Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly: Workers should feel disposable, not indispensable

[kurt_cagle]

107. Best Buy Fading Fast

I have, in general, had some of the worst retail shopping experiences ever at a Best Buy. Two hours to get a replacement phone because the person selling it couldn't figure out how to work the sales software, phone sent back for repair and losing the memory card, appliances that lasted two months before dying, generally impossible to get help when you want it but getting pestered when you're obviously just browsing, computers that had obviously been returned and repackaged, missing critical pieces. In general, this is a sign that the managers don't care - they aren't paying their employees enough, aren't training them, and are accepting massive turnover simply as the cost of doing business on the cheap. I miss FutureShop.

On the other hand, I also don't necessarily see the electronics oriented stores lasting much longer anyway. Targets, Costcos, Fred Meyers, etc. are all moving into the same space, the Internet is making it easier to order directly (and usually at better prices and reasonable shipping), and the market's changing fast enough that stock obsolescence becomes a major issue. Of course that trend, taken to its logical conclusion, will be that nobody has a job, which is a bigger part of the picture than any idiocy on the part of Best Buy, but, yeah, BB's days are numbered.