After reading another great story about Best Buy's shady tricks at my favorite consumer related website, The Consumerist, I remembered my observations of the typical Best Buy Sales Pitch.
The thing that I find humorous is that before you agree to buy something they tell you how great it is, then once you say you want to buy it, they tell you it's an awful product with shortcomings that can only be overcome by purchasing accessories and service plans.
"The TK421 is an excellent hdtv. It will make watching sports unreal. It's great for parties."
Customer says they'd like to buy it.
"Did I mention that these things have a $400 bulb that could burn out every year. Fortunately we have a two or five year service plan for just $35 a year. If it burns out once in the next five years you'll save money. Did I also mention that these things need to be calibrated when you get them to your house, that's included in the plan. The bumps from delivery really messes with the electronics. You'll also want to get our special mounting hardware, the one that the manufacturer has in the box is notorious for breaking. Do you have Monster Cables? Oh, well you'll want them, they're specially made with the finest metals and insulated with inert gasses.
Would you also like a complementary 6 week subscription to Entertainment Weekly? It's free. All you need to do is cancel if you don't want it. It's really easy."
Everything in the second part is the sales person's upsell. That's where Best Buy tries to make their real money. The margins on accessories and plans are insane. Just about every accessory they try to sell is marked way up. The sad thing about the whole deal is all of that stuff is completely unnecessary.
If you purchase the stuff with a credit card that offers purchase protection--a platinum card or just about any AMEX card, you've already extended the manufacturer's warranty without spending $35 a year.
You shouldn't be spending more than $10 on any kind of cable either. Let me make this very clear, they're all made out of metal, the only differences in quality are the gauge, shielding, and connectors. You should be able to buy better and cheaper stuff online or at a hardware store for a fraction of what you could spend at Best Buy on Monster products.
What I actually recommend for people to do is to Shop at Best Buy or Circuit City or wherever. When you find something you're interested in, write down the model number then go online and read what people are saying about them. If it looks like a good product, use a service like Froogle to find the lowest price by the most reputable merchant.
Best Buy hates when you do this so I'm all in favor of it.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Art of the Best Buy Sale
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Labels:
Best Buy,
electronics,
ripoffs,
service plans,
shopping,
warranty
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