Best Buy fails to impress with crucial December sales

US retail giant Best Buy saw sales drop in December, with some wallet-shy customers steering clear of the firm’s stores. The Richfield, Minnesota-based company tried to woo more punters through the door by offering them special holiday discounts. However, it didn’t pay off for Best Buy, which reported a sales dip of 6.5 per …

[Kevin Eastman]

Future Shop

I wonder if the quoted figures for Best Buy include the sales from it's Canadian subsiduary Futrure Shop.

[Timo]

retail for dummies

Best Buy has been going the opposite way of the internet in the past few years. They came in and undercut all of the other shops, eventually driving them out of business. Now they have been raising prices and selling their store label Insignia crap products at what you could buy name-brand equipment at other places like Costco and Walmart etc.

At this point Best Buy is only around to fleece the remaining few people too stupid to understand what the internet is and how to order stuff online.

[James Woods]

jimmy predicted this

Didn't I? :) BestBuy, at least the stores in Western Pennsylvania where I live have never, ever been ran in a sustainable manner. Dating back to when the stores opened and these options were offered: The online ordering was never quick. You would order online, be told to pickup the merchandise then go to the counter to have the associate stare blindly at you as if you had two heads. You then had to wait until the associate could leave the counter to grab the merchandise off the shelf. This happened on so many occasions I just stopped ordering that way. I used the online ordering which I believe offered free or low cost shipping. Catch, the orders typically weren't delivered for 2 weeks.

The computer counters were never staffed or at least not staffed accordingly. A number of my good friends have been sold computer hardware upgrades that were not for their computers and ultimately damaged their hardware. They all said that they told the sales associate exactly what they were trying to upgrade and wanting to sell something they always came home with something and that's good for BestBuy since unless they perform the upgrades in the store you can't blame them for selling you the wrong stuff.

Bestbuy will be joining circuit city shortly and packing up. What's with this "redundancy", this is the first time i've heard this. I wonder if the corporate wigs are all taking cuts, always the little guy getting the shaft, cya bestbuy!