Best Buy Geek Squad employees report mass layoffs

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/5/24122542/best-buy-geek-squad-layoffs-ai-restructuring

by iancmceachern • 2 years ago

75 76 2 years ago

sfmike• 2 years ago

besides fixing a pc tower many things are just too expensive to repair, if it's several hundred to repair and similar price ratio for a new one or buy a used one same price then people opt for that

freeone3000• 2 years ago

Even then! Best Buy charges $150 to take a look, plus the cost of software or replacement parts. That’s more than half of the cost of the average (as in, median most popular) computer! You can get a used optiplex for that, no problem.

accrual• 2 years ago

It makes me happy I can do nearly everything Geek Squad can do, maybe even more in some cases, especially since it's a skill apparently valued so high. I could charge 50% of what Best Buy does and still make a profit, hah.

Legend2440• 2 years ago

Really just comes down to manufacturing is heavily automated, while repair is heavily labor-intensive. It often is cheaper to buy a new thing than to hire a skilled technician to drive out and repair it.

jerlam• 2 years ago

Yup, compared to many other consumer items, computers are extremely difficult to diagnose and repair compared to their replacement cost.

I just had my refrigerator fixed last year - the repair cost $500, and I think there are only three or four major parts that the technician can repair/replace. I think it's similar for a washer/dryer. It can be diagnosed and fixed expensively, or not at all and must be replaced.

The average computer is a mess of random hardware components and bad drivers and questionable-quality software that all interact with each other in unknown, disastrous ways. The YouTube channels Linus Tech Tips and Gamers Nexus have a bunch of videos in where they purposefully unplug or disable something on brand new computers, contact the tech support of the manufacturer, an independent shop, or Best Buy to have them try and fix it. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

bluedino2• 2 years ago

The computer might only cost $500, but the function it performs is worth more.

Let's say you have a desktop computer, power supply goes out. $100 for the part, and $100 for the tech to replace it, for a total of $200. You might think, "that computer is 3 years old, it's not even worth $200, just buy a new one".

However, a new computer comes with more costs. You have to set up all your software. Configure your web browser, bookmarks, desktop icons, setup your printer, find that program you were using to do X, this might take a whole day to do. Some people just want it fixed so they can get back to work.

ipaddr4• 2 years ago

But it would take a day to get someone to look at it and a new computer can drive home with you today.

faeriechangling• 2 years ago

Adjusted for inflation, the cost of a computer has gone down, the cost of repair has stayed relatively steady.

vundercind2• 2 years ago

PCs also had only a relatively brief period between “niche hobbyist toy” (because you don’t really need a computer to do much yet) and “niche hobbyist toy” (because most folks do all their important computer-related stuff on their phones). Perhaps 15 years. Maybe less.

Did they have a lot of business contracts? If not, I don’t know how they’ve even hung on this long.

AlchemistCamp3• 2 years ago

Everywhere I’ve ever worked, “important computer-related stuff” has been done on computers with large monitors and external keyboards. Those have often been laptops at docking stations, but I’ve never seen phones used as the primary driver.

gregmac• 2 years ago

Yeah, this is just a continuation of the demise of tv repair shops.

Consider from the perspective of an average, non-technical person - someone who has never installed an OS or opened the case.

Their $900, 3-year old system "breaks". It'll cost $100 to diagnose, and anywhere from tens to hundreds to fix. Is it worth it? They're going to consider just buying a new $900 system, which will be faster and back under warranty again.

While a broken tv could be a $0.50 capacitor, the shame is a huge number of "broken" computers are purely software problems: sometimes malware, sometimes fixed by updating a driver, or even just changing a setting (And of course also "fixed" by paving over and installing a new OS).

This isn't hard to learn, but understandably people don't have the time or desire. And the value-risk-cost balance is off when compared to buying new. So perfectly good hardware becomes e-waste.

Y_Y• 2 years ago

I'd say this is a textbook example of Baumol's Cost Disease.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

paxys2• 2 years ago

There isn't much repair to be done anymore. It's not like these "Geek Squad" employees are opening up your iPhone to diagnose and fix a problem. They are simply salespeople.

Wingman4l7• 2 years ago

They didn't have the expertise nor care to do proper repair back even when they could. I had a friend in ~2006 take a Windows desktop PC to them that wasn't booting; they told her to buy a new (needlessly large capacity) hard drive. I took a look at it, and fixed it... by running CHKDSK.

craftkiller2• 2 years ago

There isn't much repair to be done anymore.

I want to to qualify that as: "There isn't much repair to be done anymore at geek squad." Computer/cellphone repair is still alive. For example, pretty much anyone with some time on their hands and access to youtube can do cellphone screen replacements. I've personally replaced the screen on my phones 4 times, and the battery once, all without any training or past experience. Laptops are even easier since you don't have to pry a screen off.

bluedino2• 2 years ago

Isn't Best Buy doing (some) Apple repairs now?

Animats• 2 years ago

Best Buy: "Where we are leveraging our expertise and our Geek Squad agents to capitalize on the growing use of technology to help provide health care in the home.”

Wait, Best Buy is pivoting to healthcare? Yes, they are.[1] It's basically a call center operation, plus some home gadgets.

[1] https://www.bestbuyhealth.com/

DigitalHackOp• 2 years ago

Their numbers don't seem to make sense

9M Geek Squad visits every year 7.1M Caring Center calls per year 30K Patients managed

So each patient is calling ~237 times per year and being visited ~300 times per year? That seems crazy high numbers

snowfield• 2 years ago

A lot of patients do need daily care / checkups, but I haven't seen exactly what kind of people they expect to be caring for

kotaKat• 2 years ago

They’re probably combining their overall Geek Squad dispatch rate (health + consumer).

I could still see 237 calls a year when you’re dealing with personalized home healthcare for the elderly, depending on conditions.

underlipton2• 2 years ago

They'd actually been pushing it since before the pandemic. The idea was to ruse elderly customers into home care replacement devices (e.g., LifeAlert but with bluetooth) and a "support" service as part of their annual Prime-style subscription. You could tie it all into connected home/security system setups.

Everyone realized it was a non-starter and no one but the most unscrupulous associates really sold from that angle.

walterbell7• 2 years ago

there isn’t any massive current innovation that would spur you to go buy a new laptop

Famous last words, stated one month before HP/Dell/Lenovo/Asus/Samsung launch the first Arm-Qualcomm laptops with UEFI, upstream Linux and Windows 11 support, including "AI" silicon and optional LTE modems. Hopefully they will be competitive in performance-per-watt with Apple M3, minus the walled garden.

iLoveOncall• 2 years ago

Literally not 0.1% of their customers would even understand half of your sentence let alone care about any of it.

withinboredom• 2 years ago

That’s a marketing/sales problem though.

walterbell7• 2 years ago

Sentence for Linux audience.

Best Buy customers will understand battery life, performance and shiny "AI" features, thanks to Microsoft marketing.

Rinzler89• 2 years ago

Arm-Qualcomm laptops [...] upstream Linux [...] minus the walled garden

You clearly never witnessed Qualcomm's MO. They're the kings of manufacturing proprietary bullshit standards paralel to the open ones, closed firmware blobs and providing next to no Linux support.

If this is what the PC future looks like, you can keep your ARM laptops, I'll gladly stick to ye' olde X86, where I can plug in a USB stick and install any OS I want without worries.

walterbell7• 2 years ago

Old dogs can learn new tricks to compete with Apple, https://www.phoronix.com/news/Qualcomm-Mainline-Linux-2024

They have publicly promised upstream Linux support for Elite X at launch.

I'll gladly stick to ye' olde X86, where I can plug in a USB stick and install any OS I want without worries.

We'll find out soon if these new Arm laptops can bridge that compatibility gap thanks to UEFI and Arm SystemReady.

paulmd• 2 years ago

You clearly never witnessed Qualcomm's MO. They're the kings of manufacturing proprietary bullshit

say no more https://semiaccurate.com/2023/09/26/whats-going-on-with-qual...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37709270

(it may or may not be true, semiaccurate's track record is... "checkered", and afaik reports were this doesn't seem to have shipped in the final product, but the fact that it's even a question...)

olyjohn• 2 years ago

You just said a bunch of stuff that normal people don't care about. Those are Best Buy's customers. The store will be stocked with shitty laptops and low end hardware that anybody who works with computers wouldn't touch.

HumblyTossed• 2 years ago

Qualcomm is the reason that for years Google couldn't offer more than 2 or 3 years of updates for their phones.

ado__dev• 2 years ago

Best Buy used to have a service where you'd pay like $150-200/yr and any tech you bought from Best Buy, Geek Squad would come out and install free of charge. I used it a bunch when I was too lazy to setup stuff myself (cameras, in-ceiling speakers, etc.) and the service was always solid. They did away with that program at the end of last year unfortunately, but that program paid for itself 5-10x over the cost.

Solvency• 2 years ago

OK so I'm confused about this. I live in Southern California, in a pretty populated area. if you search Google or yelp, there are virtually no at home services like this besides geek squad. But surely there must be a need? If you look on Nextdoor, people are constantly asking for help with TV, computers, phones, etc.

but even more than hardware: software! the amount of stuff that horse wearing on people's devices with iCloud and other consumer software services is mindboggling.

So what happened to all the independent small businesses? Is there simply not a need? Or is there an opportunity here for a bunch of college kids to put some vinyl graphics on their cars and create their own local equivalent of geek squad? it honestly seems like rape territory, especially in an age where people are less and less connected to the technicalities of their devices, peripherals, etc.

yardie2• 2 years ago

Most of the computer repair shops in my area have transitioned to phone/tablet repair. I spent $110 to repair my trusty iPhone 11 at the local PC store. Which I then traded in for a iPhone 15 since my carrier was offering almost $1000 to trade-in.

Honestly, I have no idea how anyone makes money anymore.

ipaddr4• 2 years ago

Is an iPhone the only phone people bother repairing?

michaelt• 2 years ago

I tried this briefly while in college. It turns out that if you know enough about computers to be able to successfully fix most call-outs, you can pretty much get a job as a programmer.

And as a programmer, you'll never have to explain to someone who's struggling financially that you can't get back their lost family photos, but you're charging them $150 anyway.

MrZander• 2 years ago

It can be pretty difficult to make retail computer repair profitable at scale. Our company has largely pivoted to IT consulting for other local companies who can benefit more from not having to hire an internal IT team.

Individuals have a much lower ROI from getting IT support. It's expensive to diagnose and fix "why is my computer running slow". And often times the answer is to upgrade your computer. It can be hard to stomach someone charging you an hour of labor for that.

theboogieman2• 2 years ago

I was a Geek Squad “agent” in college and Best Buy has continued to prove that they’ve lost sight of the sole value proposition Best Buy had: people want a physical place to walk into to get advice on what tech to purchase, and that same place should be able to service the tech.

Before 2020, there was a big focus on Geek Squad membership sales (Total Tech Support) as they saw the $200 yearly subscription as almost free money. They were paying the Geek Squad anyways, and there was no material cost to us providing service, so that increased both customer loyalty and revenue. It’s a great service model, until one of two things happens: 1) you’ve sold the service to almost everyone who can utilize it, or 2) a global pandemic breaks loose.

As it turns out, both of those happened around the same time. (This is not based on any internal numbers, just anecdotal experience when it became increasingly harder to sell TTS as most people either had it already or didn’t need it.)

In 2020, there was a corporate shift to focus on the Best Buy website, which really felt like the nail in the coffin to the store.

My old store is a ghost town now. Horribly understaffed. I took my mom there to buy a Macbook and we were all but standing with $1.5k clenched in our fists and nobody came out to take it: not because the employees are lazy, but because there were no employees.

Every passing year that Best Buy hasn’t been liquidated is a surprise and achievement.

nashashmi• 2 years ago

It is an eyesore to see many of the shelves empty. And the staff just don't seem to care anymore. I asked for USB-C to USB-C (before iPhone USB C) cable, and they did not have them. The guy said majority people have iPhone and so there is no point in having one of those in store!

Best Buy no longer focuses on stocking products. I used to have a rule not to go online if I can go in person to a store. Not anymore.

doubled112• 2 years ago

I used to try to buy from a real store.

Amazon has something these stores do not. Stock.

Blackthorn• 2 years ago

They pushed this online experience in a super half-assed way too. I bought a Chromebook, online, for my disabled mother, and its battery failed in three weeks. They demanded that to RMA it it had to be physically brought to a store. Nevermind that they've closed stores like mad so there wasn't any near her, and even if there were she CANNOT DRIVE. Then to add insult to injury, they made it impossible to even reach their stores by phone, all calls go to central call centers now so we couldn't try to set up any sort of pickup with a nearby store.

After that experience, I swore I would never buy a product from Best Buy ever again. Online, in person, doesn't matter. Permanently gone as a customer.

theboogieman2• 2 years ago

They took away the in-store phones while I was working there too. Taking phone calls definitely added work to the (in my opinion) already overworked employees, but from a customer standpoint, it’s absolutely ridiculous to not be able to call the store who has your computer.

The corporate mindset is “let’s cut costs and let the people working at customer service/Geek Squad/the sales floor take the blame from angry customers for our streamlining.”

aaomidi• 2 years ago

The entire value add of Best Buy was the fact that it was a physical store.

They did not have the expertise to compete with Amazon. They never paid the Amazon wages, or made the Amazon offices. They never had the presence in schools like Amazon did, or the prestige. I guess MBAs missed that when suddenly every single physical store _had_ to have an online presence that was given priority compared to their physical counterpart.

zetx2• 2 years ago

Meta question: Is this one of those "second chance" posts? Per iancmceachern's profile, this was posted a day ago (2024-04-07T05:12:35), and Algolia search says 2 days ago. Yet after a couple refreshes and an incognito browser, it's showing as being posted 1 hour ago.

Top level response by Animats says "50 minutes ago" but is timestamped 4/7 [1]. Although top level response by theboogieman says "5 minutes ago" and does seem to be [more] correct, with a timestamp of 4/8 17:12 UTC [2]. Really shakes me up on the accuracy of comments/metadata.

Turns out it wasn't deja vu after all and I really had seen this post before.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39958754 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39971752

boomboomsubban• 2 years ago

Yes, it's part of the second chance pool https://news.ycombinator.com/pool

zetx2• 2 years ago

Thanks! Wasn't aware of that link. :)

Best Buy Geek Squad employees report mass layoffs

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