This is why I don’t mind giving out my zip. I have to drive 20 miles to get to any sort of electronics store. If my info gives them the motivation to build a store closer to me, I’m all for it. I don’t hate Best Buy, and for some things I’d rather not buy online. Like mice, keyboards, digital cameras and so on - I need to actually see how they feel and work before I decide to buy. I sometimes buy warranties, too - and I have also used them, saving me the aggravation of a) being stuck with a useless piece of $$ electronics, or b) having to ship the item back to the manufacturer, and wasting 4-6 weeks for it to be shipped back. I like the replacement plans; when my laptop’s battery conked out a week and a half after I bought it (and two days before my planned trip where I needed to take it with) I got a quick, easy replacement, no questions asked, no hassle.
You are a corporate dream come true.
You could probably pick up a nice piece of change by offering your DNA for cloning.
Just show me where to sign up.
NO! NO! NO! NO!
We’re supposed to be fighting ignorance, not helping it!!
Ask not what Best Buy can do for you, ask what you can do for Best Buy. :rolleyes:
Oh fuck – now I really have a reason to never, ever give out my zip.
The last thing I want is another fucking big-box store going up next door to me. More traffic. More noise. Holy shit - don’t we have enough ubran sprawl?
SOME of us like a little natural environment left in our neighborhood, thank you very much.
And some of us think that when gas is $2+ a gallon that its worthwhile to have Sprawl Near You. But if you live far enough out in the boonies not to be bothered with sprawl currently, don’t worry about it. You’ll get a WalMart long before BestBuy discovers you. A Home Depot and a Barnes and Noble next. BestBuy doesn’t tend to be the first traffic generating big box retailer to move into a neighborhood. Buy the time BestBuy moves in they are really just mooching off the traffic generated by all the other discount retailers.
My-oh-my. What a good little slave you are. What are you going to do next? Get a chip implant so the government can keep tabs on ya?
Let me guess: You also think it would be a good idea to install cameras on every street corner. Am I correct?
If they had a reason to, sure.
Hey, it might help fight pursesnatching and stuff. And it could aid in disputed automobile accident claims. So sure, I wouldn’t argue against it.
Harumm, not always. In my area, we have a Best Buy but no Home Depot and no Barnes and Noble. However, it’s a wee Best Buy with a Borders Books attached. We don’t really have a lot of other big box retail other than the obvious stuff like Walmart and Target.
I was sort of excited when Best Buy came to town. Then I realized this small Best Buy has crappy selection and crappy prices (Ames is horrible for affortable electronics, video games, etc.). They did have a neat ten percent off everything sale when they opened though. Haven’t been back often since, but when I bought two things that had the extended warranty offered, they only asked once. Reasonable enough.
(My roommate did deal with West Des Moines’ Best Buy regarding an extended warranty, where they out and out lied to him - not an uncommon tactic - after offering it 5+ times. They told him they’d replace it free even if he broke it and it was his fault, or even on purpose. He was really tempted to buy the warranty and break it in front of the lying cashier, and demand a new Game Boy.)
CompUSA employee here. When it comes to warranties, replacements, training, ISP signups, or anything else that I’m required to offer/ask for as an employee, I ask once, and only once. If they say no, I help them get anything else they need, get them up to checkout, and thank them for shopping at my store. If they want more information about the services I’m offering, I answer any questions that they have to help them make their decision.
If they don’t want it, that’s fine with me. Despite what my managers tell me, I’m not about to push something on somebody that they don’t want. I think it’s bad customer service to piss off a customer, even if it’s by continually offering something that I (I as in CompUSA) think that they really need to have.
Oh, they’ll get noticed without a doubt. But it won’t have the effect you’re thinking it will. To tell you everything you really need to know about this, at CompUSA, regional managers and directors get bonuses if all of the stores in their regions have a certain percentage of volume dollars as warranties and replacements.
To expand a little bit further, several times in the store I work at, customers have complained about employees (not me) pushing replacements and AOL signups so hard. The manager told the customer they were sorry, and that it would be taken care of. Said manager then went to the offending employee, and told them to keep up the good job.
I don’t know about Best Buy, but at CompUSA, an employee will NEVER be reprimanded for pushing a warranty or replacement hard enough that it causes customer complaints. They’re only doing their job.
It’s not a “philosophy” that I like that.
cardsfan1975
Ah, OK, so my motivation is to help out other people who have been desperately waiting for a Best Buy to come to them for years.
Well, fuck them, too.
You know, I can understand how some people aren’t irritated by employees asking for personal information. I can totally see how someone could just think, “Eh, it’s annoying, but no big deal,” and just move on with life. I get that. What I don’t get is how, every time one of these threads pops up, there are always a few people who come in to defend the poor little mega-corporation from the bullying attacks of those of us that don’t like their practices. It’s one thing to just go along with them, but something else to actively defend them. That I don’t get so much.
Wow, Spokane must be its own little planet.
We have two Best Buys here and they’re both clean and well-kept, with a pretty good selection. They usually ask me if I want an extended warranty when I buy a big ticket item; I say “no thanks” and we’re done. They never ask for my zip code, but since I pay with my Best Buy card, they probably have it anyway.
But I do have a small gripe. Every time I go there, if I spend any time at all looking at video games, the drones try to sell me a two-week free trial of Netflix and Gamefly. Then I have to stop looking for games, and start explaining how I already use Netflix and I don’t rent console games often enough for Gamefly to be a good deal.
Let me get this straight. Best Buy sells me a DVD player. I don’t tell them my zip code. Because of this, that store’s sales are somehow underrepresented when they look at the numbers?
“Gosh, Jim…your store has sold a million DVD players, but so far as we can tell, your customers don’t live anywhere, so we have no way of measuring the demand in your area. Guess we better close the store.”
Something tells me Best Buy is not this stupid.
This is why you have to (as a customer), make this a pain in the ass for the manager. The manager doesn’t have time to run over to every customer that’s pissed off and apologize because of instructions that he willingly gave his lackeys. So complain about it. Ask to speak to the manager. Insist that the manager assist you instead of the original salesperson.
When I was buying my truck, I got all the way through the negotiations and agreed on a price, and got sent into the finance guy’s office so he could try to sell me a loan and an extended warranty. He let the loan go easily enough (I was pre-financed), but he would simply not give up on the hard-sell for the extended warranty. I got to the point where I told him that if he mentioned it again, I was going to refuse to speak to him any more. When he kept pushing it, I said, “go get your manager. I’m only dealing with him now.” And his (very annoyed) manager came in to help me with the paperwork. As we were going through the paperwork, the original pushy bastard pushed the warranty a few more times, until I finally looked at the manager and said, “make him leave or I will.” It was fucking great. I sincerely hope that manager will tell his team to bring it down a notch to avoid wasting his time babysitting a customer through signing a bunch of paperwork (which the manager didn’t even know the details of, as he had to keep walking out and asking questions of the guy who was no longer allowed in his own office).
Hear, Hear. There actually is some sense in this thread after all. What is so deeply disturbing about giving out your zipcode? I’ve never seen anything like it, pure paranoia that’s what it is. Lighten up!
The evil of the service plan I shall not deny however. But that’s a /pretty much/ global phenomenon, as well as the fact that the salesperson’s salary and the store’s profit relies heavily on them.
Great God Almighty - I can’t believe what I am reading here.
Get the book 1984 by George Orwell and read it.
Or just consider the US citizen who was arrested, publically linked to the Madrid bombings, his reputation ruined, his family subjected to death threats - all because the FBI made a mistake about fingerprints! “Uh, like, sorry dude, we’re sorry we fucked up and now your reputation is mud and everyone who watches CNN thinks your a terrorist. We’re sorry. Hope no one turns vigilante in your neighborhood. Buh-bye”.
The people installing the surveillance cameras and taking down your personal information do not have YOUR interests in mind.
First off, if you are already in Best Buy and already at the cashier making a purchase we know one thing for certain… Best Buy was the best alternative you had for making that purchase at that time. If that BB was closed or didn’t exist, you would have made that purchase at a less ideal location. Therefore, the existance of that particular store is a GOOD thing rather than a BAD thing.
Second, what is it that people have against companies doing simple market research? They do research in order to make more money, of course. They make more money by serving their customers well, by having good selections of product at good prices with stores in the right locations. What could possibly be the downside of helping a store serve you and your community better? I freely use my grocery card and give out zipcodes because I want these stores to serve me better.
Third, caphis’ story of a closed BB is about a low performing store, not a high performing store. A low performing store that draws customers from a very limited area might just be in a bad location, you can’t fix location. If it drew customers from a wide area, there might be a way to make the store more profitable.
Great, but when I go to buy something I want to complete the sale as quickly and efficiently as possible. I don’t want to be interviewed. It’s not a big deal, but it’s annoying. When it gets annoying enough, you think about going elsewhere to a company that values your convenience over their “market research”. I am considering taking more of my business away from Barnes and Noble because I am tired of being hustled for a “discount card” (which I would have to pay for up front) on every single purchase.
If more people resisted this crap companies would catch on and stop it.
I bought my first ever thing at Best Buy a couple of weeks ago. I was prepared to be annoyed, but I was not prepared for their non too sublte subterfuge. I was buying a headset for my computer since I had need of one, where I had never had need for one before. I picked out a cheap one, about $20, and took it up to the cash.
“What happened to your old ones?”
I stared blankly at the cashier, not yet quite understanding what he meant. I was using a brand new credit card, but he couldn’t possibly have known that, could he? “My old what?” I asked tentatively.
“Your old head phones. Did they break? Is that why you’re buying new ones.”
I may be slow, but I clued in. This was the extended warranty pitch. “I don’t have old ones. This is the first time I’ve bought a headset.”
Cashier guy looked visibly crushed but tries again.
“Did you know you could get an extended replacement warranty on those, so that if they’re ever broken they’ll be replaced free of charge?”
“Yes.”
“Great, so I don’t need to tell you all the details. Bla blah blah blah while he tells me the details blah blah blah blah blah. Would you like me to add that to your purchase?”
“No.”
“But blah blah blah blah blah details blah blah blah blah.”
The guy behind me in line for this one and only cashier walks away from the large television he’s waiting to purchase and out the door.
“Blah blah blah blah blah blah details. Are you sure you’re not interested?”
“I’m very sure. And also very annoyed at it taking 15 minutes to buy a $20 headset. Though, not as annoyed, apparently as the guy behind me who just walked out on a several hundred dollar purchase while you tried to sell me $1.50 worth of insurance on a $20 headset. Now please, just ring up the sale and let me leave.”
And finally, he did.