Best Buy losing its Edge?

Now that Best Buy is ruling the retail technology market after the slow destruction of COMPUSA (now a Systemax company) and Circuit City, I am wondering if they lost their edge? Has the Geek in Geek Squad gone straight to their head? Let me describe to a recent experience at Best Buy and why I would warn any consumer to check their facts before trusting an agent.*

As a technology “geek” myself, I do enjoy a casual stroll through Best Buy if only to check on the latest gadgets and PC prices. This particular time I decided to find out what Best Buy knew about the release of Windows 7 and the probable FREE upgrade program after July 1st.  I walked straight into the Computer Department and as always I was immediately asked if I would like any help, so I said “Just one question, what do you know about the FREE upgrade program for Windows 7?” The black shirt “agent” said that he did not know anything about it because he didn’t know when Windows 7 would be released and also said that it might not come out for 2 years yet.** Now this agent has to be very ignorant and not keeping up with technology news or simply lying to me so that I buy a PC right away instead of waiting for the 7 release. Either way I would never buy a PC from that person.***

So I am not one to just let that go and watch my favorite PC retailer misinform innocent citizens. So I flagged down another “agent” which I had better engagements with in the past. This time I showed him the Microsoft site where it is posted for IT professionals, a release date for Windows 7. He was better than the last guy but still said “Microsoft always pushes it back” and doubted its actual release to even this year. I was honestly appalled at these responses and continued to ask him if he had been testing the software at all, which of course he responded with “No, I use a Mac and don’t even get into Windows anymore.”  YIKES!

Now it has been a few years since I worked in the PC department at Best Buy but when I did, I surely was honest with my customers and always tried to keep up with Technology news, even if it was on my spare time. That was the kind of people that they hired, and most of them were in college working on computer related majors.

Morale of the story: Do a simple Bing or Google search before trusting an “agent”, they may not have YOUR best interest’s in mind.

 

*Geek Squad members are called agents.

**For those of you who aren’t aware of the October 22nd Release Date as spoken from a Microsoft Executive you can read this article to find out more.

***I later overheard him say something like “Macs are for editing…” to some customers, which made me roll my eyes because only an uninformed person would even claim that Macs are “better” for editing never-the-less grouping them in an “editing” category away from PC’s.

Note: http://www.pcworld.com/article/165960/confirmed_windows_7_launches_october_22.html?tk=rel_news