My weekend visit to BB with observations

[JJMP50]

Due to the purchase of some new furniture and the subsequent re-arrangement of my listening room, I had to stop by my local Best Buy store to pick up some speaker stands for my rears. While in the store I took some time to look around. Over the years I have spent a good deal of money in Best Buy so I don’t mean to flame them too badly. Overall they serve a good purpose, but I couldn’t help making some observations.

The obvious one was in their speaker section. It was no surprise that the “cube” display was prominent as soon as you entered the area. With a touch screen display you could sample an assortment of home theater and music choices (i.e. their choices). Since you are standing right in front of the display it was somewhat impressive. Using this example is suppose this would make a good system for your desktop computer not withstanding the price.

A big disappointment was the JBL section. I have been a long fan of JBL speakers and own a decade old pair of L1’s, one of the best bookshelf systems I’ve heard. BB seams to only carry JBL’s “budget” line of Northridge speakers and maybe a stand alone HT satellite system. I think this is the reason JBL’s image has slipped over the years.

If I had been speaker shopping, I would have probably landed on the Klipsch section. The “looked” like the only high end speakers present. I own several Athena speakers and know their quality, but in the store they were set up like some low end budget “no name” brand at the end of the isle. If you aren’t familiar with them, you would pass them up.

As I mentioned, I was there to buy speaker stands. These are in the same isle as speaker cable. OK, you know what’s coming: MONSTER! Almost the entire display with a little section left over for AR cables at half the price. And what’s with the Monster separates they had on display? I’m sure they are using someone else’s chassis and just adding a lot of LEDs for effect.

Well, I grabbed my stands and headed for the check out, then home to impress my wife with my new purchase – no reaction at all. Actually one: “Do they have to sit at an angle? I can see the back of that speaker from the counter.”

 

[Takeereasy]

You should see Best Buy up here in Canada. They only carry Sony, JBL Northridge, and an Infinity line (so cheap that they don't advertise them on their own website )along with their house brand called Quest for speakers.

I think that most of us have had the better half make at least one comment about the speakers. Most of my speakers have stuffed animals sitting on them, or placemats that distinctly reemble doileys, or in one case a fake plant. This room was supposed to be my man cave. Oh well serves me right for teaching her to work the remote. (I really am teasing, my girlfriend is very proficient when it comes to modern electronics, although she did make me take back my universal remote. Now if only I was kidding about the doileys.)

 

[lynn2c]

do that have to sit at an angle

This made me laugh this morning. I"m dealing with the WAF factor myself.
some of the comments
"my living room is being taken over by speakers"
"why can't the speakers be hidden in an entertainment center"
"why do those front speakers have to be so far from the wall"
"why didn't you buy those cute little cube speakers that our friend have....I think the same company that makes that fancy clock radio makes them"
and the worse one of all
"CAN YOU TURN THAT DOWN?"

 

[outsider]

man, am I glad I don't have to deal with a WAF.
My girlfriend doesn't really care so long it sounds good.
And to top it all off, she HATES Bose.

 

[mustang_steve]

I found Bestbuy's athena display (do they even sell them anymore) to be pitiful....they didn't even give them any room, they tended to just shove them into the corner and hide them...

...pity too since those were some incredible bargains right there...

...what makes me laugh is since my last trip there, the KLH speakers were no longer demoable...I think it might be that their mini-cubes and bose's are a toss-up....only so many ways a 2" driver can be made cheaply.

 

[rgriffin25]

Hmmm

I wonder if this is a trend that BB has fallen into. I have been to my local one a couple of times in the past month or so. And I must say the Athena section is pretty shabby. The receiver they are run off of hasn't worked for at least a month. The speakers themselves are mismatched and abused. Like I said above I had the same experience over the span of a month or two. Maybe the marraige between Athena and Best Buy will soon be over. In my opinion it would be a good thing... it would give them more room for Monster and Bose. Speakers like the Athena's Audition Series do not belong in BB.

 

[Dumar]

This room was supposed to be my man cave.

This is how I got my man cave back, but now I'm thinking I may have acted a little too hastily ...

After a lengthy renovation my wife and I are beginning to finally reclaim parts of our home. The first to be setup was our new Audio/Video room (naturally). Well, we had to have new furniture, so like a dummy I let her go off and get what she wanted. Next thing I know there's a truck pulled up to the door and a full size couch, loveseat, and ottoman being hauled into my tiny new A/V room. Great ... I can't even see my fronts now let alone here them. I told her this would not do, so we moved stuff around but I could see it wasn't going to work. I had to do something fast, so I told her I should be in charge of setting up the room and that if she agreed, she could look after the rest of the house. She looked me in the eye, put out her hand and said "deal". Now I'm really sweating bullets because she's laughing, and when she laughs like that I know this is going to cost me big time.

 

[markw]

BB and Athenas - my opinions.

I sense two possibilities.

1) It's not a well known name like JBL nor does it have big drivers like KLH and, as such, is a bit of a hard sell to Joe Sixpack. So, Joe Sixpack looks at them, scoffs and is drawn, like mosquitos to a bug zapper, towards the big driver cardboard speakers or the JBL name.

2) Everybody knows what a value they are and they sell too good.

 

[twheeloc]

BB Status

Best Buy is a store that has to cater to the masses. Thus their lack luster displays of quality products. They are getting more competition from Walmart (yes, Walmart) and primarilly online retailers. You will also find few sales people who are trained on the products but more the technologies. Therefore the sales people (who don't have much time to listen to the speakers with video and HTIB's being the primary focus of supervisors because of the profit margin (same deal with Monster)) spend all there time waiting at the 'end caps' or roaming. The big market chains aren't interested in necessarily the best product out there. They are big chains because the serve the masses...they TRY to focus on service and making people happy. On the other side we should thank them. Because of them more and more people are jumping into home theater. More draw means that manufacturers are putting more and more into products, like recievers, for less and less money.

 

[JohnA]

just remember

This is how I got my man cave back, but now I'm thinking I may have acted a little too hastily ...

After a lengthy renovation my wife and I are beginning to finally reclaim parts of our home. The first to be setup was our new Audio/Video room (naturally). Well, we had to have new furniture, so like a dummy I let her go off and get what she wanted. Next thing I know there's a truck pulled up to the door and a full size couch, loveseat, and ottoman being hauled into my tiny new A/V room. Great ... I can't even see my fronts now let alone here them. I told her this would not do, so we moved stuff around but I could see it wasn't going to work. I had to do something fast, so I told her I should be in charge of setting up the room and that if she agreed, she could look after the rest of the house. She looked me in the eye, put out her hand and said "deal". Now I'm really sweating bullets because she's laughing, and when she laughs like that I know this is going to cost me big time.

You might have your safe haven of a cave, but you gave your wife free reign of the rest of the house....which can only lead to one thing...your "honey do" list has just grown in size 10 fold. So you might have your cave, but you will be too busy to enjoy it Good Luck!

 

[Takeereasy]

Oh Dumar, you poor, poor man.

Not only is this going to cost you, but soon everything will be Pastels. How I wish I didn't know where you were coming from. I have made so many design concessions in order to get my own TV room that I feel like I'm living in the Designing Women's set. Oh well, the solution is simple, emerge from the man cave periodically, only to shower, work and purchase new toys for the man cave. Most critically you must cling to all things hetro for dear life. My girlfriend's dad got it right. He gave his wife one big room to decorate however she wanted, and gave her a nice budget to do it with. The only concession she had to make was that he got an equal say in all the other design decisions. He gets to rule because he is the one with the pocket book. Ah, to live back in the days when men were kings, what an age that must have been.

About most things I am the luckiest guy in the world when it comes to my girlfriend. She loves Hockey, tolerates me watching football and boxing, enjoys action flicks, beer is her drink of choice, she encourages me to go to my weekly poker night while she's at work, and to top it off she is a sexy nurse!! (no she doesn't wear the hat and hot skirt outfit, apparently it is no longer the uniform for nurses, which I feel is a crime against humanity great enough to haul the responsible parties before a tribunal at the Hauge but that is probably a discussion for a different forum). Her biggest downfall is her love of all things cheetah or leopard patterned. I don't just mean clothes, I mean everything. I refuse to drive her car after getting winks from the wrong gender (not that there's anything wrong with that) and a disapproving shake of the head from a police officer as they drove by. I have so far kept the cheeta colours from being painted anywhere but they are creeping into the bedroom bathroom (which I'm not allowed to use).

Get ready Dumar, I'm seeing something similar in your future, I just hope it doesn't cost you too much.

 

[Tom Andry]

Word of warning (or perhaps prognostication): I have a friend that is really into Harleys. He gives his wife free reign of all decorative decisions and occasionally buys new parts/bikes (depending on how nuts she gets). Unfortunately for him, his wife is REALLY into the color purple. His whole house is purple (and I do mean his WHOLE house). I will say that the new purple carpet they just had installed is supposed to net him a new bike. To me, it's not worth it.

 

[Takeereasy]

I couldn't hack a whole house being any one theme or colour. The girlfriend may be obsessed with leopard patterns but she knows that she could never do a whole room, much less a whole house in them, at least not where we live now. Maybe one day we'll move into a much much much much bigger house, one so big it has rooms I'll never go in. On that date she can do one room in the big cat theme.

Aside from the animal prints she really does have good taste (or at least taste similar to mine, kind of a more IKEAish vibe than me though). I was making light of the situation and throwing in a little exageration for effect.

 

[Shadow_Ferret]

I've stopped visiting Best Buys. It seems they have a great area for Big Screen and HD TVs, a decent section for HTiBs, but the ones I've been to, the actually speaker area is this cave set off in the back of the store, hard to find, and when you walk in they have it set up so the Bose and Klipsch are the first things you see and the rest of the selection is back in this dark area that looks more like a storage area with boxes stacked around than a place that houses all the other speakers.

I did manage to grab a guy and audition the AS-F1 and AS-B1. Even he seemed surprised at how good they sounded.

But otherwise, I avoid BB now. Circuit City seems to have better, brighter, speaker rooms.

 

[mustang_steve]

I pretty much only go to best buy when they have a killer deal...like when they had Audigy 2 ZS soundcards for $60.

Aside from that, I buy most of my stuff online...I'm UPS's sugar daddy.

 

[JJMP50]

Update

I did learn one interesting thing during my visit to BB this past weekend and it might impact a lot of us. I had a conversation with one of their salespeople (the same guy that keeps trying to sell me Monster cables and braggs a lot about his home accoustamass system:nice guy though). He told me that Best Buy bought out Magnolia's (http://www.magnoliahifi.com), a west coast high end chain and that the store I was in will be converting to a Magnolia's this summer becoming the first on the east coast with more to come. Interesting, Aye.

 

[HookedOnSound]

Her biggest downfall is her love of all things cheetah or leopard patterned.

I feel your pain brother. My Wife has a leopard theme in our bedroom, luckily it hasn't ventured out past the bedroom door...

Compromises can be tough. If you have to, be very very very specific (I learned the really hard way!)

Here's a tip (more like a warning): Wifes/girlfriends have a memory like an elephant...Once you tell them something, that's it the floodgates are open! They don't let you forget it!


I wanted one of those Bottom-mount Fridges, way easier to get a cold beer instead of reaching down all the time, and a new Amp/Receiver so I agreed to my wife's request to renovate my house (a little bit she said), next thing I know my bathroom is redone, now she wants ceramic tiles in main entrance, new wood stairs....now my Honey do list is as long as my arm!

If you get your cave, stay in it as long as you can 'cause ya never know what snare awaits you when you get out to get some air!

Good Luck

 

[HookedOnSound]

large retailers...small service

We don't have a Best Buy in my city but we have Futureshop (I think it's the same parent company who owns both those chains). Properly trained salespersons are almost non-existent and service support is not much better (at least where I am)

I don't know about BB but Futureshop puts alot of adv./marketing and displays focused on video/televisions sales...not much on audio and the athena brand is poorly displayed... I'd say 75% of the diplays are focused on large screen sales.

And unless I'm stuck in a pinch or they have a really good sale (not often) I don't bother with them because the prices aren't very competitive (unless you are looking at commodities). There is no room to bargain either.

I almost forgot the Monster display, wholly geez! The markup is horrendeous! Whatever price they give away their TVs make up for sure on accessories and/interconnects.

As much as I hate Futureshop/Box retailers I am glad they do exist if only to drive down prices. Before we had them show up where we lived, local A/V retailers had the monopoly on setting any price/product they saw fit on audio/video gear and with quite alot of arrogance. Sort of keeps honest vendors keep 'honest prices' shall I say.

I still go to smaller retailers to help me in areas where I am less knowledgeable and I am willing to pay for some added service.

My comments are strictly from my own observations but I sense the same pattern that everyone is talking about. The focus is more about volume sales and not servicing the customer.

Customers have to rely on themselves more than ever and due the research necessary to avoid any disappointments while shopping.

Good Luck and may the credit card not get maxed out!

 

[outsider]

He told me that Best Buy bought out Magnolia's (http://www.magnoliahifi.com), a west coast high end chain and that the store I was in will be converting to a Magnolia's this summer becoming the first on the east coast with more to come. Interesting, Aye.

I had a feeling that was going to happen, or already had. I have made a few purchases at Magnolia (I live in Oregon) over the last few years, and recently the store just has a different feel to it. Not only that, but the salespeople seem to be getting dumber by the minute....

 

[cmusic]

....
I almost forgot the Monster display, wholly geez! The markup is horrendeous! Whatever price they give away their TVs make up for sure on accessories and/interconnects.....

A few months ago I was in BB looking for a component video cable for my PS2. The salesman handed me a Monster Cable PS2 to component video cable for $99. I put it back on the rack and asked if there were any other brands of cables that were cheaper. He said no. I then tried to look at the other cables he was standing in front of. He would not move from his spot. When I looked around his back at the other brands of cables he backed into the rack, deliberately blocking my view of some of them. I said forget it and walked off.

A few moments later I went back to the same rack without the salesman and found a Sony brand cable for $20. The salesman had deliberately stood in front of it to hide it from me.

Since then whenever I have been in BB I have asked salesmen and saleswomen to leave me alone.