Another article from the Consumerist today. A reader by the name of Robert sent in this tidbit after taking a look at a television display over at Best Buy,
“Thinking that something was not right, I took a further look at the demo and realized that the inferior tv on the left was turned to plain old ESPN, and the superior tv on the right was tuned to ESPN HD. What’s even worse is they had a box for their Black Tie TV Protection Plan strategically placed so that when looking at the display from most angles, it covered up the ESPN logo on the left tv as to disguise the fact that it was not an HD channel.”
When Robert went to ask some of the employees about this they tried to brush him off, at first saying that they could not find the remote to change both sets to the same channel and then trying to feed him some BS about how their calibration service cuts down on power consumption by 30%…so it’s okay that the display is completely deceptive. Obviously Robert was not impressed.
What do you guys think? It seems pretty slimy to pull this kind of practice off. Having worked for a large retail chain I understand that these practices are not condoned by the company but by individuals working at that particular store. However I do believe that this is the kind of atmosphere that Best Buy creates and maintains. They tell their employees to meet the weekly/monthly numbers and then try to brainwash them into believing that their BS services like “calibration” and computer “setups” are actually worth what they charge for them.
This issue was about televisions but it’s still important to the computer repair sector. How many managers across these stores train their inexperienced “techs” to sell and promote services that are not beneficial to the customer? How many use deceptive practices? The people who do these things have no pride in their work or what they are doing in life and that is sad.
For an independent look at calibration visit Crave’s post on the subject here.