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?
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Reminder that Best Buy used to serve up a different Best Buy website if you were accessing it from their store kiosks. You would see a deal advertised on their site from home, drive to the store, and then they’d feign ignorance and have you try to find the deal again while there.
Edit: yeah, I am derp, the protection plan is part of the cart and is what makes the “member” price higher without the discount. Leaving my original response in case anyone doesn’t know what would be illegal, if it was actually happening here
~~This is, in fact, actively illegal. Companies cannot advertise a “sale price” under a number of circumstances, such as when the price is the same absent the sale (e.g. there’s no actual discount) or when the price was artificially raised just prior to the “sale”: https://content.next.westlaw.com/practical-law/document/I6dfb3ee4077511e89bf099c0ee06c731/Beware-of-the-Sale-Complying-with-Promotional-Pricing-Guidelines~~
In this case, the “regular” or non-member price was raised precisely 0 seconds before applying the uh… “discount”. Pretty cut-and-dry violation by any metric.They gave him a protection plan. The price of the item didn’t change.
And free shipping. I think he would have been charged for delivery on the non-member order. Probably why he didn’t add it.
Unless the item he is buying is one of the “exclusive offers”, then I don’t really see the issue.
Well its really hard to say tbh. Delivery isn’t available in the top section but has a different area code. On the bottom section it’s a different area code but has delivery as an option. Without checking if the top has free delivery without membership when the area code is fixed there’s no way to tell. Some places do offer free shipping on cart values over whatever designation they set.
Looks like they got a free protection plan though
Best Buy and most retailers offer free shipping on items $100 and above most of the time. You just don’t see that until checkout. No special plan needed. It’s to compete with the likes of Amazon.
That’s true, I didn’t notice that it was part of the cart with a (discounted) price. It looked like an optional extra that could be added. Makes the whole thing a nothingburger. Yet again, a derp is me - at least I have a few dozen friends in the same boat this time!
Best buy destroyed their membership about a year ago now, where you only get points if you put it on their credit card, and the amount of points you need to redeem went way up. (Instead of $5 for $250 spent it’s now $5 for seemingly $500 spent).
I tried to shop there while they had their last CEO. he was investing in training, better wages, better stores, more stock, just overall a better experience. Now they have some basic late stage capitalism CEO destroying everything the last CEO built. If you’ve been into a store recently and noticed a decline in quality, that’s why
Fuck em. They don’t care about me as a customer anymore, why should I care about going to them vs a competitor? And trust me, I’m someone who made them wayyyyyy too much money.
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.
I recently went there to buy a basic health watch for Mother’s Day and they didn’t offer it. They only offer it at select stores, even though it’s just small watch with small box. Not a no name brand either, it’s famous for being a working health watch. They also refuse to deliver to my closest store and i had to drive 30 miles to pick it up.
The best i can describe current best buy is a warehouse store. They don’t put effort in the look or placement. PC is next to console games with games content. When I mean games content I mean everything popular in games like Minecraft, lego, etc. No clear understanding of children’s toys vs virtual games. The watch that i was looking for had only a small rectangular case. Not even fill with Apple Watches because Apple is a PC and it’s on PC section. The rectangular display is just Samsung, Gimami and some random brand I never knew. All over the $200 price mark, while the one I wanted is $60 (with current price drop).
I left knowing I shouldn’t visit them physically for anything. It’s just a warehouse now.
Pass on the fridge. I have the same one and it will freeze the ones in the back if you don’t leave a space between the back of the fridge and your drinks. I can only fill it about 2/3 of the way or it doesn’t work very well. I’ve considered adding a fan inside, and I’ve even powered a USB fan off a battery pack and it made a big difference.
Technology connections on YouTube did a video on mini fridges a while back. He focused on the peculiarities of one specific model, but one of the things he did to try addressing some of the issues with uneven cooling was add a fan, and he found that it didn’t really help and made things worse in other ways.
IIRC, the fridge was designed expecting that certain parts would be cooler than others and accounted for that in how the compressor cycled on and off, but with the added airflow those parts stayed warmer than expected so the compressor never shut off.
This fridge very well might be different, and maybe the fan is helping in your case, but you might want to check that video out so you have some things to look out for in case it’s causing other issues that you may not be thinking about.
Link to the YouTube video in question
Only Technology Connections could get me to watch a one hour video about a fridge.
I mean, you got a 2 year extended warranty and free delivery, both of which I’m sure Best Buy charges for.
Yep, that protection plan is $1.49. The real sin here is having the “Original Price” not be an obvious order total, but that’s pretty minor.
You got a free protection plan, according to the image you posted.
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Looks like you might be getting some sort of protection plan thing for free. Check that out. It lists the member price as $0
TIL people still shop at Best Buy.
If you want to get fleeced but still be respected the next morning, shop Monoprice or NewEgg.
Jeez. Best Buy? Just shop like you deserve to be treated like a carpet.
Is Newegg really any better?
Back when they introduced their marketplace, I found an extremely good deal. Thinking it was too good to be true, but cheap enough to say “what the heck,” I bought it anyway. Fast forward a week and I received a completely different item than what was described (no surprise, to be honest) in the listing. Naturally, I reached out to customer service for a refund because the item I received was not as advertised. To my surprise, Newegg refused to refund me the whole amount even though they acknowledged the listing was essentially a scam, so I back charged through my credit card. Then, they banned my account. I had been an avid supporter of the company and built many computers from things purchased there, up until that complete joke of a refund process.
Newegg died the day they sold out way back in the 2010s, screw that horrible customer service.
Wrong question.
Is NewEgg any worse? Too close to call.
Alright, so if those 3 are all bad, then what’s the right answer here?
Micro Center! Unfortunately they can be a little hard to shop with if you don’t live near one. Their inventory for online shopping and shipping is more limited than their in-store stock.
You can still get a deal on occasion at Best Buy, but you have to be careful and you have to be ready to walk away.
I know about Best buy and Newegg but what’s the deal with monoprice?
Yeah….also curious. It’s been a couple of years but when I previously bought stuff from Monoprice it was a smoking deal and I’m pretty certain none of the cables I bought ever failed me.
They were my go to for a long time for good charging cables and dongles. Don’t know what happened with them. I do know they got delisted from online shops.
I’ll still shop there if I can use trade in credit for old tech. But I literally only spend the store credit I get back from old tech. Its usually something that’s several years old and worth like $40-50, and I spend it on something I was planning to buy anyway. I’ve tried reselling that kind of thing on eBay. It doesn’t move because nobody wants a windows 7 computer or an old pair of earbuds from 7 years ago.
I haven’t been to a best by since the local one closed a couple years ago. They closed it do to poor sales and I can see why. Every time you would go there, the shelves weren’t stocked. Things weren’t organized, it was obvious that nobody that worked there gave a fuck so why would I wasn’t to support a business that was in such bad shape. It was common to either not be able to find a single employee to help you with something or they would have 20 people working that would ask if you if you need help every 3 minutes.
i posted about having this experience on reddit a year or two ago and people were pissed? but yeah, empty shelves and barely any employees. it sucks, because i used to enjoy going there to see what’s new.
Omg they raised the original price to create some puny “savings”? That’s scammy AF
That’s not what’s happening.
It is easier to track you with a membership!
Okay, I like physical games and don’t like the whole gamestop meme thing, so I went to Best Buy a few times for games. They didn’t have Pikmin 4 when it came out, and no one there heard of it. I went to Target next door and they had some promo stuff they gave out and the person working the games section was dressed up like Oatchi.
Guess I’ll go to Target for physical releases, not BB.
They’re actually earning the nickname Worst Buy.
Were you doing this from the same IP address? Cause some places check for that kind of thing.
m the same IP address? Cause some places check for that kind of thing.
Yep, didn’t bother playing any games, same IP.
