Best Buy employee here that got forced into the Apple Master position, ask me anything

Best Buy employee here that got forced into the Apple Master position, ask me anything.

Forced into it? Don't they lend you a free iPhone 7 and Apple watch? Sounds cool to me. I work PCs as well, but it's easy to make rev and engage customers when they see that you're an apple master.

Are you me? I'm in the same boat.

5s and s1 watch.

I hate having 2 phones, and I'm not going to use the iPhone because it's like half the size of my personal phone (6p)

Not op,

It's easier to sell ,sure. I hate that I'm the only one at work that has an Apple watch though. Even though we have 2 apple watch demos, I get all the calls about it because nobody wants to just learn. Everyone pawns off their customers to me.

Why the fuck doesn't Best Buy stock up on watch bands and tries their best to sell their shitty third party ones.

>apple master
made me cringe, wtf is that?

My store has an entire wall of Apple watch bands.

if you are in a sales position then quit

Isn't this a good thing as a salesman? Do you not get commission?

It's apples certified retail sales person.

I'm not op, but I'm And I spent like 4 hours with our Apple rep and got sent a plaque thing and a 10$ gc for iTunes.

Just recently got my iPhone and Apple watch, but they belong to BB.

Sure it's easy rev, but I'm expected to have more responsibility akin to a VPL, yet my hours are only guaranteed to 32/wk, and I'm still expected to close. I'm also now the only full timer non VPL in my department, so I'm essentially closing every fucking night.

Best Buy doesn't work on commission. Regardless of this fact, I see 90% of customers come into the PC section, say "I'm just looking," and then look at every single laptop without even looking at their specs. I'm pretty sure they just think if it looks better, it runs better.

>commission

BBs whole thing is "no commission, no pressure."

On our back end, as sales people, there is huge pressure to sell more. Our daily number tracker is actually called Sell More Sell Better. If you don't hit the target % or $ value, they can put you on a "performance improvement plan" which is the first step to getting let go for not making them enough money.

What is VPL?

I'm in Canada so it might be called something different here.

Fuck Best Buy. I hadn't been there in years and just recently decided to go and look at laptops and literally 99% of them were those gay ass 2 in 1 memetops.
Also, everything in that store is overpriced af. I miss Circuit City...

You know you can just price match to amazon right?
I go to BB all the time to avoid waiting for Amazon to ship if its available at BB.

This. We're tracked on our amount sold in a day, amount sold in accessories relative to price of the computer, amount sold in extended warranties and services, how many units we attached to a transaction, and how many credit cards we get out.

>just looking

I hate this. They're the ones that want to belft alone until they just come and say "I want this one" and point to the shitty $299 junker. No attach, just dry toast.

I agree that the selection isn't the best, it really depends on the size of the store you go to though. In my store, HP is paying for half of our laptop section so we have like 12 shitty HP laptops there.

As far as price, theyre as good as anyone else for the most part. They price match almost anyone else too.

Price match is great when the selection is decent. The problem is Best Buy has shit all for laptops.

I hand it to them and send them to front lanes. Ours are spider wrapped and on display. I also love when they say "just looking," then I talk to another customer and the "just lookers" suddenly want my attention.

>credit cards

Like finance cards? If so, I feel bad for you. We aren't required or tracked on how many BB cards we get. I would have a moral objection to that. It's just not my place to recommend someone going into debt so I can get a sale.

Sounds like heaven. There's a huge pressure in my store. I don't really offer it like my bosses ask me to, but I let people apply if they ask or mention it.

I'm gonna take the iPad because it's actually useful to show products that we don't have on the floor to customers with.

Best Buy is a non-commission environment. We do bonus off of storewide sales, but not individual performance.

This shit honestly infuriates me. I work at a destination store that doesn't even have a sign out front with our logo on it. (Thanks Coral Springs Building Codes) If you don't know we're a Best Buy, you basically drive right past. We're standalone, no attachment to a mall, and located next to residential streets and a small hotel. People coming in have wasted time and gas to get to our store, and yet they just want to "look"

Vendor Provided Labor. Positions such as Microsoft Expert, Samsung Expert, etc. are paid for by the vendor. They are also not required to open/close, work exactly 40 hours in a week, cannot do code ones, cannot sell product beyond their vendor, etc. They coach the rest of the department in selling the vendor's product.

2 in 1's are honestly rather popular. We do have traditional clamshells, but most of our customers like the 2 in 1 concept, so they remain on the sales floor. All of our laptops that aren't shitty plastic craptops (Most of them are 600+) are what we call "Blue Labels" and are developed with customer feedback and direct vendor support.

I've managed to convert people buying hotbuys by just telling them they're better off spending 300 bucks on a used laptop from the pawn shop down the road.

The BB card is pushed so hard because it increases purchasing power of customers, and it also influences how the store's leadership bonuses. It also offers rewards for those who were looking to pay off a purchase immediately.

I sometimes send them to the cashiers.

Our managers are stingey about that because people do it with dry sales and it fudges their numbers. It also doesn't provide the "door to door experience" that we are supposed to provide.

Our managers are chill af, but they take it all way too seriously.

Geeksquad agent checking in, I hate the salesfloor

i have dark brown hair and blue eyes, but some hairs on my mustache and beard are blonde. my question is why do my ass crack and dick are pitch black?

Same thing here. If you come in, refuse my advice on not buying that white Lenovo for your photoshop projects (You should know the demonspawn) and then ask if you can ring out at the computers register while I'm busy working on a customer looking at a Spectre or an XPS, you can kindly go fuck yourself all the way to the front lanes to check out.

As soon as a full time ARA spot opens up, I'm in that shit.

What the shit?

>Vendor Provided Labour

We don't have any of those in my store. I'm aware of Samsung and Microsoft experts though.

>pawn shop

I just remind them over and over that a Celeron with 4 gb is just not enough for them to use for uni(or whatever) and that cheap isn't always best. There's no sense in buying a laptop or anything if you are going to hate it right away.

>BB card

I totally understand the reason to promote it, I have an objection to that though. I dont see the bonus for hitting rev, so I'm not going to push it. I'll mention it, but only as an option.

Usually the card is a good way to move someone off of a craptop and onto a blue label, or to attach more accessories or GSP to a laptop. Laptops are fairly important, so many consider them to be "good debt" because they can provide a long service life. That being said, don't push the card incredibly hard, just genuinely ask if they want it. Don't half-ass that step. It's how I've done decent in apps, and it's how my coworker had 40 apps last month as a part timer.

Good shit I'm part time ara, I've made it to the most comfy position in the store and couldn't be happier about, gonna ride it out til I'm don't with school

>demonspawn

Ours is a little blue HP Stream.

Same shit though I'm sure

Hope that comes with white skin or else me and my sister won't be buying anything from your dirty ass.

>tfw BB will never have multiple kiosks of consoles showcasing different games.
Now is just the Sony one while Nintendo just shows a video for the Switch and a 3DS in display and MS doesn't have one.

I have customers coming in trying to buy that, and I'm so glad we don't carry it.

Celeron with 2GB ram and a 32GB eMMC "Solid state drive" right?

I'm white af

Nintendo is probably holding off until they make better display units, and my store still has an XBONE demo station.

I love the nearly orgasmic feeling of telling customers that we don't carry it, before selling them on a Chromebook instead. I know they're terrible for privacy, but for 200 bucks you can either get a windows paperweight, or a nice snappy laptop that you can actually use fairly well for simple tasks.

Yep. And it comes with Office 365 installed so that 32gb is not true at all lol

>What the shit?
you said ask me anything. i'm just curious.

Fair enough.

It's astounding how people can fail to understand that Windows takes up space.

I love when the idiots that actually buy it come back and return it. I always try go up and smugly ask what's wrong with it.

Managed to sell 3 years of 24/7 support and a data transfer with a PC today. I told them multiple times it didn't come with Office, and they did not purchase it. I took them up to Geek Squad, and 10 minutes later a manager asked me to go to Geek Squad because the customer wanted to return everything due to it not coming with Office. Apparently he was "confused," and I wasn't able to save the sale. I spent 90 fucking minutes with that asshole.

Better yet, they claim they have an old copy they can use, and then return it when GS tells them they cannot data transfer programs, despite the fact I explained they could not do that multiple times during the sale.

>Astounding

Another thing..

While I think a lot of people who work at BB are pretty damn smart, who the fuck goes to any retail outlet and expects the staff to be experts on absolutely everything?

I work retail, how the fuck am I supposed to know how to do payroll on your sage 50 program?

>"Well, I bought it here"

Fucking call the company that makes the program for fucks sake.

The Geek Squad manager told the guy "Hey, I'll transfer over your old copy if you just get the code." The dude refused, and said the computer should have come with office already on it.

Sorry about your luck man. That shit pisses me right off. I would have just sold the office 365 into the Cx line or did a re/re.

Serves you right for being a sales monkey. Keep dancing for that next sale you dirty monkey wagecuck. Mr. Shekelstein Goldberg needs a new gold plated Bugatti.

All Lenovo/HP need to do to make those streambooks not shit is install a lightweight Linux distro on them.

"I bought it here" triggers me. It's always something well beyond EOL too. I had a guy come in with an IBM laptop straight out of 2004. Demanded I help him with it becasue he "bought it here" and "spends a lot of money here"

I had a wife force her husband to return a 2k sale on a gaming desktop with two 144hz monitors because she didn't want him spending the money that he probably makes.

It's cool, I'm just making some extra money while in grad school. It's just frustrating to have wasted so much time with someone so unreasonable.

All those replies were to me lol

Wives are killers for sure. The husband's come in to spend their money, and I see shit get returned all the time. I love when the wives come in to return it without the husband. We need to return the money back to the same card it was purchased with, and I'm sure we can make an exception. When the wife comes in and acts like we lured the man in and sold him a bunch of shit, I'm not willing to make that exception.

I love telling her to go home and get yet husband and his card. I just imagine the fights they'll have about it when they get home.

>Spends a lot of money here

I get this all the time too. Entitled pricks.

Most of the time, it's some old hag who has spent maybe 500 bucks across the past year. Most of our elite/elite plus customers are incredibly nice people. Never ask for any additional discount, always engaging in the sale. They're a joy to work with.

I worked CS for many months. I even covered some phone operator shifts. People spend thousands here every day. I don't give a shit what you spent, I'll do what I can and won't be shy about telling you what I can't.

>Old hag

I'm willing to work with anyone as long as they're respectful.

My store is in a very blue collar town. We get a lot of angry jackasses that yell and scream when we CANT do anything for them. It's not that I won't, if I don't have a solution then it needs to be escalated.