[general8bitso]

Not a fan.

Used to work there during college.

If we didn’t sell enough PSPs (extended warranties), we were not allowed to leave at our scheduled time.

Also, we moved all the laptop inventory to the back of the store, so if a customer wanted to buy a laptop that was in stock, but did not want to purchase an extended warranty, we were instructed to lie to the customer and say it was out-of-stock.

Also, the whole incentivized FBI Geek Squad informant deal was a bit immoral, too, IMHO.

[metasaval]

Just to add my two cents, I worked at a Best Buy Mobile (the ones that were in the mall) for 3 years during college, between 2014-2017.

1. I had no issues with not being allowed to leave on time. Of course we were incentivised to sell GSPs with as many products as possible, I was never not allowed to leave on time if I didn't sell enough.

2. Never had to give up a sale just cause I didn't attach GSP or accessories.

3. Agreed here.

Unfortunately, I think you had bad management. With my manager, I never felt like I had to resort to scummy practices to get decent numbers. And maybe it was a district-wide thing, cause all my friends at other Best Buys (whether big box or mobile), had the same perception.

I still have many friends who work there, and to this day recommend it to people who are looking for a part-time job.

[CalRobert]

Seconded. I worked in the photo department and a woman had damaged the kit lens on a first or second-gen Canon Digital Rebel she'd bought a day or two before (I'm old, OK?). I mentioned offhandedly "we don't carry them but you can find them for about fifty bucks" and my boss was apoplectic that I hadn't pointed out she could -still- get a PSP (bullshit fake warranty) up to 30 days after the purchase for ~$200 and get a lens that way (dubious, since she'd clearly dropped it or similar).

Also, trying to push Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated subscriptions on people who just wanted to buy a damn printer in peace. Not to mention that they bought a $39 printer and a $29 USB cable, then found out that half the time the printer came with a cable.

Horrible place.

[giancarlostoro]

> Also, trying to push Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated subscriptions on people who just wanted to buy a damn printer in peace

I responded a similar comment to the parent comment, but this has never happened to me, must be a specific location or something? Or are these just really old practices I was fortunate enough to avoid? I live in Florida, and have never seen some of these things at Best Buy. The extended warranty has been useful for me in regards to computer monitors, mine went bad, then they refunded me the money, and when the replacement went bad I was refunded the money as well and bought a monitor that outlasted the previous two for a little bit extra (I upgraded from a roughly $160 monitor to a $299 Dell monitor).

[general8bitso]

Were we coworkers?

[jnbiche]

The first few issues sound to me more like poor management in a particular location, rather than a global company policy. However, it could be that company incentives led to this such management initiatives.

[learc83]

The overall company policies were pretty good, but each district was ran like the District Manager's personal fiefdom.

Corporate pretty much let DM's run things the way the wanted and, and most DM's let store General Managers do the same (to a lesser extent). That combined with corporate providing tools to make it easy to drill down into meaningless metrics, and you ended up with employees encouraged to walk low margin customers in some stores, while in other stores that would get you fired.

[anoncoward111]

Really appreciate this insight. This is one of the reasons that I wish corporations died sooner and had less power over the employee.

Employees can provide helpful knowledge to customers in exchange for a wage. The ones who hawk PSP warranties are probably the worst customer advocates, yet aren't the ones being fired....

The helpful employees and loyal customers lose, corporate wins....

[wccrawford]

I've shopped at quite a few Best Buys near me. I used to hate them, until I found a good store. I love shopping there now. They don't pressure about PSPs, they're friendly, available, and knowledgeable, etc.

Whenever I end up at another Best Buy, I'm reminded how much I used to hate them because the others haven't changed.

It sounds like you worked at one of the many bad ones, and that sucks.

[jedimastert]

> Also, we moved all the laptop inventory to the back of the store, so if a customer wanted to buy a laptop that was in stock, but did not want to purchase an extended warranty, we were instructed to lie to the customer and say it was out-of-stock.

So what you're telling me is if they ask me about an extended warranty, say yes then change your mind at the register?

[general8bitso]

So, I believe you can ‘return’ the warranty portion of your purchase a few days after the initial purchase.

One technique was to speak w a manager prior to purchase, and make a deal where the manager, who would discount add-on accessories for the major purchase if you were willing to buy the PSP.

The customer would come back a day later and demand a full refund for the PSP, while keeping their add-on discount.

This did not happen often, though.

[whoopdedo]

The right way to do it is to buy it off the web site and select in-store pickup. Then you don't even have to speak to a salesperson.

[mikeash]

Was it actually better for Best Buy to lose a sale than to sell a laptop without an extended warranty, or was that just a case of bad incentives making the rank-and-file do things that hurt the company?

[learc83]

Bad incentives. Some items were low margin, but almost nothing was so low that it was actually worth losing the sale.

One of the things you were ranked on was PSP (extended warranty, but they beat it into your head never to call it that) attachment percentage. When a measure becomes a target...

Occasionally there was a loss leader sale item, and in those cases if someone wanted to by it without any attachments, it might have made short term financial sense to pretend we didn't have it, but I don't think the company could get away with that on a large scale.

Source: I also worked there during college. First in customer service, then as a Geek Squad supervisor at a new store, and I was sent to training at HQ up in Minnesota.

[mikeash]

Measuring percentage would do it. I’m always amazed that companies can be so boneheaded. You’d think I’d stop being amazed at some point, but no.

[learc83]

My favorite was when we started focusing heavily on close rate. Close rate was just the number of transactions divided by the number of people who walked in the door, so someone proposed that we start breaking up people's purchases into multiple transactions.

I proposed a counter solution--we just move the laser sensor on the door a bit higher, so that short people wouldn't trigger it.

[pionar]

I worked in an electronics store (regional, not Best Buy, and out of business now) in the mid-2000s that had this exact measure.

In my store, on busy days, the manager would occasionally "greet" customers at the door for 10 minutes at a time. Coincidentally, the spot he would choose to stand would block the sensor, so instead of 20 customers coming in in 10 minutes, it looked like only 1 had come in.

[mikeash]

The ingenuity of employees in gaming stupid rules also never ceases to amaze.

[mikeash]

Truly, the mind boggles. Did you ever end up doing anything to improve the close rate?

[scarface74]

Sounds like when I worked at Radio Shack. Not so much with warranties but with names and addresses. We did get a bonus for each extended warranty we sold.

[general8bitso]

I feel your pain.

[bluedino]

A lot of hardware was sold near cost. The accessories and service plans are where the margins are.

The “team meetings” before and after every shift showed you the numbers from the previous day and your goals for the current day.

If your department didn’t hit their numbers, you’d get your hours cut or manager would get canned. Promotions went by how well you could sell, but you weren’t on commission.

They pushed for us to sell 2 black and two color ink cartridges with ink jet printers. Plus two packs of photo paper and two packs of regular paper.

[general8bitso]

Yes, the profit on the laptop was minimal, but the extended warranty considerably boosted profits, as well as provided bonuses for management.

They had a folding table setup at the front of the store w/ a PC running Excel, and every 15 minutes over the PA, each departments percentage of sales with extended warranties were read aloud.

[Spooky23]

Definitely the latter.

The CompUSA I worked in in college was like a scaled down Enron. Bonuses were paid for hitting those percentages, period. At the time (late 90s), BestBuy was better, mostly because they were more diversified.

For constrained product, it makes sense to play some games. You can 10x your margins with the right customer.

[LTL_FTC]

It would just depend. If you could close a laptop with a low margin but attach several high margin accessories management was happy. If the laptop was the only item, your department’s metrics would go down. They kept track of everything including number of items per transaction. Scanning the rewards points cards counted as an item so almost everyone walked away a member at one point.

[jiqiren]

I bought a 5-year warranty @ Best Buy for a laptop back in ~2002. Got the cheapest eMachine sold for writing papers at university.

I had it replaced and/or fixed at least 4 times. Was worth it for me.

[diminoten]

Moving laptops to the back was almost certainly detected by corporate when their laptop sales plummeted for that store. The fact that they didn't do anything about it (if it kept up for more than a week) is on corporate. Entirely detectable.

[general8bitso]

Laptop sales dis not plummet, only laptop sales with no additional add-on items or other purchases in the same transaction ($30 USB cables, etc.)

[giancarlostoro]

> we were instructed to lie to the customer and say it was out-of-stock.

Odd, I never get asked if I want that till after the employees are checking me out. Must be that particular location then maybe? Sad.

[jonny_eh]

"incentivized FBI Geek Squad informant deal"

wat?

[judge2020]

Presumably https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13841504

[general8bitso]

Yes, that is what I was referring to.