Since January 1st of this year I have tried to make several purchases in your stores, almost every time I have left unhappy instead of making a purchase. I'm sure this will probably do no good, I really do want your company to stay around, but you are making it very hard to spend money in your stores. To be open I used to work for BBY until 4 years ago.
The first trip was when we bought a new car for my wife. We wanted a car starter, so we went to the Blaine, MN location (1443). We walked back to the car audio area and waited by the car starters for a while, after about 10 minutes we went to go try to find someone. There were a couple people in the computer department and a couple in the home theater department. None of them were free right away so we waited in the home theater area for about 15 minutes for one to become available. We asked him for help and he bluntly, but professionally, said he didn't know much about them. He said the other guy did though and would let the other guy know we needed help. We went back to the car starters and waited. Another 10 minutes passed and the other guy came over. We said we wanted the car starter that worked with an iphone. He proceeded to read the cards to us, and did not really know anything about the car starters. I called it out and he said that we really should come back in two days and talk to one of the car installers. So we left unhappy. The next day we went to a competitor and bought one and had it installed the following day. Total bill with install and the extra key fob was about $1100.
The next trip was to buy some speakers. I like definitive technology speakers, so I went to the Coon Rapids, MN store, only to find out that they are only at the locations with magnolia. Ok, so I left that store, drove to the Maple Grove, MN store. I went back to the Magnolia area and started looking. I found the speakers I wanted pretty quick and went to find the sales guy. Of course one guy in the area and he was with someone else. SO we waited for about 20 minutes for him to free up. We pointed out which speakers we wanted and he wrote down the SKU number and went to the computer to check it out. He spent a few minutes trying to cold sell me on the service plan, since he didn't bother getting to know me. I shot it down a few times and then he told me what the total was. Before I swiped my card he also let me know they were out of stock, but they would ship for free to the store so I could come back and pick them up when they came in stock in 2-3 weeks. I stopped the transaction and started asking about shipping to my house instead. I was told that I would have to pay for shipping then and that it would be easier to just buy them online instead. So I left unhappy again as I decided that I would order them online at home. I arrived at home and looked online at your site and found the speakers, they were ready to ship in a couple days. Once online I also checked other places including Amazon. They had them in stock also, and they had free shipping, which was pretty sizable on floor speakers. I could not justify the difference in prices based on the shipping charges and you lost out on a $1600 in sales.
The third trip was about a month later and I decided I needed some rear speakers to go with the new front speakers. I remembered seeing which ones I wanted from the last trip. So this time I looked up online to see where they were in stock. Sadly the only location was the Eden Prairie location so I drove across town and showed up to that location. I went into the Magnolia area and of course the one sales guy was busy, so I waited. After a couple minutes he noticed that I was ready to buy and he paged another person to help me. A few minutes later another guy showed up and offered to help me. I told him exactly what I needed and he went to the computer to look it up and got a disappointed face. He said that he was sorry but they were out of stock. I asked about that because they showed in stock online. He said, well that was technically true. They did have one in stock, but not two and they could only be sold in pairs. He did the "we can order it for you" line and said I could have them in about a week. I said no thanks and that I would wait. At which point he mentioned that all of that line were special order only. So I pulled out my iphone and looked on Amazon. Yep they were in stock, and free shipping again. So I placed the order on Amazon and left unhappy again. This time with the mounting brackets, you lost a $400 sale.
Today was just a small purchase but was just as aggravating. I showed up to buy a few movies on blu-ray. I knew the titles I wanted and made my way to the movie area. Within a minute of looking at movies a sales guy walks over and asks how I am doing. I say good, and he asks if I had heard about the special promo going on today only. I said no, and he starts on how he can save me on reducing my cable bill. I asked him what he was talking about, since I was looking at movies. He started asking me questions about who I get my TV service through and wanting to know how much I spend. Each time I said, I was looking at movies and not looking for satellite TV. After several attempts to avoid his questions and ask about movies, I finally had to tell him I was not interested in satellite TV and asked why thought I was since I was shopping for movies. He excused himself and proceeded to try to sell the guy 8 feet away who had been laughing at my encounter. When they were talking, I finally saw that this sales guy was really a DirecTV sales guy. I continued shopping and found 2 of my 3 movies and saw another sales person across the aisle and walked over to ask if he knew if it was in stock. He was an Apple sales person and could not help me, but waved a real employee over. She came right over and asked if she could help. I asked her about the third movie and she went over and looked it up. She told me it was DVD only right now, and walked me over to grab it. We found it and I went up to pay for everything. The cashier tried to hard sell me on scratch protection plans on each of the discs. I said no several times and finally checked out. Upon getting home I noticed my receipt had one of the movies a dollar more than I thought it would be. Being a bit picky I went online to see if I was crazy or actually was overcharged. Turns out I was wrong, and I was charged correctly, but I saw that DVD only movie was actually available on Blu-ray too, but apparently out of stock at the store I was at. So yes you made the sale today, but it will be going back tomorrow.
It was very sad to think back to the number of sales you have lost just from me in roughly 4 months, when in case I went into your stores with the intent to spend that money in your store. But it seems like you are so worried about keeping labor costs down that you have no trained staff, you are so worried about keeping inventory costs down that you have nothing in stock, you are so worried about making the store term sale that you risk the long term customer, and that you want to push the service plans so hard that you forget why us customers came into the stores in the first place. Try instead on hiring more sales staff, training them in the products you sell, and then having them in stock for us to buy. I would gladly pay more to buy a product from a friendly well trained sales person who can help me find the products I want versus fending for myself on Amazon, but the moment you make me fend for myself, price wins.
Ryan-BBY
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