Those great people were in the "Consultant" position, higher hourly rate and shared pool of company cars to do in home sales. They were all eliminated in the last round of layoffs. They were allowed to apply for the regular jobs but those are all part time and near minimum wage. Nobody with the sales skills their Consultants had would take such a job, or at least would have only taken it for a short time while they get in somewhere else. In SoCal I understand Howard's took most of these "Consultants" on.Romr123 wrote: ↑March 4th, 2024, 8:46 am I went to the Pacific store in Rancho Mirage/Palm Desert a couple years ago (mid COVID--height of supply chain problems) carrying a bagful of dishes to test-fit them into higher-end dishwashers. I had exactly that experience...extraordinarily well prepared folks who were glad to help.
If those people are gone, you're absolutely right---utterly no reason to visit there if there isn't that kind of help. Will either downscale to Lowes/HD/BB or upscale to Perche/Ferguson/Abt. (BTW ended up at Abt after Lowe's cancelled on me...Abt drop-shipped to California within 7 days no muss no fuss. Really a joy to deal with.
I am not sure what the status of Consultants who worked in freestanding Pac Sales buildings is, but Best Buy has been working to close those and move them into existing Best Buy locations as they have done in Costa Mesa, Oceanside, Mission Viejo etc. So if there is still a freestanding Pac Sales with great consultants left, take advantage of it because when they move that into a regular Best Buy store it's just going to be the merchandise that moves and not the high service level.
My last two trips to Best Buy the only person who said a word to me was the LP associate at the door watching cameras. And they don't even check receipts anymore. Pointless.
The C-Suite of this company does not get it. They must give the customer a reason to shop them versus online or a Costco/Walmart/Target/Home Depot/Lowe's. They do not have the best prices. Having the best selection is subject to debate these days, they certainly don't carry every model in every product line anymore. They definitely don't have the best service anymore. And the experience is not the best either with many run-down looking, cluttered, messy, very disorganized stores that manage to have both empty aisles everywhere and product piled in the aisles blocking your path. Yes I am biased but Circuit City ran a superior operation all around versus today's Best Buy, even though their bumbling corporate office made some very poor decisions. They must feel bulletproof because they bring in tens of billions in revenue and make a tidy profit, I find the profit actually excessive based on the gross margins of the core products. But they are going to find themselves out of balance, and soon. Returns alone are the biggest killer in electronics and I have personally seen where a store that delivers over a million dollars a week in sales winds up running at a loss entirely from excessive no-trouble-found (NTF) returns that have to be sold at a loss. Effective service people who ask qualifying questions are the only way to avoid this problem. The fact that they keep having to increase the size of their fleet of "outlet stores" selling NTF items alongside scratch/dent appliances (another preventable loss if you employ competent people) is very telling about the problems within Best Buy. I found they have more people working in the outlet stores than the regular ones, and that is because they're trying to get everyone to buy a costly warranty on everything they sell. Most of the time you're better off just buying new in box at Costco where a warranty is included at no additional cost.
I will say again if there was another nationwide, publicly traded electronics retailer for Wall Street to compare notes with things would be very ugly for their executive committee. This company is running itself into the ground and fast. I could easily see them getting into a place where they are bringing in revenue in the $30 billion a year range (down from the 40s) and actually running at a sizeable loss that pushes them into bankruptcy.