this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2026
811 points (97.5% liked)
Technology
87417 readers
3842 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I was BestBuy services when they bought Geek Squad circa 2004. We went from "keep the customers happy by actually solving their problem so they come back and buy more" to "you're all salespeople so charge every customer $60 just to set the computer down on the counter and push magazine subscriptions"
They must've gone back and forth a couple of times since then.
Yup, I started at the tail end of where you ended where they realized they done fucked up again, and then rinse and repeat. Good leaders learned it's a long term gain, that services are there to support the sales. Then they get "line go up" short term morons who kill all of that good will for a good quarter, and the stock plummets. To me you can see it clearly in their stock price:
You can see your drop down, then they realized they fucked up, then my time was around 2011-2015, you can see the collapse and rebuild. Then wit does go up during the tenure of Jolie, until he was forced out. They enjoyed short term profits and got lucky through covid, and now they're floundering because they don't really know how to retain customers, so it's wildly fluctuating.
Yep. Worked there around the same time as you. I was on the appliance and TV repair side and was part of the massive layoffs. I left and focused more on my engineering career. But I saw the same thing you did. I started in '06 and left around '16. Saw the wheel spin a couple of times. My dad went there recently to buy something simple, asked for help, was told someone would be right over, and after half an hour he left and just picked it up from Walmart. They got rid of the checkout at our local store and now customer service rings people out, but when no one is around to do that... People just leave.
It's sad to see, I don't want less competition out there for electronics retail.
Very validating to hear others who saw the same. So frustrating that when I was there I really did pride myself on my work and making people's lives easier. (I always am annoyed at people who are like "har har geek squad dumb" when they really don't know what we do, doing the simplest tasks for people who are too afraid to do it themselves). Sadly, it appears that all of that has just gone down the drain as the search for more profit has eaten up all of that goodwill.
I also completely agree, with Fry's closing and microcenter only in a few places, and then radio shack long dead consumer electronics is very sparse. Like them or not we need best buy as an electronics retailer elsewise most of the country is empty.