Mobile Phones & Broadband

[Nokia]

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cougardew wrote:

I don't care what department things fall on.  The CEO or COO are ultimately in charge of EVERYTHING.  They delegate certain tasks to their subordinate but ultimately THEY are in charge.  And YES, I would can these people before the launch.  Most BB have less than 10 phones.  How many employees are they going to need to handle the 10 customers they get?

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But you have BTS coming up very soon. It's a big deal, especially for cell phones.

How do you know these employees were not told by someone higher up to make guarantees? My point is, you can't investigate something like that, and fire that many people without having multiple wrongful termination suits brought against you.

[cougardew]

Maybe termination isn't the answer but some sort of disciplinary action would be appropriate.  He'll, I'd be happy if they got written up for failure to follow corporate rules.  I KNOW they shouldn't be promising customers phones on launch day but the employees don't?  That's managements fault plain as day.  They need to communicate these things.  Maybe the silver lining here is that BB learned something?

[Nokia]

In any retail setting, you'll always have employees that make mistakes. The key is to look for those who continually make them.

Are they upsetting people? Of course. But you have to consider that when you fire someone, in this economy, you may be evicting them from their dwelling or expelling them from their school as well. That's not something to consider lightly.

Of course, it's easy to say "Too bad. They know the rules and they broke them." But it's a horse of a different color when you have to sit there and tell them they are now homeless because they made a mistake.

Find out where the disconnect happened, and perform coaching. Most employees will benefit from it.

[cougardew]

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Nokia wrote:

In any retail setting, you'll always have employees that make mistakes. The key is to look for those who continually make them.

Are they upsetting people? Of course. But you have to consider that when you fire someone, in this economy, you may be evicting them from their dwelling or expelling them from their school as well. That's not something to consider lightly.

Of course, it's easy to say "Too bad. They know the rules and they broke them." But it's a horse of a different color when you have to sit there and tell them they are now homeless because they made a mistake.

Find out where the disconnect happened, and perform coaching. Most employees will benefit from it.

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I don't disagree with that.  I think you're right in that I shouldn't be blaming the floor level employees.  MANAGEMENT, on the other hand, really screwed the pooch on this one.  I'll try and give you a quick example.  I was in the Navy for 4 years.  On one of my first ships some idiot opened the wrong valve completely flooding the engine compartment and effectively "sinking" the ship at port.  The ship didn't "sink" because the water was too shallow as we were at port.  The Captain lost his job and probably never got command of a ship again.  The XO and Chief Engineer also went down with the ship.  Why did these people lose their jobs?  He'll, the CO wasn't even on board when the incident happened.  It was a weekend.  They lost their jobs because they were responsible to make sure that everybody under their command has proper training.  It's their responsibility to make sure some idiot doesn't open a valve and "sink the ship".

[Nokia]

I'd argue that the Navy is a bit more professional than BB, and their jobs are much more important than some 20-something selling someone an iPhone. I don't really think the example translates. I'd expect a lot more out of a seaman then a retail employee getting a bit more than minimum wage.

[cougardew]

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Nokia wrote:

I'd argue that the Navy is a bit more professional than BB, and their jobs are much more important than some 20-something selling someone an iPhone. I don't really think the example translates. I'd expect a lot more out of a seaman then a retail employee getting a bit more than minimum wage.

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That Seaman isn't making much more trust me.  Point taken though.  I would say that there would be nothing wrong with BB striving for that level of professionalism though.

[Nokia]

I think that's an unattainable goal, especially when many of their employees are either HS students, or college students just working there to pay tuition. It's not something they're going to make a career out of. With the Navy, you're there for at least four years. And I would imagine the training is a bit better as well.

[Jacob-BBY Community Web Planner]

I respect everyone's opinion here.  But, this is all I have to say.

This launch doesn't touch Best Buy® logistics.  The phones are sent to our stores directly from Apple.  Apple knows how many 16GB and 32GB each store needs.  Our pre-order success is completely dependent on them.  This may not be acceptable to some of you; but, this is how Apple required it to be.

We have done absolutely everything we can to make sure everyone gets their phone as expected.  Unfortunately, Apple has not met demand.  Now we, as the largest electronics retailer in the world, can be furious about this.  Although, it makes no difference.  Either Apple sends the amount of phones we need, on time, or they don't.  For some stores they did and others they didn't.

I have said time and time again.  Stores should NOT have said you would get a phone on launch.  As this cannot be guaranteed by anyone at our company at all.  If this happened, the GM of your store needs to be made aware of this.  I know most of our stores played by the rules.  It sucks that some didn't.

I truly wish you all get your pre-order!  Thanks for listening. 

[cougardew]

You're making the problems sound like isolated incidents.  I don't know if I agree with your assessment.   from just reading this forum I get the impression that promises were and still ARE being made.  Some people are still reporting White Phones in stock.  Can't BB management control their employees?  My store STILL won't tell me how many phones they got in and what mix they got.  Why the secret?  I have a pre-order and called yesterday morning and was told that they had their inventory and that I would get my phone today.  8 hours after that conversation another employee called and said I was out of luck.  BB management STILL has employees telling customers lies.  I've heard others complain that their BB wont refund gift cards when you yourself have said that we CAN get refunds.  This lack of communication between management, employee and customers IS ALL BB's FAULT.

[JBasco20]

once again the major question still NOT ANSWERED........    JACOB when will Best Buy treat customers with respect and give us a lead time on the phones they tricked us into preordering????????????????????