I’ve had some good experiences shopping at Best Buy. Bought a couple of TVs there, but how often do you buy a TV? So I only visit maybe every 5-7 years or so.

I hope they hang on. Several other similar chains have gone belly up over the years, like Circuit City.

wife and I bought our pnones there, and will likely buy the replacement for my phone this week from them

better deals than the verizon store usually

I bought a 55" TCL-6 Roku TV from BB Reno online this summer. I never set foot in their store. I was skeptical of a 55" TV delivered by Amazon/UPS. The BB truck delivered to my vacation condo and unpacked it, inspected for damage. The Geek Squad delivery guy asked I needed any help setting it up, but was not pushy. I guess I am an atypical customer as I did not need to see the TV in a store before purchase.

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Originally posted by 220-9er:
Only been in there a few times and had some of the worst customer experiences of my life.

I think this is a significant problem for them. The one near me always seems to have adequate staffing but you can't get anyone to assist you. They hire kids that are hiding somewhere in the store or they're clumped together socializing. When you do grab someone, they claim it isn't their department and that they'll get someone for you. Don't hold your breath. You're basically on your own which pretty much undermines their business model.

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Originally posted by downtownv:

Their return policy is the absolute worse!

I have DSL for internet service at the hangar. Internet stopped working, I went to Best Buy to pick up a replacement DSL modem. Bought one that specifically said, on the box, that it was compatible with my ISP (CenturyLink). Could not get it to connect, so I concluded that there was a problem on the line.

Contacted CenturyLink, the tech who came out informed me that there was nothing wrong with either the old modem or the new one, and there was no problem with the line. It seems that Centurylink had changed the DSL protocol and this type modem, which had been working just fine for many years, would not support the new protocol.

Tech gave me a replacement modem which is working just fine.

I took the one that I had bought from Best Buy, back to the store. I fully expected a problem with the return, but they took it back, refunded the purchase price, and mentioned that they were having a lot of returns of modems from CenturyLink customers.

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Originally posted by cparktd:
It looks to me like they are downsizing by perhaps closing poor performing stores. Store count is down about 500 over the last 5 years to ~1,200 world wide.

Net Income looks on track for 2019 to be a record year at ~1.5 Billion.

No link, behind pay wall.

A lot of that number was the "cellphone only" stores that were located mostly in malls. The final leftovers from the Sam Goody/Suncoast takeover,which was a bad business decision.

Just because a company closes stores doesn't mean they are doing poorly.

It's part of business decisions to cut the fat, write off losses, and keep cranking out money.

Better to close a poor performer that is hemorrhaging money, take any short term loss, and keep printing money elsewhere.

At this point no Best Buy is "suddenly" closing. They have been shutting them down for 3+ years. Finding one still open would be more surprising to me at this point.

I do quite a bit of purchasing for IT and try to buy at our local Best Buy when opportunity presents itself. Its an hour and a half to the next biggest city with an electronics store like another Best Buy or a Microcenter and while I can buy online usually with speedy enough delivery its always nice to have local options - of course for enterprise level I go elsewhere but for basic items like keyboards, battery backups for pc's etc in small qty I use them

I also know that sometimes stores can perform well enough but their lease options at renewal may present an opportunity to get out of a location that may be under performing or not meeting expectations or their forward projections show over time best to cut bait now - lots of variables factored in