A week or two ago, I was asked if I wanted to do a call-in video interview with a Best Buy BlueShirt and a Geek Squad Expert. I wasn’t able to make time to do that, but they did allow me to send in a couple of questions that they would video tape the answers for. Here are the questions that I sent in and the video that the recorded…
1. What should a buyer be looking for right now in an HD TV? What’s the big deal about 120MHz? Does it really make a difference? Which brands give you the biggest bang for your buck?
2. What are some really cool green gifts that people might not know about?
Video Details:
Format: QuickTime .mov
Length: 5:24
File Size: 31MB
Video Size: 480×360
Best Buy BlueShirt: Jevon Kinloch
Geek Squad Agent: Eddie Johnson
As you can see/hear, they did answer my first question (partially), but they didn’t answer my second question – unless you count the info about recalibrating a plasma TV. Anyway, watch the video and hopefully some of the information will be helpful to you.
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These guys ARE NOT experts. Don’t take their advice.
(Lost my first comment because I didn’t fill in the ‘website’ line)
Short and sweet:
Nearly all Best Buy employees, particularly those within the Geek Squad, are SALESPEOPLE. I agree with Mike 100%.
I’ve not had the opportunity to have someone from Geek Squad help me… I tend to figure out issues on my own. I was hoping they would go into more detail about the questions that I asked – especially ideas for green gifts.
I’m not too big on GeekSquad guys simply because I have seen way too many here in my store asking us question in TechSupport. It’s pretty sad that they come here to ask us questions and they go back to their store to fix the computer that they just inquired about…
Being a former GS agent, I can say that some of us were experts ^^ At least I can speak for myself and the people I worked with. A large part of the job is being a sales person, but in many ways is was the customer coming in not knowing what they needed, and I gave them options. Yes, I would try to get them to get N over wireless G, or a 500GB over a 250GB. But I would not try to sell them something that they did not need. I would also take into account what they already owned, and would sell services that would benefit them. Yes, having someone come to the house to do work costs extra. But it is a premium service, and the inhome agents I knew were top notch.
As for the hardware side, personally I know my stuff. That is also because I had been on PCs for along time before I was with the GS, but this was true for the many of the agents I knew. The people a level or two above me knew even more. If a PC came in with weird problems, we had a guy who worked magic, even when I did not know what was up… I remember a time he patched together drivers to make an older printer work. We had our apple guy, and our linux guy. We were all windows guys. I was, then and even more now, I ‘jack of all trades’, having weird skills that helped the customer.
Now, this is not to say that I think every precinct is like this. Sadly, we have our bad stores… more than good stores I think! As for me and my store, we were the best! Because I would not tolerate less from myself, and the management would not either.
{disclaimer, I have not watched the video because I’m in a starbucks now, without headphones!}