Best Buy Membership "discount"
Best Buy Membership "discount"
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.They gave him a protection plan. The price of the item didn't change.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
Omg they raised the original price to create some puny "savings"? That's scammy AF
That’s not what’s happening.
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.
It is easier to track you with a membership!
They're actually earning the nickname Worst Buy.
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.
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.
Some less tired viewers have correctly pointed out that the "warranty" was added for a price and discounted in the cart, as well as free delivery. Perhaps, if you don't find the UI misleading like I did, this isn't a bad thing.
Greetings fellow Hoosier. The Castleton Best Buy is particularly awful, though I guess the website is not necessarily a reflection on that. Did you check the Micro Center to see if they have what you're looking for?
Microcenter doesn't sell fridges, unfortunately. However, I have been pretty pleased with them since Fry's is out of then picture. That was a rough couple of years.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
You're paying for the privilege of paying them even more money if you want them to build a PC.
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