Best Buy worker here, and honestly I can attest to a lot of these problems here. Starting with customer service, at least at the time of writing, my store and many others are severely short staffed, so it can take up to 20 minutes for an individual to get help. Not surprising when you have 15+ customers and one or two sales reps in the same department. Plus if we need to walk to get product for a customer, it's almost guaranteed that someone else will stop us on the way. As for training, there is none lmao. For each department we receive very, very basic training. Think along the lines of "the cpu is the brain of the computer. Someone who does professional work may need a faster one than someone who just checks email". We don't get any training regarding any specific products or their use cases. No one gets knowledge on the different features of computers, how they are tailored to different users with different needs, how different CPUs affect performance and heat output, why the cheap plastic POS computer with a mechanical HDD and a 15 year old design isn't a good purchase just because it has an i7, etc. In my store there are really only 4 guys who are really knowledgeable on computers. One of them isn't very honest and just sells whatever makes the customer shut up, along with spending waaaaaay too much time and effor selling BestBuy services. The other guy is part time and gets very easily annoyed by customers. I'm part time as well, leaving only one full time guy and one part time guy for the whole store who actually know about computers and are willing to genuinely help. And yes, we do have a lot of pressure to sell stuff like extended warranties and our Total tech subscription. Personally, I offer it, but if the customer says no, then they said no and I won't pressure them.

@keithb6344

Жыл бұрын

I ran the computer department at BB 15-20 years ago. I transferred to a new store and on my first day I had about 10 customers waiting to yell at me. Employees were telling customers the store was out of computers that the customers could clearly see on the shelf. After some digging I learned that stores manager had told staff to walk any customer not buying an extended warranty. After fighting that for a few weeks, I quit.

@wookiology859

Жыл бұрын

Someone isn’t doing their e-learnings lol

@kount4

Жыл бұрын

Good story, man. Hopefully my best buy works out (if I ever work there).

@fancypants5782

Жыл бұрын

@@LLIMITthere is no incentive to do the e-learnings when you won’t get paid for doing them or receive a promotion

@shortyplayz3995

Жыл бұрын

Still No excuse to not recommend the “Best” for the customer.

I had A+ service at best buy last month when I walked in asking for specific model. The sales rep said they were “out of stock”. I showed the website that said 2 were available for pickup. He then rolled his eyes and said they are probably in the back. He stared at me for a couple seconds before I followed up with “could I get one of those”. He was clearly annoyed that he had to go to the back but 10 minutes later he came back with the computer.

@HearMeLearn

Жыл бұрын

stuff like that is why I would never go anywhere other than microcenter for physical computer stuff purchases

@wcanard2894

Жыл бұрын

A+ for lack of effort

@ViXoZuDo

Жыл бұрын

100% sure that the deal was that good that someone was probably hiding them for themselves...

@SnuggleLabes

Жыл бұрын

“A+ service after having to ask the guy to do his job and he reluctantly did so”

@sunbleachedangel

Жыл бұрын

lmao, that's just so brilliant

I feel like the employee telling them to try other stores was actually their way of saying "We don't have anything good that you can buy today in your price point." That's pretty much confirmed by them saying to buy a more expensive one and 'hope' it goes on sale, they might have checked RSS and saw something he couldn't outright say, and to order one on back-order. It seems like they tried to get the best option for you, but with your criteria it didn't work.

@incumbentvinyl9291

Жыл бұрын

I can't believe they said that. They seemed to have better options, and one of the recommendations didn't even have PCs for sale apparently.

@incumbentvinyl9291

Жыл бұрын

@@sirballs5622 Then why specify information, falsely no less? Tell them that they could try their luck elsewhere if the current stock does not satisfy them. That's all you need to say.

I used to work in sales at Best Buy and that “come back for the sale price” thing is almost 100% legit (I knew someone who would occasionally stretch the truth but that’s a major outlier). The point is to lock a transaction that day, while you’re in the store, but knowing an upcoming sale price is happening, they’ll easily backprice it for you. The employee gets the benefit of making a hefty sale, but doesn’t get dinged down the line (when the sale price match happens) as a refund normally would. This is often only recommended when a product-specific sale is coming up within a week or two.

@matthew3948

Жыл бұрын

How long do you have after you buy it?

@Jeff_in_3D

Жыл бұрын

@@matthew3948 depends on the return window/sale window.

That tip about the return window was legit! "Hope it goes on sale" is code phrase for "I checked RSS and a couple other back end tools and this is definitely going on sale soon, but I don't want to risk my job by telling you that so I'm going to toe the line by letting you know about our price matching". I look for deals like that all the time. Usually you can get a pretty good come up if you know the sales patterns.

@spearhead1657

Жыл бұрын

I worked at Best Buy (Geek Squad) for 2 years and have never heard anything about being able to see future sales. Can you actually do that?

@AA-ix2es

Жыл бұрын

@@spearhead1657 did you work in inventory? There are several back end programs that give you sales window information and a few other pieces of data (RSS mainly, if I recall correctly). Also, I'm not sure if they're still sending sales brochures with COVID and all that, but those usually get to the store two weeks in advance and the inventory team sets them aside in a specific area of the warehouse. If you look at both of those, you can get a good idea of what's up. Another tip in case you didn't know about it: search Best Buy HR for "pay grade calculator" and you'll find out what they are able to pay you within your pay bracket 🙂 knowing this information is usually the difference between $17/hr and $19/hr. You can also set alerts up to notify your work email of new openings with the company specific to a pay grade/wage too. I apologize if that isn't specific enough 😅 I work in the field as a Home Theater installer now and my inventory associate skills are a little rusty. Edit: just saw you were in Geek Squad like me!

@spearhead1657

Жыл бұрын

@@AA-ix2es I did know about the pay grade calculator. When I left I was actually an ARA and making more than some of the supervisors in my store lol. I don't recall there being any sales brochures or anything like that that I know of. Im still on as seasonal, but haven't worked a shift in a couple months. The job got me started in my career. Thanks to it I have my A+ and am now a district tech at my local school district. Working on my Net+ and then Sec+ with the goal of finding something new over the summer

@AA-ix2es

Жыл бұрын

@@spearhead1657 that sounds pretty legit 🙂 I've used the tuition reimbursement to help cover some credits towards my psychology degree, but I'm getting to the point where it's hard to justify certain classes as being directly related to my employment 😅 I was in my store earlier today and the inventory crew showed me some PDFs of the upcoming brochures that they have access to. Not sure that I have clearance to see them on my account, but the info is definitely there.

_But you know who isn’t dumb? Our sponsor!_

@Jett_Jain

Жыл бұрын

Linus better heart this comment

@Gokul_Yt

Жыл бұрын

Msi. Sometimes feels that way

@keatonmontgomery1523

Жыл бұрын

GLASSWIRE!

@blez5418

Жыл бұрын

Aboba

@im-deepfriedwater

Жыл бұрын

they trained us well

Worked 9yrs in a Sony Centre and while it wasn't the best job in the world by any stretch of the imagination, it wasn't bad. Sony's sales philosophy was match the customer to the product and if they want extended warranty, there it is but don't ram it down their throats 🙂 I lasted all of 4 months in Currys PC World before I walked out! They honestly do not care what you buy or if it's actually a good fit for you and your budget as long as you buy the warranty and take it on BNPL! Largest single sale I had in there was worth just over £20k. It was an old customer of mine from Sony days and he owns a couple of hotels. He drove over 100 miles to come to me. I got 2 written warnings for that sale. Same day it happened I was pulled because I should have passed him to the business team... even though he'd only deal with me and the manager knew this because the customer specifically told him this when the manager tried to butt in during the sale. The next day pulled into the office again for the 2nd warning and this time it was because I didn't sell warranties with the over 20 TV's the dude bought along with cables, mounts and stands. I walked the next week and my customer cancelled the order and got his money back before they could deliver 😂

@FamousWolfe

Жыл бұрын

Some people really do hate money lol. Good on you for getting in the last laugh.

@Voltaic_Fire

Жыл бұрын

You did good, management were clearly money hating idiots.

@christianfoghsrensen5744

Жыл бұрын

I agree! I have never gotten service like in a Sony Center. The only place where people actually know their stuff, even though I still knew more about some of the products, but that's a given at this point, when you study tech as much as me apparently. However, I had a good chat with them, they actually care about their products, and we spoke for so long about their different products and the future. it was genuinely cozy.

@MoA-Reload...

Жыл бұрын

@@christianfoghsrensen5744 in the UK at least the vast majority of Sony Centres are franchised so most are family owned type businesses. The company that owned the franchise I was in was a family business that had been operating in N Ireland for over 50yrs doing furniture and white goods. They moved into home gift, bridal and electronics and got the Sony franchise. Those sort of businesses still want sales ppl on the floor obviously but they also want repeat custom and all the customers friends so far less inclined to screw the customer over just to bag a few extras ringing through the till. Might not always be the cheapest but sometimes that little extra cust service is well worth it.

@TechyBen

Жыл бұрын

@@FamousWolfe They do. They probably only made a couple of hundred, perhaps thousand tops on those TV anc cable sales. Why, if they instead sold those 15K of tvs to two customers for 30K with "warranties", they'd make twice as much money! Basically if they are not making the biggest scam profit margin ever they don't want the customer!

I needed a PC during the shortage last year when my PC was dying. I ended up getting a Ibuypower with a ryzen 3600, B550 board, 2060 RTX, and an SSD. I upgraded 100 into it for 2 more fans, a 980 1 tb M2, and 16 gb more of memory for a total of $1050. At the time nothing was even close to that price and even though it was a gen older video card it was going for 2/3 the price of the whole PC. They did a good job and I have been very happy.

@2oqh

Жыл бұрын

Dual GPUs?

@sinepnam

Жыл бұрын

I got a similar set up on marketplace in march for $750

@cheetahfurry9107

Жыл бұрын

@@2oqh Oops brain did not work. Fixed!

@cheetahfurry9107

Жыл бұрын

@@sinepnam I got mine in November 2021. I would not have except for the laptop I had was dying. I was trying to wait it out. It's been great so far. The I paid 950 for the base but added the SSD and memory and fans on sales.

@incumbentvinyl9291

Жыл бұрын

@@cheetahfurry9107 There was a similar build with a 2060 RTX GPU for sale for 749€ in the first half of 2021. But yes, the GPU shortage was a bitch.

I worked at Best Buy for most of 2018. Reps are *barely* trained - I got lucky because im already active in this space, but my coworkers had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. The only thing we were ever told is ALWAYS try to sell them the most expensive model first. It doesn't matter what they tell you they want or need, your metrics are what matters. I quit on the spot during black friday after getting yelled at for selling a budget laptop for basic word processing to a mother who stated that was *exactly* what she wanted. moral of the story, ignore every single Best Buy rep that tries to speak to you ;)

@skayhitdalotto453

Жыл бұрын

you a real one for that , cheers

@Jet-ij9zc

Жыл бұрын

I worked at bestbuy Canada for a year and half (geeksquad) and it's crazy how different our experience can be depending on the managers, in the store I was the customer surveys (aka customer satisfaction) took priority over everything else, to the point where they'd rather we send the customers to an other store that has exactly what they need/can help them instead of selling them a service they won't be satisfied with. A good example is whenever we got an apple related issue that we didn't know how to or couldn't reasonably fix, we referred them to the only Apple certified repair store in our area instead of charging them for a mediocre job. (We can fix any Apple issue but not in-store so it cost a lot more which we feel bad about and try to prevent)

@localchoom

Жыл бұрын

@@Jet-ij9zc yeah this is my experience working for Best Buy as well. Always some bad apples but as long as management is good there seems to be a distinct difference.

@themandalorian996

Жыл бұрын

You are awesome for doing that. It's why I never buy anything tech related at these big tech stores, because for one, I know my tech fairly well and because they'll try to sell me on something I don't want or need

@sync0000

Жыл бұрын

Weird, I wasn't trained like this at all when I worked there. In fact, we were lectured on the value of selling what's right for the company. Guess this must be an American thing

I made the mistake of wearing a blue shirt and khaki pants in best buy and was confused why people kept asking me questions. I thought they were all just friendly and I looks like I knew stuff....I think I helped more than the actual emplyees

@th00perman_

Жыл бұрын

I work right next door to a Best Buy, and while on break I went there. Our uniform is also blue. I was confused because this lady was asking me all these questions about gaming products. I helped her anyways, I didn't want to be rude.

@shinaikouka

Жыл бұрын

You'll run into the same problem if you wear a red shit with khakis in Target. 😋

@anarfox

Жыл бұрын

This reminds me of the Improv Everywhere Best Buy prank.

@cionheart

Жыл бұрын

Remembers me of that one time I entered IKEA in a yellow shirt.

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

You think highly of yourself and are probably wrong... you'd usually be less helpful.

I went to Best Buy like a week ago and there were barely any staff in the store. The normal registers weren’t even open so everyone had to be checked out in customer service. Felt like a business on its death bed.

@DerangedFetus

Жыл бұрын

Lots of stores got rid of “customer service” and it’s all just at checkout now

@katser5023

Жыл бұрын

Kind of hate going to my best buy too for that reason. Takes forever for you to check out now.

@marklindhurst462

Жыл бұрын

@@katser5023 I work at customer service- we're trying our best. Checking out can take a while upfront bc we do a lot of different tasks in addition to checkout. Also since we're in the "slow season" rn they've cut us down to one person to work the front of the store.

@amunago080

Жыл бұрын

It's not the deathbed, its just another January atleast when you left the comment.

@n646n

Жыл бұрын

Not even close to its death bed lmao, hundreds of people

I remember going into PC World (our best buy kinda) and looking at the prebuilts and some guy prob a kids dad looked confused while looking all the gaming PCs and i decided to help him which resulted in an hour of helping random people to the point the manager asked if I wanted a job there kinda wish I said yes at the time but he praised me in helping the customers because he honestly said "i have no clue about computers" and said he gets anxiety and people ask him for help and tbh i understand that the average person won't know much unless they learned it themselves even the store reps.

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

And then everybody clapped...

@FamousWolfe

Жыл бұрын

Dude you probably could've negotiated a better wage as well, being the resident tech expert etc. Ah well, hindsight is 20/20 as they say.

@Lizlodude

Жыл бұрын

This was me at Radioshack as a kid lol. I probably helped more people than the staff whenever I was in there and have gotten jobs from them. Amazing what happens when you hire people who actually care and don't treat them like crap...

@neilg97

Жыл бұрын

Our local Currys PC Word store is TERRIBLE! Great if you want a TV white goods or a Mac, but I'd never ever dream of buying a PC (not even a laptop) from there.

@FunBoy77

Жыл бұрын

r/thathappened

Linus referring to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve F1 track in Montreal as "Vancouver's" might be the thing that gets him canceled after all. 'Twas a good run while it lasted lol

@TetraSky

Жыл бұрын

While that might be what is displayed on the screen behind him, it doesn't mean that this is what was run for the benchmark itself.

@zedex26

Жыл бұрын

@@TetraSky There isn't a "Vancouver" track in F1 22... There's a Canadian GP track, which is Montreal.

@latinodollar

Жыл бұрын

It's Joever.

@DillandShaj

Жыл бұрын

Came here just for this lmao

@mokujin4076

Жыл бұрын

look who wrote for this video... possibly a probation writer.. but the most shocking thing is this video passed QC by the QC person. 👍

Working tech in retail is so incredibly toxic. Selling a machine without a warranty will give you a "talking to" from your manager to figure out what you did wrong with your sales pitch. Sell too many devices without a warranty and youll be moved off the sales floor onto register or other department. Most of the time when it becomes clear a customer is not interested in a warranty the sales person will try to deter you into purchasing a machine at a different store, ignore you hoping youll get fed up and leave or try to make you believe they dont have the model youre looking for/the machine you want wont meet your needs. The reason the salesman wanted her to purchase it and return it later for a better deal is because the return will come off of his sales, and as long as he isnt the one to do the repurchase next time, the repurchase wont count against him.

@griffinwhite4164

Жыл бұрын

As a Bestbuy employee this is 100% true

@flamedarkflare

Жыл бұрын

Haven't had this issue at may store, we don't really care about warranties at all and just care about credit cards

@OtakuboyT

Жыл бұрын

This is why I changed to library IT.

@animefreak5757

Жыл бұрын

@Netzero except that's not how corporate metrics are used. The manager is the one who's going to get yelled at if he didn't sell enough warranties.

@griffinwhite4164

Жыл бұрын

@Netzero Unfortunately it is the case, you’re goal as salesmen is to keep you’re efficiency ( average number of products you sell without warranty ) under 6000$ and if you have more then that you can kiss you’re job goodbye in most cases.

Best buy worker here, since amazon is taking a lot of the sales no days people think they can have their cake and eat it too. The store is not the thriving place it once was, if you need help don't expect someone to walk up to you, go to a register and ask. Not enough employees anymore to swarm you like back in the 2000s.

@xsnkaubdinxjs

Жыл бұрын

hey I have warranty on a prebuilt pc but no box? do you think they’ll still accept it? the box was water damaged so was thrown away. still have receipt with warranty

There's nothing wrong with getting a prebuild, aslong as it gives you the option to work on and swap parts in the future. There's alot of pretty decent prebuilds that just need a little more memory

When I worked at best buy, we were trained to do these EXACT things. Get people credit cards, get people warranties, get people total tech support. The expected "basket" (or items we should add on to the original sale) was 10-20% of the item sale.

@thelizardwizard3172

Жыл бұрын

Absolutely true. I work there right now and it's less about basket items nowadays and simple warranties. However, we've changed a lot to where we aren't as pushy anymore.

@jimmydandy9364

Жыл бұрын

The extended warranties offered by stores are the biggest fraud out there - The companies providing the warranties will always find excuses NOT to repair or replace - LOTS of exclusions, charges for diagnostics, deductibles, or you will end up getting a refurbished / used item or shoddy repair or a refund of heavily depreciated value. One would have to be totally clueless to deal with Best Buy, first of all Best Buy online marketplace is a cesspool of fraud sellers and scammers, and Best Buy is not doing anything about it. Best Buy's tech brand is abysmal at best, and the sales / service totally clueless in stores. Try returning an item at Best Buy the process is difficult. Lot of open boxes on shelves, used porudcts sold. They claim they identify open boxes, but not all.

@profosist

Жыл бұрын

Yes you are told to sell those things because those are the things that make the company money the computer doesn't make the money check your employee discount that is their Cost Plus 10%, now look at how much they pay you per hour that's not covering the cost of you selling it

@jimmydandy9364

Жыл бұрын

@@profosist BestBuy is a crummy company and I stopped buying there a long time ago - I would definitely not work there either, they are pushing their sales people to sell GARBAGE basically and a totally deceptive warranty plan.

@profosist

Жыл бұрын

@@jimmydandy9364 so is Amazon a good company also somebody who's used the warranties I wouldn't say they're deceptive as long as you read what they are beforehand far better than the random square trade s*** and some sites offer

Ex BBY employee here and I love that you are calling them out. A lot of their tactics are only questionable but secretly really shady.

@profosist

Жыл бұрын

That's literally just retail as someone who's worked that for many years that many different employers Best Buy is one of the better ones want some scum take a look at GameStop

@HotdogSosage

Жыл бұрын

I don't really understand the comparison they made in the video though. Why are they comparing the 1k custom build to a cheaper pre built? Is it pre built meant to somehow be better for less? It's weird

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

@@HotdogSosage Because making a video isn't about telling the truth as much as it is about shock value and entertainment to get views. Linus is also selling you something and his goal is to get the most clicks possible. You rarely get a story that is all good things because that doesn't sell well. Everybody wants something from you and they will position their product as best as they can to get that thing from you and will even be shady to do it.

@profosist

Жыл бұрын

@@HotdogSosage the person selling them the system did not take full advantage of their budget

@HotdogSosage

Жыл бұрын

@@profosist true, but they also didn't spend that much in the end. Its not apples - apples. They're directly comparing a cheaper pc. They should have mentioned that the sale was poor but then compared the similarly budgeted pc instead. The entire pc comparison section of this video is a waste of time and is almost a strawman argument

I think I’m lucky. I bought a prebuilt from Best Buy in the summer that was pretty similar to those Acer PCs with a 3060 in them. Mine looks great, performs great, and I only got it for around 1200 dollars. At the time, the gpu I got with it was going for 800, so it was the best bang for my buck at the time. I’ve had no regrets, but I also understand that my purchase was very circumstantial.

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

And so was the one linus did...

@FamousWolfe

Жыл бұрын

Helped a friend of mine buy a new gaming PC last year, I ended up sending her through BestBuy as well. She paid only $1100 but that was during the GPU shortage etc, honestly the build should've been priced closer to $900 but oh well. She was happy that she could play all the latest games and stream them on her Twitch lol.

@chancefreely

Жыл бұрын

@@FamousWolfe yeah it was just the cheapest option at the time. I looked into building my own since that’s what all my techie friends recommended as being cheaper, but since the gpu market was hot garbage, buying a prebuilt ended up being cheaper.

@MsHojat

Жыл бұрын

Wow. That sounds more than just "best bang for buck" sounds like big discount over manually building a system based on what's on sale and/or the best buy.

@chancefreely

Жыл бұрын

@@MsHojat yeah 100%. It just worked out pretty magically

The odd thing is that, I have bought items from Best Buy and and the next week the price went even lower.

@tamparockout17

Жыл бұрын

From Best Buy I got a desktop with a 3080, 12700k, 1tb SSD, 32gb 3600mhz ram, 850w gold PSU, full tower, z690 wifi board, 240mm AIO. I couldn't build this on PC Parts Picker for less than $1750. Got this for $1500. Price before black Friday dropped and I went back and got a price adjustment to drop it down to $1250. Hell of a deal. Ibuypower, so large builder, but no issues and no bloat ware. Only gripe was a gen 3 SSD, but so what. Then again, I watched prices for almost a year and a half before jumping on this when it went from $2,200 to $1,500. And believe me, I take advantage of their price adjustment windows all the time. Got a Sonos arc for $200 off after it went on sale. Samsung g50 monitor got a $100 price adjustment Xm4s for $250 after an 80 drop Buy smart, and you'll be fine.

@BMWWolf

Жыл бұрын

Electronics get cheaper at a fairly rapid rate relative to other consumer goods

@MrMarioski

Жыл бұрын

You can always go back an show them the price drop. They should be able to match within 2weeks (return period)

@maxxclarke5995

Жыл бұрын

Same

@ZycL0n33

Жыл бұрын

@@tamparockout17 I bought the Acer Orion 5000. It is possible to beat the 2k I paid for it, but not by very much. A week or two before I bought it, BestBuy was selling it for 1.8k. It gets really hard to beat that price. P.S. Now that the holiday price match window has closed (closed on 1/14/2023) the price has dropped to 1849.99 gahhhhhhh!!!!!!!! Edit: Upon further review, that is for the one with the 3070, I have the 3080

Don't give them too much crap over the warranty upsell, their jobs literally depend on that. Part of the reason I quit Best buy is the hours I worked for directly tied into how many warranties I could hock to customers even if they didn't need it. A manager straight up told me they were sending me home early every day because I didn't sell enough warranties. Apparently I wasn't worth the near minimum wage paycheck.

@cesarreyes809

Жыл бұрын

That sucks dude good thing I didn't apply there.

@arandomcommenter412

Жыл бұрын

My god, retail workers get the worst huh.

@laurencefraser

Жыл бұрын

@@arandomcommenter412 Well, they have competition for first place in that department, but they're definitely in the running for it, yeah.

I work at a Best Buy right now as an experience IT guy, I did my training in the PC section and was there for about a week. I didn't sell as many warranties and memberships as they wanted and so I got moved to the registers. The guys who work in PC aren't as experienced as I am with the tech stuff and so when they have a specific question they'll come and ask me at the front, which is really funny for me. More then once I've had customers ask why the PC guys ask me for help if I'm just the front cashier, and I have to explain that I am a professionally certified technician in the IT space and that management determined that I should be working in the front instead.

@jsnotlout3312

Жыл бұрын

This is so dumb, Best buy needs a new CEO like now.

Hey, a bit of feedback: while the comparison with the diy build in the same budget is useful to see how much performance you're missing out on with a certain budget, I think it'd be useful too to include a diy build of a similar price as the store-bought pc (though ideally this wouldn't be necessary when the store-bought pc is at (or at least close to) the budget). That way there is a sense of bang for the buck, as 'obviously' a 1000$ pc will be faster than an 800$ one. It would be more apples to apples.

@EobardThawne_RF

6 ай бұрын

i got the same pc brand new for 583 dollers

It would be interesting to see how Best Buy would do if thrown into the Secret Shopper gauntlet. Even more interesting would be Micro Center, a semi-regular sponsor (or at least used to be) and widely regarded as the gold standard for anything PC, especially since they sell pre-builts but can also build custom PCs.

Only time I've gotten a gaming prebuilt from Best Buy I ordered it from their website and picked it up at a store. I would've built my own computer but it was so much cheaper to get a prebuilt with a 3080 (or any other good GPU) at the time and was the easiest way to avoid paying scalpers.

@dailybantam

Жыл бұрын

Yup same here

@TheGeekAndTheCaveman

Жыл бұрын

Same

@benwu7980

Жыл бұрын

c19 scalping price, and going for a prebuilt was a valid approach for that reason. That some places were matching / bundling some terrible products with the main desired item (gpu) is a different, but also real issue too.

@EtanChamare

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, in the middle of the GPU shortage Best Buy had some great deals. I got a prebuilt with an AMD 6800 XT for less than the MSRP of all the parts combined. Since it was my first PC it was clearly the best option. Nowhere else I checked online came even close.

@wooonerf3195

Жыл бұрын

Same. Except mine was from Dell. Had to pick up new coolers and fans but it ended up being alright for how often I play games

As a former Best Buy employee, my guess was that the salesman saved the $200 from the budget, hoping that peripherals would be bought, because that’s where the profit really comes from. I worked in the video game and home theater department back in the day, but money wasn’t made on TVs or gaming systems, it was made on all the wires, controllers, speakers, etc.

@UranTCG

Жыл бұрын

There are very few high margin PC gaming peripherals. It's mostly the cables and store brand products. I think he understood her budget to be $1k CAD not $1k US.

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

@@UranTCG Which being in canada is a pretty safe assumption. But this whole video is about selling outrage for eyeballs on the screen so linus can make money for views for his sponsors and youtube sponsors. This is all about selling you a product and nobody seems to understand that.

Whoever was in charge of the close up b-roll for this video, chefs kiss. Fantastic quality

I’ve had my 2070 super and i79700f pre built for years from I buy power. It still can run the games that I like to play at max settings and can do some pretty great ray tracing. I have no regrets from buying it at Best Buy.

Many of the other comments with their experiences working at Best Buy resonate with my experience there, too. The sales team I joined when I worked at the Computers department (before they made everyone "Sales Specialists" as opposed to being trained for specific departments) was very solid. Most of us were knowledgeable with specs, there was usually 3-5 of us scheduled at all times, and we were coordinated with managing customers. Despite that, I was not given in person training about the actual computers that we sell, but rather the credit card and services we sell. The training in the product came in the form of e-learnings, and after having to do 15-20 e-learnings in a given day, anyone would eventually just rush through it so they can get on the sales floor, thinking they'll just learn about that from our leaders. Obviously, that didn't really happen, but in our area, we were luckier to have many customers that didn't have complex needs and wouldn't need much questioning to wing it and find a product they liked. For the more complex customers, my team was knowledgeable enough over time to learn what to ask and what to recommend. Nowadays, I work at Geek Squad, and the stark difference in our sales team is unnerving. I've seen old people (65+) check in a $1600 laptop for us to setup, and we learn that they wanted us to "transfer their facebook, their emails, and their banking". I've seen $400 laptops checked in and they want us to get steam installed during the setup process and ask us if their device is "good enough to play the new COD". And most of the time, these are clients that were sold this from our sales team only minutes prior. Overall, the quality of Best Buy has degraded significantly over the years from all their downsizing, outsourcing, and focus to their online market. They cut most departments down and no longer have people dedicated to a single department. Where you would used to see 3-4 people in blue shirts at our Home Theatre, now you'd be lucky to see 1 person who's available to help you. It's been an issue for over a year, and it seems like no change is coming anytime soon. TL:DR- Don't go to Best Buy without doing your own research. Don't expect help within 5 minutes of entering a department. If you know what you want, order it for pickup. Don't get mad at the employees, they are barely more knowledgeable than you and likely spread thin.

@profosist

Жыл бұрын

It's been an issue since the virus when they found out they could run a whole store with 20 people and still make 80 to 90% of the revenue people cost a lot of money

@aseed89

Жыл бұрын

How much u get paid at geek squad

@rickyking300

Жыл бұрын

@@aseed89 I'm in PA, I am currently at $17.50 an hour

Former Best Buy employee here. Best Buy in the 2010's was honestly pretty solid. Most employees were trained on a specific section of the store (I was PC so you would almost never see me in Home Theater or Appliances unless they it was an emergency and they just needed a warm body to stall with customers), the price match was good, and there were plenty of employees available. But at the end of 2019 a new CEO took over and she absolutely gutted the stores. Slashed hours, cut jobs that were important, and started pushing the services (Best Buy Card and the dreaded Total Tech Support) over the actual products that customers wanted. I left right after Covid started but things got even worse after that. So likely you got an employee who knew nothing but the basics of PC's but was the first person to wander over. It's a shame too because Best Buy was finally fully investing in PC parts and become a decent replacement for people who don't have a Microcenter near them. I built my last PC entirely from parts we sold in the store and it was a good value even without the discount.

@joecool4656

Жыл бұрын

Current BB employee. The staff cutting got worse. Around the end of summer 2022 they basically banned overtime and about halved the amount of staff here. It is a much more fast paced experience now. I’m lucky to have survived the hour cuts though

I had this exact same pre-built, I ended up getting it in the Covid days because I wanted a PC and I got a pretty good deal on it. I believe I only payed around $600. And while yes it ran pretty good, it could play basically everything I wanted and I could stream on it overall it wasn't that great, the cooling performance was horrible and often times I ran into thermal issues with the CPU. Also it was pretty loud underload. I'm happy I sold it and finally built my own custom PC now that prices are a lot lower.

Lol why do I like these videos so much… i guess that’s why you guys put one out every year

7:32 ah yes, the famous Vancouver F1 circuit, just a short drive away in Montreal 😂

Used to be a retail supervisor at a store over here in California. Back when I was originally hired as Microsoft vendor provided labor, all entry level associates were sent out for multi day training, and bombarded with elearnings that took honestly weeks to finish. By the time my end came at Best Buy, Best Buy had cut all of those programs drastically. The off site trainings stopped, the vendors stopped getting involved providing their own supplementary training materials/swag, and due to the employee shortage, it was hard to hire people and give them time to train at all, it was necessary from Best Buy’s point of view to give them point of sale access and throw them on the sales floor ASAP. That’s why I left- as a hard working salesperson who was at the very top of the company in terms of metrics (997 stores and god knows how many employees in 2019) by 2022 being promoted to leadership I quickly realized I was not armed with the “tools” to effectively guide my team of employees. In fact, I didn’t even have a viable team of employees. They all dropped like flies like everyone else during the great resignation. As did I. My pay was great, and I was always well taken care of, but dealing with the usual retail workspace politics, unreliable workforce, and worst of all, the absolutely egregious customer base (Watched my assistant store manager get bear maced by a guy that stole all the MacBooks off the table and ran out, causing the store to close for the day and everyone in the store was coughing because it went thru the AC) made it no longer a worthy use of my time. Linus, blame upper Best Buy management for this. I promise, it’s always their fault.

@profosist

Жыл бұрын

Literally always upper Management's fault they may step foot in a store every once in awhile but that's about it

omg i was so worried about the $1000 build i put together because thats a decent amount to me, but then linus's build was super similar to mine which gives me tons of confidence that i did a good job picking parts!

This whole month had really good deals on nicely configured gaming laptops at Best Buy and Micro Center so for those types of machines it's worth it for people to go to brick and mortar stores.

The price protection thing is legit. Got a partial refund of about $330 from a laptop that went on sale a week later.

@TechnoBabble

Жыл бұрын

Except there's literally no guarantee that it is going to drop in price. Most people don't deal in luck when it comes to their money.

@Lexlugr

Жыл бұрын

I think the weird issue is relying on it as if the price drop would be a sure thing, not necessarily the salesman bringing it up

@accelement3499

Жыл бұрын

credit cards have free price protection

@UranTCG

Жыл бұрын

@@Lexlugr Yeah it's one thing to cite price protection for people having trouble committing to a purchase in a season with a lot of intermittent sales (all of November) and another thing entirely to say roll the dice and go over budget.

@TheSens_

Жыл бұрын

@@Lexlugr Working there. if the price dropped during black friday. It's 100% dropping during boxing day. Might be that

Hey there! I've been using the HOTO Compressed Air Capsule for a while now, and it's been a game-changer for keeping my desktop and peripherals clean. The vacuum power is impressive, and the blowing feature is great for dusting off my keyboard. Plus, it's super portable and has versatile accessories. Definitely worth considering for optimizing your desktop setup!

I will state that the hardest stipulation on the list was the instock. Constant supply chain issues and very high demand have made it very difficult to keep more budget friendly gaming pc’s on store shelves, readily available. Also, you did give two very big advantages to the custom built that easily allowed for it to be a better value. First was the aspect of being readily available. With building a PC, most people are going to need to order some part or another for the build. This luxury was not given to the store bought, as I’m sure that there were many better options that could have been available for order. The other aspect is the building of the unit. Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean someone else can. A first time gaming PC buyer is probably not going to want to build their own.. or if they do it could take them days to do so. Even experienced builders, putting a PC together, installing the OS and drivers, and making sure that everything is 100% could be an all day affair. This is time and money the manufacturer spent to pre-build the PC. They could subtract $100 from the price and just send the parts, like how furniture manufacturers do now.

I used to work at a best buy. I can promise they usually have to account for the warranty when a customer gives their estimated budget. Best buy's not actually making much on the big sales themselves if they don't sell any of that, and most of the mark-up is on stuff like cables and phone/tablet cases. I rare bothered upselling myself unless somebody specifically asked about it, its a pain in the ass to explain and not usually worth it for anybody who knows what they're doing since geek squad is another problem altogether. Another problem, at least back then, was that most of our towers and laptops would be best buy specific OEM models with barely any documentation available to know what was inside of it at a glance. It'd say like i3/5/7, the amount of ram and the hdd size and that's about it. CPU clock speed? dunno, ram specs? dunno, hdd rpm or ssd r/w speeds? dunno, GPU? dunno. Anytime I had somebody come in who really knew what they were talking about I'd just send them to a better store or offer to help build something since best buy simply did not cater to those customers at the time. My store didn't even have GPUs.

@shanez1215

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, it's the Amazon issue of oversimplifying crucial details that they assume won't matter. The listing will have something like "Storage: 1TB". Is that a hard drive, SATA SSD, NVMe? DRAM cache? TLC or QLC? Etc.

@xzp7

Жыл бұрын

LOL im the 70th like i just cant be 69

@Finnedquill6918

Жыл бұрын

Its the same approach at Staples where they make more off the services and addons over the machine

@ConstantPS3

Жыл бұрын

@@Finnedquill6918 this is so accurate. I work at staples and the other day a ~300 laptop sold for almost $600 once the support bundle was added on...

@jamesworth3378

Жыл бұрын

You guys didn't have MRI?

As a former BBY employee: this is 100% the fault of Corrie Barry and corporate. I guarantee you the reason he was hesitant to sell, is he was worried about his membership efficiency. That’s all the company cares about these days, and salesmen get chewed out if their membership efficiency is too high, regardless of how much money they make for the store. In my last year there, I saw people turn $2000 sales to other stores, because that sale didn’t have a credit card or totaltech attached to it, and they didn’t want management yapping to them about their efficiency. In my four years, I watched the company go from encouraging people to focus on being knowledgeable salesman that focus on taking care of the customer, to chewing people out for making $10000 sales because they didn’t have a credit card attached to it

@oglcn11

Жыл бұрын

What? Best Buy gives credit card? How does that work exactly? Asking as a non-US person

@Ph03nix1

Жыл бұрын

@@oglcn11 most retailers have deals with banks to offer store credit cards, in Best Buy’s case Citibank. These usually offer perks like interest free financing, and rewards points for in store purchases, and can save you money if you’re smart with them. As to why corporate cares about them… there’s two reasons: 1: banks usually give retailers kickbacks for each accepted credit card, if I remember right it’s about $200 per card 2: People that get a credit card at a store, will generally come back to buy more than people who don’t. This makes them a good metric to drive recurring revenue from repeat customers. On paper, they’re actually pretty solid, I still have my BBY card, and use it a few times a year when I need batteries, movies, or whatever. The problem is, the people in corporate can’t get it through their thick skulls that memberships and credit cards are only valuable as recurring revenue of the customers want to come back. With the way the company is now, the majority of the stores are running on skeleton crews due to constant restructuring, and the employees aren’t rewarded for being good, knowledgeable salesmen, they’re only rewarded for memberships. This has lead to a degradation of customer service, employee morale, and overall quality of the store, which kinda renders the purpose of the memberships moot.

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

@@Ph03nix1 They aren't rewarded for memberships they avoid punishment when they get them.

@Ph03nix1

Жыл бұрын

@@thomgizziz depends on the store in that regard. Avoiding punishment is universal, but our store did have management that did care about us, so we got rewarded. Problem is, when the store management has corporate threatening their jobs at every turn, even the best managers can only do so much to shield the underlings from corporate. I survived three restructures, and the COVID layoffs that axed about a dozen managers in the four years I was there. Two were under Corrie Barry, and the other was the restructure that happened right as she was taking over from Hubert.

My mom just got me a pre-built from Best Buy. It took 2 weeks to get here and out of the box, it's really nice. I'll have to test it's overclocking and performance, but it has an i5-10400F, 16G of RAM, and a GTX 1660 Ti. Overall really good for under $1000

@gokublack8342

Жыл бұрын

What if I told you I could have built you something far better with a monitor and all the peripherals included for less

@silentfeelz9350

Жыл бұрын

@@gokublack8342 can u make a list?

@gokublack8342

Жыл бұрын

@SilentFeelz I couldn't post the links here but provided you are able to build it and are willing to go AMD its not hard to get a better build for less Edit: I think the list I made for my friend came out just under 800 which included a better pc a monitor and peripherals minus a keyboard because its easy to get a keyboard if you're super budget focused. Literally any working keyboard can get you started

@christianhoos3116

Жыл бұрын

Not really. In the event that you use the warranty Best Buy usually just issues a store credit for the price you paid for the product. But there has to be something wrong with the product, and Best Buy will attempt to repair the product before they issue a store credit for a replacement

Learning how to build PCs was the best thing I’ve done at home. It’s extremely overwhelming for a newcomer and I was literally sweating installing ram back like 4 years ago but I it’s so much easier now and it’s really fun

@Sasquatch10

Жыл бұрын

I'm literally sweating now, considering installing RAM for the first time. But i feel like the PC i got last week is the last time i'll ever buy a pre-build.

@mkfmgaming3019

Жыл бұрын

@@Sasquatch10 you can work on your prebuilt by upgrading it. Watch LTT how to build pc on KZread. Linus does a great job at explaining everything and it’s about an hour long but goes into everything

@Sasquatch10

Жыл бұрын

@@mkfmgaming3019 I'll check it out, that's basically what I'm looking to do. I bought the pre build last week and looking to upgrade the RAM on it.

Was in Best Buy this holiday season. The comment about the sales staff wait is *very* true and its a bad sign that the company is in trouble. When I went in and needed some help checking something with their inventory they put me on a _waiting list_ on an in store app they used. The store (this was around the first week of Dec.) as far as I could tell, only had 2 to 3 people on the floor for THE WHOLE STORE. There was 1 in pick up order and 1-2 at the cashiers and the 2-3 walking the floor. When your staff are *that* low in the most busiest period of the year, that is *BAD* news.

@Badanon

Жыл бұрын

That's what happens when the CFO gets the CEO position after the old one gets pushed out.

@profosist

Жыл бұрын

They found out they could run the store with half the people and still make 80 to 90% of the revenue that's a lot more profit

@gmualum08

Жыл бұрын

​@@profosist would you really call that running a store? I wouldn't

@profosist

Жыл бұрын

@@gmualum08 as a publicly traded company what's most important profit Only thing that fix is that is you know a decrease in profit likely due to unhappy customers or enough people complaining (you know not employees)

When I was young I worked at Best Buy in the warehouse. I'd often give customers good advice and downsell them on things they didn't need to waste their money on, like $100 HDMI cables. As for the sales rep, none were techy or had any knowledge of what they were selling. Their focus was only meeting their unrealistic metrics of credit card sign-ups and warranties. Honestly, the company is poorly run, treats their employees terrible, and hopefully goes out of business. Not to mention the experience for customers was terrible and has somehow gotten worse.

I just built a new computer, but before that the computer I had was the Alienware aurora r5 from Best Buy, which I got at a good discount because it was open box. Had that computer for almost 6 years and it was still mostly fine even when it finally got replaced.

Videos like this are really really important.

I worked in retail for staples as a tech sales supervisor. Plain and simply put, the sales rep advised to get a PC from another store because he immediately knew Maria would not buy the service plan. We called it a naked computer sale. Its better for the customer to walk out of the store with nothing than with a PC with nothing else.

@jumbomuffin1316

Жыл бұрын

That’s ridiculous

@alexandrebelair4360

Жыл бұрын

@@jumbomuffin1316 Margins are super thin, if there's any margin. It's often time sold at lost or close to it. Services and add-ons pays.

As a former BestBuy employee that's been around to a toooon of different stores across the US, there are unfortunately a lot of employees in PCHO that know so little about computing(and just dont care to learn). Most of the training was computer based iirc, and occasionally we would have reps from companies like Intel,AMD, etc come to conduct mini training. That said, our store was pretty legit, but it all comes down to management. Job was super easy..just had to ask proper questions, listen to the customer and know your inventory and basics about computers.

I have to point out, having the bundle of sat connectors loose is good. When you come to want to add another drive you don’t want the connectors bound to all the the other wires, you want them loose so they are easy to get at and install another drive. Imo this is a nice feature. They could easily have just zip tied all cables together without thinking of the end user

@AB-80X

4 ай бұрын

There are better ways. Just use a multi use cable tie.

personally I got a pre built from bestbuy. it was dicounted to $700 and a little more since I took the floor display. I wasnt looking for anything crazy and other than some long loading times here and there I love it. I dont really care to max out graphic settings and it can run the games I want at a good quality. I will definitely upgrade in the future and look into building one but I got what I needed/wanted out of the current one.

Sometimes you do get duds from Best Buy, but in my experience, I've always been recommended good computers when I present a budget. The only time I ever went for the warranty was for my Grandparents who live across the country so they can easily bring their PC in and get it serviced.

@sunbleachedangel

Жыл бұрын

sounds like they are very hit or miss, which isn't a good thing

@UranTCG

Жыл бұрын

@@sunbleachedangel People are hit or miss and no retail environment is vetting their employees that much. If you think the person you're working with doesn't know what they're doing, ask for the most knowledgeable person in the department you're shopping that works that day and tell them you're comfortable waiting for them to free up.

@Janzer_

Жыл бұрын

@@UranTCG Thank you. I think a lot of people don't work service jobs and just spout out negative things because it's easy to do that. Reality is that working retail has it's ups and downs. It's a low level economic job. You're going to get a wide variety of service, no matter if it was Best Buy or the DMV.

@Navi_xoo

Жыл бұрын

You just don't know about PC's and are assuming it's a good computer. A warranty is pointless as well they don't service PC's at best buy.

@derkdottv

Жыл бұрын

@@Navi_xoo they do. I have bought from them in the past, and I have used their services.

I can give you context to this. When 2020 hit Best Buy got a new CEO and she had initiated this idea that people should treat Best Buy like Costco. Having a membership and using price protection and return. It’s so bad that when I worked there, we got yelled at for not selling enough. In fact that’s the most important things to them. The way Best Buy operates as a whole is a systematic issue.

@gmualum08

Жыл бұрын

Ultimately it's the job of the board of directors to fire incompetent CEOs. If the board is negligent in getting rid of clueless management they risk being sued by the shareholders. But the current CEO will make every excuse in the book how it's everyone's fault but hers.

Got a prebuild iBuyPower from BestBuy back in 2018. Still running like a champ

The Value Equation: What do you gain by paying more? And what do you lose by paying less? Don't be afraid to shop around and learn about the parts, especially the CPU. You don't have to build your own. But worth learning what is value in your area. Enjoyed this and good comparison review 👍

there's nothing wrong with buying a prebuilt PC. You just gotta know what you're buying still. I usually recommend friends and family certain prebuilds that I research for them cause I'm not going to build one for them and I'm not going to help them warranty individual parts if anything goes wrong.

@5punkybob

Жыл бұрын

This! I am so done with friends/family wanting me to build them a PC then provide unlimited tech support. I actually started recommending iPads/MacBooks for those who don’t want to play games.

@shrektheogrelord6435

Жыл бұрын

Im too dumb to build one.i got confused when a friend explained the process. I ended up getting a laptop and quest two . They do everything i need with no lag so im satisfied

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

Even giving them recommendations for prebuilts will make you their future IT guy... it isn't a good idea unless you want to be their IT department.

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

@@5punkybob You feel that gets you away from being the IT guy? If they can't run a windows PC with out running into problems they aren't going to have a better time on an macos PC. You might get away with an ipad because it works like a phone but if they are screwing up on one PC they are screwing up on another and you have just bought into some stupid propaganda that a mac is magically going to be easier to use and have no problems which from experience is just not true.

@Ccagesniper

Жыл бұрын

@@thomgizziz I'd rather they come to me then go to my uncle who "knows a guy." My uncle literally purchased a laptop that had 2 gigs of ram and an intel e processor for 700 bucks. I was not impressed. I also don't really expect store reps who are hired minimum wage and most likely are churned through a revolving door of turn over to give my relatives good advice. It's not really their fault. That's just the nature of our society and it's complete ignorance. We expect these store reps making nothing to be experts but we don't want to treat them with respect or even give them the time to become the experts we want.

I worked there for 3 years and a bit, I always took pride in my product knowledge (learned from way before I got hired, from just learning and researching and building PC's on my own). Best buy does barely any knowledge training besides their online "quizzes" and most employees are just using knowledge they learn on their own. I'm thankful I had good experiences working there due to the great management at my store and the staff standing up for you, and was able to give the unfiltered honest truth to the people I was helping. It's changed a lot since I left, and I heard for the worse with the new CEO taking over.

I wanted to build my latest PC, but I'm recovering from surgery and just didn't have the ability. I bought a refurbished prebuilt from NZXT, and have been real happy with my experience, besides one cable that was loose.

the motherboard closeup pans are lit. need more

The good thing is Linus doesn’t have to worry about dropping any of the parts because it’s prebuilt

@halfblood_drag0n

Жыл бұрын

ouch

@Shapershift

Жыл бұрын

He'll just drop the whole PC.

Yeah BB has gone downhill for sure. Bunch of people left after the pandemic on top of a lot of store closures and vastly reduced staff. Not to mention they hire seasonal people who know very little as well as people are no longer section specific. So people who use to know everything about TVs not not very the much about computers or anything else but only had to sell TVs now also have to sell all the other products in the store leading to people selling things they know nothing about. Needless to say it's a mess. I will say depending when you bought it they do have a pretty long return policy during the holidays so what he was saying about the coming back part is if the price reduces within the return exchange period you can post purchase price match unlike most places where you have to price match pre purchase. But besides that it's a mess and hard to get consistency these days. Worst of all is having people who have never dealt with mobile phones and accounts / plans are setting them up and selling them again with little to no knowledge which is a shit show as well

I have a 8+ YO pc that I bought at Best Buy (Cyberpower PC), and it actually has lasted very well so far, yeah, nowdays it has its limitations, but I haven't changed most of it since then; new SSD, a new graphic card (original burnt out after 5 years) and a new fan, and I'm quite happy with her, I'm looking forward to update her later this year (just, hold a little longer my old friend).

this was very interesting, id like to see you try this with multiple stores

I used to be a RadioShack store manager back in the 70's. There was no training for staff other than from the store managers who vetted and trained their staff. Back then from my experience the store managers were enthusiasts about electronics, audio or something along those lines. “We’re not looking for the guy who wants to spend his entire paycheck on a sound system”, rather RadioShack sought customers "looking to save money by buying cheaper goods and improving them through modifications and accessorizing", making it common among "nerds" and "kids aiming to excel at their science fairs" - Charles Tandy CEO RadioShack - Died 1978.

@MikeWood

Жыл бұрын

I was one of those 70s kids that made what seemed like monthly trips to Radio Shack to buy small switches and boards to make simple circuits. I think my dad and I assembled most of the parts for a Vandergraff Generator from Radio Shack for a science fair.

@RangerXXT

Жыл бұрын

I used to go to radio shack to get free batteries

@HSkraekelig

Жыл бұрын

Thank you! I loved going to Radio Shack back then for components, connectors and so on. I still have a little plastic pouch of pre-cut solder strips that I bought in '74 or so, among other treasures.

@Iesous27

Жыл бұрын

Radio shack was the best even in the 90s when I was growing up. Was sad to see it close down. But then again, I was sad to see blockbuster close down too

@caddyguy5369

Жыл бұрын

I miss Radio Shack.

i am not a big fan of Best Buy but the sell rep will not care what you buy, they don't have commission and they get paid maybe a little more minimum wage

Last time I was in a Canada Best Buy, I was looking through the gaming PC towers and ALL the demos you could see into with a glass side panel, had 1 stick of ram in single channel.

My current desktop is one I built myself, but the one before this was an ASUS on a steep discount at Best Buy. It had a decent processor and lots of memory, but the graphics card was substandard. There was a lot of space inside for upgrades / additions. I was able to upgrade both the power supply and graphics card for quite a lot less money than the store discount by getting the previous generation of GPU, also on a steep discount. I tried to repeat that with my last build but couldn't make the numbers work - I was better off buying the components separately and putting it together myself. I built the PC in early 2018, so it is 5 years old and still working fine (GTX 1080ti). If I do decide to build another PC, I will certainly consider an upgradable pre-built computer, if the price is right.

I absolutely love that every time Linus reviews a case with no ventilation in the front, I immediately think of Linus dremmeling "speed holes" into that Gigabyte Aorus case while Jake looks on in horror... only to see the editor then add clips of it, to my delight. Keep up the fantastic work, team. We love you. :-D

Coming from a Best Buy employee: I agree, the warranty pitches are stupid. The membership doesn’t work for all people and the company doesn’t realize you can pick that up through social cues and instead reccomends you shove it in their face three times before you stop trying. It’s the kinda thing that made me stop working on the sales side of the place.

@profosist

Жыл бұрын

All say is you don't know without trying and there's probably something that you can get that might Peak their interests since the plan is so wide I remember Jay's two cents ranting about the plan but has their reading through the benefits he's like oh this is actually pretty good if you shot the best buy.

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

That is your best buy, not all of them are ran by the same people. Corporate isn't pushing this 3 times nonsense that you are talking about.

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

@@profosist It is almost like almost nothing is universal but people seem to be coming to the conclusion that everything they think should is universal.

Pre builts are a convenience.. hunting down sales for parts, inconvenience. It's also quite a bit to learn the knowledge required to know exactly what you are buying. Some people, myself included work long hours and have very limited time.

0:30 the floating head was a nice touch

I work for geek squad (home theater installer i dont work in the store) it sounds to me like they were trying to clear old product. Also, best buy doesnt have specialized in store employees anymore, now random people work in random departments

At Bestbuy I recently I bought the 13700kf and rtx 4080 rig by CyberPower Pc. I recently bought it for $2629, and am happy with the purchase so far. It really saved me time and labor to build it. I like prebuilts as long as the specs are in the ball park of what I need and the components together are msrp or lower.

As a current bb sup in pc. Other then not having enough staffing.. my staff of advisors are awesome about their pc knowledge. If this is in canada.. I'm surprised they haven't adopted the queue system to help with making sure customers are not getting skipped. Tell Maria to come to my bestbuy I had a 3060 omen on open box for 850!

Bought a Black Friday prebuilt MSI Codex R Gaming Desktop - Model CODEX R 12TC-059US For my uses I am very happy.

I worked at Best Buy in the USA in the late aughts We were not commission, but told to push old inventory before new stuff the clear space so that we didn't have to "devo" old stock back to manufacturer

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

That sounds like a thing your store did and not a company policy... you clearly don't know the difference and don't have the ability to understand why your anecdote is probably terrible.

@Wolf3685

Жыл бұрын

@@thomgizziz Every BBY in our region had the same policy, including the east coast flagship store I worked at. This was a policy handed down by the Regional Manager for Inventory Control Tell me you know nothing about BBY ops, without saying you know nothing about BBY ops.

I'd like to see this done again, but comparing buying a laptop instore (laptops have been far more popular than desktops for an extremely long time) vs. online retailers that actually let you customise a laptop (e.g. Framework, Lenovo, PC Specialist [UK] and so on).

Today I enabled Smart Access Memory on my build thanks to you. I didn't know about it and I do feel silly now. Thanks Linus.

7:33 The Vancouver track xD, it's the Montreal circuit Gilles Villeneuve aka the only track F1 race of Canada

I work at Best Buy, and I'll tell you that you'll be hard pressed to find any 'experts' for sales. Sometimes you get lucky and find someone who actually knows their shit, but that's usually because they're an enthusiast, not because the store trained them. I work as a repair agent at the Geek Squad, so I typically avoid the sales floor as I'm not subjugated to outrageous sales goals. That said, even us Geek Squad agents aren't necessarily knowledgable either. It's sad, really.

@davidomar742

Жыл бұрын

why would anybody think someone getting paid $15/hr is going to be an expert? I think the general public are the idiots here

@drifterbingus

Жыл бұрын

@@davidomar742 You'd be surprised how many people trust you because you're wearing a blue polo.

When I sold computers at Best Buy I always got people the absolute most performance for their dollar I could. But I’m a nerd and I knew every sku we had and every component that was in them, and their performance numbers. I’ve gone back to the same Best Buy I worked at now and nobody in the computer department or geek squad knows what they’re talking about when it comes to anything in their respective departments

@profosist

Жыл бұрын

With how fast retail Cycles through employees why would anybody knowledgeable stick around if they have a choice

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

you didn't know every sku. Im sure you tried but stop it with the hyperbole it detracts from the validity of your comment.

@aaronfisher7159

Жыл бұрын

@@thomgizziz you’re right, it’s impossible for someone to be familiar with and memorize all of the prebuilt configurations Best Buy has on the shelf. All 10 of them. Real hard work.

I work at a really awesome BBY. The GM really cares about hiring people who already know their stuff, managers are pleasant. TT and Cards aren’t pushed heavily as I’ve heard they are at some other Best Buy’s. It’s a chilled out environment, plenty of staff and pretty good pay (at least for a broke college kid) some of the best people I have met are from that Best Buy. Only 2 months in but this is by far my favorite job. I work in computers btw, and would have loved to have sold your secret agent an actual good computer for the price range

I picked up this pc at Best Buy on Cyber Monday for $699. It included a Asus TUF 23.8 monitor, glass side panel, mouse and keyboard. I think at that price was a great deal.

I've talked to a few Best Buy employees (as well as my share of Fry's Electronics employees back in the day) and I think the Best Buy reps only get paid or scored by the extended warranty that they sell. I think the Fry's folks were paid on commission for the whole sale price (assuming they could get you committed to the product in their area) so getting you maxed out for your budget was right in line with their compensation as opposed to the extended warranty push that BB forces

@joecool4656

Жыл бұрын

BB employee. We get paid hourly. The only commission from BB would be a $10 gift card for getting 4 memberships in a day which is not worth it. Some employees get money from brands themselves though which I do not know much about

@DerangedFetus

Жыл бұрын

@@joecool4656 you guys get commission from that ?? We only get ANYTHING extra for mobile activations.

@wandererreece9540

Жыл бұрын

My current manager used to be a manager at Best Buy. He said their hours were dependent on the amount of sales they made.

Asus warned me about that performance drop with my 13700K, so I do not think it matters that much.

@mikeramos91

Жыл бұрын

That cpu just came out lol

@scott420

Жыл бұрын

@@mikeramos91 they are pointing out that Asus said that the 13700k would have a performance drop, even though I doubt it would

@mikeramos91

Жыл бұрын

@@scott420 the pc in the video had an i5 11400f

@Leo-sl9vr

Жыл бұрын

@@mikeramos91 he means that performance drop is unlikely to happen on any decent cpu

@mikeramos91

Жыл бұрын

@@Leo-sl9vr because of the rgb? You will be fine as long u have a good cpu

I had to buy a prebuilt from best buy when graphics card prices were high and you almost coudnt find any. overll was fairly happy with my setup only problem i had was the stock CPU cooler. Ended up changing it out for a noctua low profile cooler and have been very pleased ever since

I know that I am late for the game, but I really appreciate that you acknowledge some people are learning.

I'm recently listening to all of the previous WAN Show podcasts, and I just got to the USB naming discussion. I've been paying a lot of attention towards how you express the ports as "USB xGB" instead of the ridiculous naming schemes currently lol. It is significantly easier to understand.

honestly I think that Best Buy in this case did an excellent job, you are buying a prebuild that include labor, a share for the brand, a share for the shop and they give you an under 900$ machine that's need over 1000$ to be replicate... and it's plug&play. Obviously if you buy everything by yourself, looking for best deal around in every single component from different shops, build everything by yourself (no labor) and completely skip in some cases the shop, the last ring of the selling chain, obviously you will save money but time and effort is not even comparable. And to be honest, in few benchmark in this video we saw a 20 to 30% extra performance with.... 20% extra cost (even more considering is coming with m/k already).... I honestly think is a very good machine for the price

@thomgizziz

Жыл бұрын

But if there is no clickbait how is linus going to sell his product effectively and hook people into watching his videos? Everybody has something to sell you and if you cant see and dont understand that then you are just waiting to be taken advantage of.

@xxxViceroyxxx

Жыл бұрын

@@thomgizziz calm down.

I have worked for Best Buy indirect and directly for the past 10 years. I can confidently say that the days of having employees be subject matter experts are pretty much gone. You will have one, maybe 2 employees in the stores that know a ton about computers, but generally speaking they either move to Geek Squad or they end up going to a department that will allow them to grow. Best Buy operates on what they call an ACD model: Advisor (general sales advice for every category in the store), consultant (2 levels of subject matter experts: senior consultant being the most highly trained), and designers (think system integrators or what used to be Magnolia system designers). Best Buy's operation model has changed from being a product and expert based company to being a service company that happens to sell products. For new hires, the main focus is ensuring they can offer the Total Tech yearly subscription and offer financial services through credit applications. There is no standardized training outside of electronic learnings on a computer that take about a week to complete, and the sales certification is entirely dependent on the store leaders saying they are ready to go. If you end up going into a Best Buy, ask if they have a Senior Consultant available to speak to, or make an appointment via Best Buy's website at no cost. Not only will you have the ability to skip the line entirely, but typically speaking they will have significantly more knowledge and a more personalized experience for you. These are salary + commission sales people. While they do make money for what they sell it's not a ton. The most important metric they are held accountable to is repeat business from their clients, so you'll usually have a much better experience with them. I have loved working for Best Buy over the years I've been there, and I think that the company overall is a great place for a kid to learn work as they are learning about sales, business, and other skills along the way. However if you're looking for subject matter experts, I can no longer recommend speaking to our stores reps. The company just doesn't seem to care about the training of the employees overall and it seems today they focus on doing more with less when it comes to labor and headcount.

Congrats for 15M subs!

I’m happy I took this pc back and got a new one where I was actually able to put my tan at it’s rated speed in the bios

The pre-built actually came in pretty good. The days of saving a ton of money by building your own PC are long behind us. There used a be a time when you could get a lot of components free after rebate. Unless you really want something specific or want to tinker, prebuilt computers are just fine nowadays. Loving my "gaming" laptop I bought 2 years ago for Walmart Black Friday. GTX 1650, Intel i5-9300H. I upgraded the ram and storage. Got me through the pandemic for $450. At that time, you could barely buy that GPU as a standalone card for that price, due to the shortage.

Not really sure I'd call this a failure. It's the holiday shopping season and inventories are low. The fact the salesman had to "go in the back and see what he could find" kind of supports that theory. She ended up with a computer that was built for the previous year's holiday season which you described as "adequate" and at a "lower price than she would have paid if she bought the same components and paid someone to put them together". Not bad for a last-minute holiday gift. Maybe give this another try after the holidays are behind us and stores have restocked their inventories.

@laurencefraser

Жыл бұрын

keep in mind: Better PC, within budget, was sitting Right There on the shelf while they were talking.

@JeskidoYT

Жыл бұрын

Though you could have gotten a better option by walking around and looking at specs

I work at BB right now and its rough, they kinda just send employees out to fend for themselves and we are constantly getting asked hundreds of questions. So it doesn't surprise me that an employee was redirecting or trying to push some quick alternative.

I've worked at Best buy, what probably happened here is the guy you got probably didn't agree with The sales quota training that they currently got. End of year, you're going to get a lot of that. So he tried to get the customer to go somewhere else, knowing that he would have to push the old stock computers instead of sell the current ones. I can't tell you how many times I ran into that. Even in geek squad and we didn't sell all that much. Way back when I was at circuit City it was even worse, if we sold a model that was current, over one that was backstock, we would not get bonus'd on that sale. Always had to push old products first.

@TheFalseShepphard

Жыл бұрын

wait what do you mean, why would he push the old stock and what does that have anything to do with sales training ?

@JPIndustrie

Жыл бұрын

@@TheFalseShepphard because the older stock is taking up room that they need for the new stuff which means losing $$$ , the staff is encouraged to push the older stuff like in this scenario

@ben9959

Жыл бұрын

It also depends on the store you work at. The store I work at has never pushed back stock or anything like that. Reading a lot of the comments on here talking about how terrible the experience has been for some people working there has made me realize how good the management at my store is lol

@beardedgaming3741

Жыл бұрын

@@TheFalseShepphard like the other guy said, old products needs to move first. It would get bonused at my stores, maybe you would get a gift card to a local diner, maybe you would get and in store gift card. Whatever. The point is though, you don't sell what the customer needs, you sell what your store needs to get out the door. I worked at two Best buys and three circuit cities, they all operated that way. Some stores don't punish you for going outside of that sales training but others do. I've seen people lose hours, be threatened with termination, lose bonuses, all four not following company policy.

I had an issue with BestBuy recently too, Normally when you return DOA parts its as easy as, "here is the dead one, gimmie a new one and I'll go." Unfortunately for me, they were a brand new employee and sent my bank a refund that wouldn't post till the next day and I hadn't gotten paid yet so I didn't have enough to buy a new one. They offered me NO solutions and the only reason I walked out with the part is because my friend loaned me enough to get it. I was pretty steamed that day because I explicitly told them I wanted to refund it for the same (working) part, and the fact that they wouldn't even work with me after they accidentally did the wrong thing just rubbed me the wrong way. This won't cause me to go elsewhere because in my experience it's few and far between but still an issue.

@Ducksnuget

Жыл бұрын

Never worked at bestbuy, but once a refund is done there’s nothing they can do. Inexperienced customer service, yeah. But there is no undo button. The word you meant to say was “exchange” not refund.

I've bought a pre-built desktop from best buy when I was in the military it was actually pretty good for the most part at the time.

I got this same type of pc from micro center with a 3060 and 16 gb ram, and 512 gb storage, and it also had a polycarbonate window you could put on, also it was normally $1250USD, I got it $400USD off for $850USD.

I'd be interested to know how a custom build at the same price point as the prebuilt compared, even though $1000 was your budget you didn't spend it all when at best buy so you did technically save some money...