Posts by e4tmyl33t 6 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Mar 2008
I'm sorry, what?
I used to work for Best Buy here in the States, and I never received any sort of 9-week training course. Neither, I recall, did anyone in the store I was in. It was more along the lines of 1 day of watching the mandatory corporate videos and filling out paperwork, then 2 or 3 days of 'shadowing' someone on the floor and not doing any interacting while I learned the register and internal systems, and then a boot going "Hey, go sell crap now!"
I can definitely say that there is nicotine delivered. I've been using an e-cig exclusively for almost 6 months now and it is definitely delivering nicotine, possibly better than an actual cigarette ever did.
I'm just saddened at all the BS the US is going through because of these devices. I'm glad the US Supreme Court ruled that the FDA has no regulatory authority of them.
I've seen Flexplay discs at a local Choice gas station/cigarette dealer. They usually run for about 4 dollars or so, and do exactly this. 48 hours and they're gone. I've never really gone for it, because if there's a movie I want to see, I'm usually going to just buy the disk anyway.
Mine's the one with the DVD reciept in the pocket.
Honestly? I think you've got one of our bad stores in your area. Yes, I've read the Consumerist stories (and I have my own gripes about my company) but I find them horribly biased and half of them seem like setups designed just to get a negative reaction that can be posted.
That being said, I'm going to let everyone in on a bit of Best Buy training that I'd bet half the employees that people complain about tend to ignore in favor of that "big sale".
We aren't on commission. We advertise that a lot. Our job is not to sell you a computer because we sell computers, it's to sell you a computer that will do what YOU want it to do. Our training tells us that we need to find out what's going to be done with the machine, and by who, and make recommendations based on this. I'd bet that 99% of the Consumerist stories (that aren't based on targeting the Geek Squad agents who obviously shouldn't be Agents) have hit an employee who, like a lot of employees in our company, just don't give a rat's arse.
As for the small talk, yes, we are actually encouraged to do this. Our management has this thing where we HAVE to contact EVERYONE who comes in our store/department, whether they need our help or not. It's partially an anti-theft thing (Hey, how you doin, I know you're here, don't try nothin), but it's partially a customer service thing (Hey, I know you're here, if you need help, let me know kinda thing).
The thing is, it's retail. Half the employees don't care about the store or the company because they aren't getting paid enough to do so. Hell, I make more than most people on the sales floor because of my time in the Geek Squad, and I can't really afford to even live on my own (being a full-time sales associate who doesn't go to school). Just like any other retail job, you can't really live off it unless you're management.
Which is where the other half of the problems in our company come up. Management is trained to hound the hell out of our employees to offer EVERYTHING that we can with EVERY sale. Whether we know you need it or not, we have to. Just to increase the chance of someone going "Oh, I didn't know I needed that, yeah, I'll get it." So we routinely offer hundreds, if not THOUSANDS, of dollars worth of stuff with ANY computer purchase (not to mention TVs and other departments) because either A) You really do need what we're talking about, and if you actually KNOW what we're talking about, so much the better, or B) Our managers have been on our asses the last few days and we're tired of getting yelled at.
I see this all the time across the company, and even in my own store. I try my damndest to make sure that I only get what you need, not what I want you to get, but I also make sure I let you know what else you might not have known you would need with it (i.e. security software that properly works with Vista, proper cables, etc.). I try to play the good guy when it comes to companies like this. Unfortunately, I'm still stuck in retail hell.
As a US Best Buy employee, I can see where Tom might have been coming from, but calling the police was a ridiculous move. If the customer was getting violent or abusive, THEN I can see calling them in, but having him escorted out by officers just because he recommended against something? If I was the initial employee who overheard it, I probably would have just stepped in to help even out the problem and recommend a different product. I've done it in the past, and I work in both Geek Squad for repair and the Computer sales section.
Mind you, I agree with the customer on this one. The Jawbone sucks royally. I stick with Motorola bluetooth headsets myself.
Well, I for one have seen my fair share of virus removals, having worked for the US Geek Squad for a while. It is a bugger to get rid of, and because it LOOKS like actual anti-malware software, so many people get suckered in by it. A lot of the antispyware utilities out there can't even weed out everything installed by the WinAnti* crowd of crapware, they just get most of it and then catch whatever tries to reinstall each time it does.
I am glad that they finally can get rid of this one (hopefully for good!)
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