Yeah I saw that at hedge end the other day when I was going to JustForFun and saw a news article about it around a month back. More competition against DSG for high-street electronics can only be a good thing imo.
BestBuy UK is a venture with carphone warehouse, so if they're customer service is anything to go by... it's doomed
Ya bestbuy is a ncie store to take a look at everything in person.. I have a friend who works there so whenever i buy anything i just go through him. They definantly mark up prices a ton i got a FM Transmitter for my Ipod like 20 bucks cheaper with his discount
That is true. They get stuff for 5% above cost. So some stuff is dirt cheap. Dont expect to get a 55" HDTV for $400 though, that stuff has nearly no markup at all, unfortunately.
Popped over to BestBuy today in Hedge End, Southampton (avoiding yesterday's mad rush queues on opening day) and overall it's a thumbs up for me but I was expecting a bit more tbh. It's quite similar to PC World/Currys combined (The Hedge End PC World/Currys stores were next door to each other until they knocked the wall down and refurbished the stores). However BestBuy has much more variety on electricals but I am disappointed on the PC hardware side of things which is quite limited and the largest (non-Apple) monitor they had was 20". However they have PLENTY of staff who actually know what they are talking about (unlike PCW!) and prices are pretty much the same as everywhere else. It's about time PCWorld/Currys actually got competition of sorts and BestBuy does have a large variety of electricals. Currently BestBuy is only open in Southampton and London so here is a little insight to the rest of the population Oh and I got to play with the iPad - just an enlarged iPhone tbh.
I meant to take a look today but I couldn't be arsed in the end. What's their range of other hardware (CPUs, graphics cards, hard drives etc.) like? Are their prices more competitive than PC World/Currys, or would you still want to buy everything online anyway?
When's Aintree's store expected to open? Apparently opening day sales with them are awesome, and I want a decent lens for my Camera.
Quite probably a better job actually!! Haven't worked for PC World so I can't say I only go in there to buy thermal paste when I've forgotten to order some >.<
I went over to thurrock the other week. Awful pricing. The MS Wireless deskset my mother in law just bought from PC world for £30 was £59.99, and the oven that we'd bough from dixons for £479.99 was £949 - That's pretty much double the price of both of those items!
I'll answer my own question since I've just had a look myself: Their range of PC hardware was crap. They only sell Western Digital hard drives, they only sell PNY RAM, and the highest end graphics card they had was a 5770, and they wanted £160 for it. The only other cards they had were some of nVidia's rebranded GT somethingorothers. They don't even stock any CPUs or motherboards at all. Everything else was just as highly priced as PC World. £45 for a 16GB USB flash drive? No thanks. Overall, it was pretty much exactly the same as shopping at PC World. Just a tiny bit less soul destroying for some reason. And a little more shiny.
From what I have heard staff don't get paid on commission, and are generally supposed to be less pushy. They are aiming at the same market as PC world, so the prices are always going to seem astronomical to us. But for the general public I imagine best buy will go down a storm if you can walk in and browse without being thrusted upon by several morons who say things like "yeah the athlon x2 is pretty much the same as the core2quad, if anything the bigger hard drive means the athlon system is going to be faster overall" That is the reason I managed 3 weeks at PC world and then I just had to leave, fearing the rest of my soul would be enveloped.
