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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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Link to the YouTube video in question
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I mean, you got a 2 year extended warranty and free delivery, both of which I’m sure Best Buy charges for.
