Best Buy Caught Tricking Customers Again, Now It’s HDTV Calibration

[admin]

Electronics retailing giant Best Buy is stooping once again to generate business, showing they are willing to go to any length to get it, and they are certainly not going to let truthfulness or ethics get in the way. HDTV calibration, we here at Audioholics talk it up, and it is a good thing. A properly calibrated television balances color, providing a more natural viewing experience. It does not make crappy SDTV signals look less blurry and distorted. Best Buy is counting on uninformed customers not knowing the difference to sell Geek Squad branded HDTV calibration services.

Discuss "Best Buy Caught Tricking Customers Again, Now It’s HDTV Calibration" here. Read the article.

 

[Cyprinodon]

Best Buy Customer Support

I wanted to post my experience with Best Buy after reading the article about their underhanded sales people and the Geek Squad. I bought a PC from BB about 4 years ago and had numerous problems with the RAID controller. The third time I took it to BB I did get the problem finally repaired, but the computer had been “modified” by their repair experts. The side panel on the PC had about 7 inches of graffiti carved into the plastic panel. After three returns I decided that enough was enough and that I would get more satisfaction from showing my friends the type of support to expect from BB rather than fight with the store manager to get the graffiti removed.

 

[EJ1]

Not surprised in the least.

 

[mudrummer99]

This is a very frustrating thing for me, as a consumer but more directly as a BB employee. I dislike dishonesty, that's why I don't work for anything commissioned based because you deal with it on a regular basis. I've been lucky that I have had supervisors and managers that wanted me to build relationships with customers and make sure they were happy in the long run than just getting product out of the store. In any store I have worked in, our calibration demo was always set to HD for both televisions or, for the cases when our one crappy Directv box wouldn't cooperate, both being set to SD, but we always made sure they matched, otherwise we were not being truthful to our customers. I wish more stores were focused on customer happiness than just putting out numbers. In my opinion if you take care of the customers the numbers take care of themselves, but there are far too many managers that don't get that. Just like in any job out there, BB has its share of idiots, underqualified, under trained, under capable individuals. I have been relatively fortunate that I haven't worked with too many of these people. I really hope that everyone doesn't just assume every BB employee is like this just because a small amount are. Thanks for reading.

Mike

 

[highfigh]

If we listed all of the dealers who tweak the settings on their displays to make the ones they want to move look better, the server would be overloaded. It's also very easy to see the ones they messed up the settings to look bad. Often, the brightness ot contrast have been turned down and maybe the color intensity. Whenever I have to go to a dealer to look at a display, I always grab the remote and set them more neutral.

The problem in this is partially caused by consumers often being too lazy to learn about this stuff and when they see one that knocks their socks off, they want it even though it's the one that's farthest from accurate.

 

[davo]

Make a zoo out of them.

I can see it now, enclosed glass cages and on the inside rip-off merchandise stands set up with stupid people buying the products.
The rest of us can walk around checking the different exhibits out. There would be the 'Bose cage', the 'Any-thing-over-480i-is HD cage', a whole area that sells different kinds of speaker wire etc (nothing under $1000 a meter), the special ' I-want-to-spend-$50,000-on-a-speaker' compound.
You get the idea.
Best Buy could have their own special area.

I wonder if David Attenborough would do a voice over in a doco following people around a big box store..

 

[poohmanji]

Calibration display.

I'm sure I'm going to make a lot of friends saying this, but I work for Best Buy. Just like any place, they have people that know what they are doing, and people that are just there to pick up a paycheck. Many of them hardly know the stuff they are selling, but most of them at least know a little bit more than the average consumer (but for 10 bucks an hour and no commision, it's not a dream job for many audio/videophiles). Dispite the apparent ignorance of the associates in the article, the purpose of the display is two-fold. It was originally implemented before Best Buy started performing calibrations. Its original purpose WAS to show the difference between SD and HD. I've worked with Best Buy for a long time and remember when it was unveiled. When Best Buy began doing calibrations, it was a logical choice to demonstrate it on two identical televisions side by side. Since such a display already existed in many Best Buy's, this SD/HD display set-up was chosen to also show the difference between a calibrated and non-calibrated TV. The calibration demo is shown on two identical DVD players using the same connections, but it's pretty boring, so unless they need to demo it, they don't keep it running all day. Usually the associate is eager to demonstrate the differences between the calibrated and non-calibrated TV's, but for the most part, they still display the SD/HD demo so it can perform double duty. I don't know the story of the associate at the store: maybe he was new, maybe he was trying to help out in home theater (which gets ungodly busy at times), I don't know. But I personally have never been told to mislead anyone.

 

[mike c]

Chuck at 'Buy More' makes 12.50 an hour

on a serious note:

i just computed how much i make an hour ...

7.29

hmmm, and i was laughing at 12.50 when i was watching Chuck

 

[jamie2112]

I don't know if I would trust anyone Other than the geek squad to calibrate my tv. Those tools are the best...

 

[Alex2507]

I worked on building a few BB's and CC's in the 90's. IIRC in a CC I overheard a manager telling the staff that even though they had a high return rate the easiest TV's to sell were the Hitachis (?). The customers were suckers for the Made In America thing (I think they were assembled here). The staff were to completely disregard the high failure rate. Once they sold the TV, the store got paid. The return was the manufacturer's problem. Nice looking out, huh?

The last thing I bought in a CC was my computer a few years ago. You think I'm stupid about computers now? You should have seen me then. Any way the sales guy was visibly angered by me sticking to the product I came in to buy. After he bad mouthed eMachines non stop I asked him if he was saying that CC was selling a garbage product that was bound to fail and not work. No, he wasn't saying that.

When I wouldn't pay $70 for a starter kit which included a power strip, a short coax cable, a rubber band and a paper clip the dude looked fit to be tied.

My refusal to get a free T-shirt with an AOL subscription had him looking at me like he wanted to fight.
What kind of @$$hole doesn't want a free T-shirt?

My computer still works.

 

[Adam]

i just computed how much i make an hour ...

7.29

How many hours have your worked, Ultra boy?!?

My computer still works.

Amazing, considering that you vacuumed one of the heatsinks off.

 

[klix58]

I purchase a Samsung DLP at BB and had the "geek" come calibrate the set, I wasnt fooled in the store I wanted an accurate picture and the tech who came out showed his ISF credentials and the result was impressive. They may try to hit suckers in the store but for most on this forum we know the value of the service. To add the cost was $299.00 and the nearest independant competitor was $425.00

 

[Alex2507]

Oops, I just realized that this is the BB Sucks thread.

Okay, BB sucks too.

 

[jvgillow]

As a former employee I used to enjoy reading the bestbuysux.org site, but it was taken down a while ago

 

[Halon451]

This is likely to be an unavoidable problem with these big box stores, as the technologies become more advanced, and deviates a great deal away from the old "Plug and Play" scenario of old. This puts the average consumer at a severe disadvantage, and very vulnerable to these kinds of deceptive tactics. As the average Joe walks into a BB, for example, prepared to plop down $2K or more on a new HDTV, of course he is going to want it to look it's very best; tweaking and calibrating is something that many of us here at AH take for granted, but Average Joe does not. So when they (BB) explains that he can get the very best out of his new investment by having a "highly skilled and trained Geek-squad member" come calibrate his set, hey - what's a few hundred dollars more, right?

What I find amusing as a side note: BB also offers the Avia II calibration disc, but I have yet to find it in stock in any store I've ever been in.

 

[jinjuku]

After he bad mouthed eMachines non stop I asked him if he was saying that CC was selling a garbage product that was bound to fail and not work. No, he wasn't saying that.

When I wouldn't pay $70 for a starter kit which included a power strip, a short coax cable, a rubber band and a paper clip the dude looked fit to be tied.

Dude, I bad mouth eMachines non-stop. I have had way to many experiences with faulty eMachine product vs other vendors. He was telling you the truth. Glad yours is still running however.

 

[jinjuku]

The customer profiling I have no issue with. They aren't doing anything illegal. I try to never purchase @ BB or CC. Last thing was a washer/dryer in 2004 with 0% financing.

 

[Jack Hammer]

Last time I was in the tv section, early in the year, my local BB had two identical model tvs with the input signal split from a hi-def video source, I think it was Transformers playing on HD. One tv was on factory settings and the other was the calibrated tv. I thought it was a good honest comparison. It was the Magnolia section though, the people in that section at my local store have always been more informed and far less full of crap than what I've normally dealt with in the regular tv section.

Sounds to me like it might not be a Best Buy as a company policy thing and more of a shady store manager(s) looking for a fat bonus thing.

Jack

 

[avliner]

...i just computed how much i make an hour ...

7.29

Adam,

a bitt off topic, but I can resist though:

maybe you don't now about it, but the "Ultra Boy" mentioned above is older than Nostradamus himself; therefore easy to explain why he has done so much @ 7.29/hour

For us - single mortals - to accomplish that would be an impossible task in a normal lifetime, though

Regards, Chuck

 

[MatthewB.]

I hate CC with a passion, I actually had to file complaints with the Better Business Bureau and Attorney Generals Office on two occasions for very simple issues that should've been resolved at the store, but they were such A-Holes, that i had to file formal complaints, and not until I did that, were they willing to bend over backwards to resolve the issue.

In fact i was speaking with the CC president of the company in Virginia about my displeasure and told him many ways he could help the customer and generate business with little to no cost to them, but seeing how they are now in Chapter 11, I see my words fell on deaf ears. Just a horrible company to shop at.

Best Buy is a tad better, but not by much. At least with BB I didn't ever have to file formal complaints with government agencies for simple solutions.