Best Buy Experience

Last night I went with my wife & daughter to Best Buy, so my wife could look at a new CD player for school. We did the shopping that she needed and, while hanging in the CD section, heard a song on their in-store radio that we liked. I asked someone about it and, since I had not really heard the name of the group, we began the process of trying to figure it out.

In order to do that, we first had to find someone who could work the in-store sound system, which was pretty easy. I told her that the song was 4 or 5 songs ago, so she started skipping around the songs to see if she could find it. That took quite some time.

We finally found the song, which sounded like it was from a band called blue something project and the name of the song was different day.

So now there were 2 people trying to help us find this song. we went through every song they had listed with 'different day' listed in the title without any luck.

Finally, another associate came over and said “That's Gotan Project and their new CD Lunatica.”

OK, I was thinking I was old and out of touch, but the two, young sales associates helping me couldn't understand the name of the band either! And it had now probably been about 25 minutes since we started this effort. And, the had been replaying the same sequence over & over for at least 15 minutes

But, now we had the name of the band and the real name of the song - Diferente - and we could now search it in their system.

And guess what, they only had two copies and it went on sale tomorrow! So, after all of this effort, I couldn't even buy the damn song!

Now, the two associates helping us were really excellent. They could've given up, but they didn’t and the really did their very best to make the sale. And the store couldn’t deliver! I mean, that had gotten me all excited about making the sale and there process made it as difficult as it could possibly be! How could they have an in-store radio station designed to get me excited about the music without providing a play list or some other mechanism to make it easy to find the song or artist? Why would they promote an artist and then tell me that it’s not for sale?

In the end, what did I do? I got home, looked it up on iTunes and made the purchase. I was so ready to make the sale with Best Buy — their folks went above & beyond to try and help me — yet the product wasn’t available! With as many barriers that a retailer already faces in getting me to make the purchase decision, why would they add their own barriers? I was ready to buy the whole CD and give it a try but they stopped me.

If anyone from Best Buy reads this blog, give us a holler. We have a number of ideas that could help!

Comments

[eric, store 281]

What store was this at, the store i work at will apply tomorrows price today. i'm happy to hear that they helped you as much as possible, but that could have gone even better had they took the next step. If you get this go ahead and email those ideas to me.

[terry campbelle]

Sir, I am a media supervisor for Best Buy, I run the CD/DVD section of media, and I want to personally say IM SORRY!!, This is unexceptable, they should have given the CD to you as Best Buy, policy if the price is cheaper in the next week, we price match ourselves so even if you bought the cd that night at original price you could have come back the next day and got your money back, any way sorry, I myself would have given the CD to you that instant, and only probably taken about 5mins to complete this whole transaction, Email me your adress Ill send you that CD, in the mail.

Send me your ideas I will check them out,
Sorry again, Terry

[Devon - store 979]

This is not price issue, it is a street date issue. Most of the time, singles from New Release albums are released weeks before the actual album drops. This would be the reason why the song was playing, but the album not available.

The reason why Best Buy could not sell you an album, is well, because that would be illegal. If a store sells an album before the street date there are substantial fines and license issues to deal with.