Best Buy --Beware!!!!!

Yep, Best Buy sucks.

 

For the record, megapixel count has absolutely no bearing on picture quality. The camera manufacturers are using picture resolution as a price point. You should only buy enough megapixels to support the largest sized print you will make. A 5MP camera will make a nice 8x10, and a very acceptible 11x14. If you do not plan on making 20x30s, poster prints, or anything of that like, going to a larger resolution (aka higher megapixel) camera is a waste of money, memory card space, hard drive space, and can be a real pain in the arse when you are trying to send pictures to friends/family by email.

My recommendation is to determine what the maximum size print you see yourself making is, then determine which features you need/want and go shopping.

Will I accept a proprietary battery or do I want rechargable alkalines?
How much zoom do I want?
Is size a concern to me?
Do I want image stabilization?
Do I need fully manual capabilities?
Do I want movie capability?
Do I already have SD/CompactFlash/MemoryStick memory I'd like to reuse?

These are questions you should ask yourself before shopping ... don't get caught up in the megapixel hype. A high quality 5MP camera's 8x10 print will blow the doors off a crappy 7MP print any day of the week.

Bill in Brooklyn

 

Why do you deal with $8/hr clerks? You should have (politely) asked to see the store manager. Clerks have no power.

 

The Best Buy's in my area all have very large signs hung from the ceiling in a couple of places explaining their return policy - which includes the restocking fee on many items.

 

You should have spoken to the manager. I've returned stuff to my best buy and never had a mention of a restocking fee. You had a dumb teanager on a power trip.

 

Not to hijack the thread, but how then do you identify a high quality 3,4, or 5 mp camera?

 

Go to dpreview.com for camera reviews to pick a good one. It will list the good and bad points of various ones and you can pick what suits you best.

Regarding the original poster, I dont mean to sound like a jerk but it sounds like you were wrong. A restocking fee on electronics is pretty standard, and you should *always* ask about it before buying, and make SURE you have something in writing, because whats in writing is all that counts. If you want to be able to buy electronics and return with no questions asked, you will be hard pressed to shop at any of the major chains. Almost all of them have restock fees. If you didnt read the terms of the sale and then expected them to violate those terms because you changed your mind, how is that their fault?

 

I swore off Best Buy years ago. I had a cd player installed in my dad's car, and I just hated how they acted and worked. Guy followed me to the car and asked if he could start smoking. I was like wtf?

I always liked Circuit City. Actually went there yesterday to see if the warranty on my camera was still valid and they helped me out. The website is great too for reviews.

 

I'd go to a different Best Buy, look for a moron and fast talk them!

 

I never buy anything from best buy anymore. Hands down, the best company to work with is amazon. You can usually get it in 2-3 days, CHEAPER, and they never ask ANY questions concerning returns. They send the box, you put it in, and it's gone. Even if Amazon is more expensive (never), I will shop from them.

Long story short, I bought a navigation system for my dad on Amazon. I come back to find out that the day I recieved it, they cut the price down 80 bucks. I sort of felt cheated, but I also was the one that told them other places were cheaper! I didn't need it right away so I was going to send it back and order again.

I called them and less than 5 minutes later, they are refunding me 80 dollars - just like that! They have a customer for life, AFAIK.

 

Your receipt will explain the return policy. They must have had too many people just buying a camera to use for say a wedding and then just turning around and returning it. If you contact the manager I'd be surprised if they stiff you as long as you're upgrading.

 

Just do your homework prior to buying the camera. No need to deal with crap like that, then.

 

Best Buy should put a policy like that right on the box where you can clearly read it before opening.

Oh, wait.........
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I wonder why we do that (put those little stickers/seals blocking direct access to the inside of the box)...hmm maybe for a reason. I work at Best Buy in the Digital Imaging Dept. here in NC, and yes they should have told you about the policy...but you also need to realize that is the stores policy. Even if they didn't tell you that at the beginning, you still should acknowledge it. The store policy is posted all over the stores, especially right next to the customer service desk on a gigantic sign. And anyways...like Bill Ng was saying megapixels only come into play when determining what the size of you prints will be in the future. So that was definitely not your problem. The equivalent quality of a 35mm photograph is matched by that of a 3 megapixel camera. And let me ask you this, are you camera savvy? It is a possibility that you just took the camera out of the packaging and began to use it right away? Camera settings are sometimes screwed up and need to be set to certain specifications. They never come set to you as a user/customer, from the factory. Sorry but cameras are not personalized to their users when they are mass produced. And another thing you really need to understand is that, most Best Buy employees are lifeless fools that just want to sell you something and get you out of their face. I know this b/c I work w/ them every damn week....please don't start this crap about Best Buy b/c of one stupid employee. Thanks

 

I only remembered that because I didn't have a razor handy and it took me a good 3 minutes to get through that f'ing thing with my key. Looks like it, too.

C.

 

Another Hijack...sort of.

Best Buy does indeed suck. Follow me on this real quick. I manage a local music store, so to me this stuff matters. About 3-4 times last Holiday season, Best Buy would put out CDs early. Not the day before they were supposed to come out, but a full 4-5 days early. Typically on the Friday before they were due to come out (thereby boosting weekend sales). I am not talking about small artists that no one cares about, but season making releases like Eminem, 50Cent, etc. Titles that sell like mad.

When I called Best Buy to find out what the hell they were doing, the best answer I receieved was, "A small store in the states broke the release date, so now we are selling it." BS...The penalty for doing so is huge. No ma n' pa store will risk that. Furthermore, the only titles they ever released early were all Universal or Universal subsidiary releases.

I don't care that Best Buy sells new releases for far less than everyone else. As an economics student, I can appreciate their method of playing the game. But by doing this, they are not playing the game fairly, it is outright cheating.

- Chris

 

I ALWAYS read return policies when buying things like this. I generally like to purchase electronics online (no sales tax, usually cheaper, etc), but not without making sure it's worth the investment first (returning things online is a pain). I bought a $1,300 camera from Ritz Camera and returned it about 2 weeks later. I went onto the Ritz Camera website and bought the exact same camera, free shipping, and NO tax - saved about $100-120 bucks. I buy things at Fry's or somewhere without a stupid restocking fee.

 

I gave up on B/B last holiday season because of the store's shady INTERNET policy and bad attitude from the manager when confronted about the problem.
You have to watch out because the website will say, "Online prices and selection generally match our retail stores, but may vary. Prices and offers are subject to change." If you don't see this warning before you go to the store with the web-site's price in mind, you'll be surprised when you go to buy the item because the price is higher in the store. Long story short, rude people work the customer service. I walked and never came back.

 

Good Guys let me do exactly what you are talking about, AT THE SALESGUY'S SUGGESTION!

I wanted the 3.2MP Digital Elph, but they were out of stock. Sales dude says "Hey, but the 2MP use it for a week and when the 3.2 comes in just return the 2 for that." So that's what I did.

They used to cost more but now pretty much match Best(Not)Buy.

 

Best Buy, Circuit City, et.al. they're all the same.

I once bought a VCR at Circuit City. The VCR had the normal manufacturer warranty on it and I opted not to take the store's extra warranty. After a year, I got a call from Circuit City explaining that the warranty on the VCR had expired and for a fee, I could get the "extend warranty".

I explained that since if anything goes wrong with the VCR, I could likely fix it myself so I dont really need the extended warranty. The snippy ***** on the phone then said "Oh, you are one of these people who just throw things away when they go bad".

I explained again, that if something went wrong with the VCR, I could fix it myself. The more I thought about it the madder I got and ended up calling
Circuit City headquarters where I let a customer service manager have it,
explaining that the person on the phone was rude and restated her quote.

Long story short, she lost her job and Circuit City lost a customer.

By the way, the VCR still works without a hitch and I didnt need to buy any
extended warranty" more than 10 years later.

And, whats up with Best Buy's checkout anyway? 50 cash register lines and only 2 open, even at the busiest times of the year! Screw them.

If you want cameras, shop B&H Photo/Video in New York.

BHW

 

I personally like the Sony Store. Its sort of manufacture direct almost. Plus Sony Products have been great for me.

 

What's worse is that these cashiers all seem to be NEW people who do the slowest cash transactions I have ever seen. I was a cashier for a short time, I know it's tricky at first, but 2 lines, 50 people waiting, get more people or work faster.

Don't ask for a manager, because you're going to get another slightly older teenager on a power trip as well. Nothing will help, because it's "store policy" for all their BS.

In California it's a law to honor the lowest price listed in store. And they have screwed up a couple times on this and they told me TOO BAD.


And to top it off, one Thanksgiving I waited in line for about 30mintues only to have one employee trying to grab the items I was trying to buy and tell me I couldn't add more items to my basket. WTF then I just grabbed all the batteries I was standing near and placed them all in my basket along with some magazines. The manger said it was store policy you can't do that and pointed to a sign, which had only return policies listed.

Actually they can't do this, at least not in CA.
My friend worked at Tower and the both of us with the BestBuy once and some some CDs and DVDs that were like supposed to be released 2-4 weeks later. We bought all those titles and then called the MPAA hotline, they get fined X amount for selling discs in advanced. A few weeks later in the employee area of the CD section there was a huge sign that said to check the release date before putting things on the shelf because they got fined 350,000. BWHAHAHA.

 

Aside from the issues with the cra**y return policy at Best Buy, you do want to go by more than pixel resolution when you get another camera. There are at least 3 other factors that affect perceived image quality: 1) is the quality of the lens in front of the sensor, 2) image processing capability of the camera CPU, 3) quality of the media used to view the image, i.e. if you're using a good photo program, you can see every pixel if you want; but if you print to paper, then it depends on the size of the paper, quality of the printer, quality of the paper, quality of the ink, etc. Obviously #3 is not an issue with the camera, you just want to make sure that it's not influencing how you're viewing the image.

For most people interested in 5x7 or 8x10 max prints, then 3-5Mp is plenty. But I second the suggestion to check out camera reviews at dpreview.com