illegal. They were trying to force you to abandon your job as retaliation. And even if they have no paperwork to the effect a good lawyer would be able to prove it was retaliation. But of course they don’t pay enough for their employees to actually retain a lawyer. Shame, cause the payouts can be really good.
Yup.
I was 17, I was about to graduate high school so it was part time. I was the most reliable department associate, but one of the “weaker” salesmen.
The department was spotless when I was there and the phone always got answered, and I made sure to bag 3 or 4 big sales a week, but I wasn’t out to bleed every poor soul who walked into the department dry. I was more about good service and finding the right solution for each person.
So I got an average of 32 hours a week, well over all the other people in the department, but I was definitely on my way out, and that raging hemorrhoid of a waste of air reaming me out over helping an 80 year old woman who literally showed me her social security check, but assured me she had friends she could get to invite her over for dinner if the computer was too expensive pushed me out.
Its not even like if they fired me I would have gotten unemployment. It was just a petty move from a coward with a micro-peen who couldn’t handle a 17 year old telling them they were a 45 year old failure at life working in a Best Buy for just over minimum wage taking advantage of nice elderly ladies.