[roamerz]

Our Best Buy is great. Usually pretty good stock and good variety. People there seem to be pretty nice as well. Bought a laptop there a few weeks ago. The one I wanted was in stock, they had a good price and gave me a fair trade in for my old one. Wife loves the place too as she can try on all their phone cases before she buys. It’s great to have a local option so that is one of the reasons I also choose to support them.

[gdulli]

Best Buy price matches Amazon, I get what I want same day, no need to pay a monthly fee for "free" shipping. I used to browse Amazon for reviews (hoping at least some weren't fake) then buy in the real world in person, but now that Amazon is replacing access to reviews with AI summaries (there's a login barrier to see more than the first few) there's no need to go there at all.

[y-c-o-m-b]

I have a similar experience at my local Best Buy stores. I buy most of my electronics from there because I can't trust Amazon to give me a product that isn't counterfeit or defective to some degree. In general I largely prefer to buy things in person these days than have it shipped. No more Prime.

[jerlam]

Yes, it's the same reason that I recommend people just buy stuff from Costco if they have the item.

A buyer at Best Buy or Costco explicitly made a decision to stock the item at the store/warehouse, where shelf space is not free. If that item has a lot of returns or complaints, the store will stop selling the product. It takes up space where a better product could be, and returns waste the time of employees.

Amazon doesn't have these controls. Listing an item on Amazon is cheap and Amazon has no incentive to prune their marketplace of junk. The only controls on Amazon are user reviews which can be gamed.

[qingcharles]

Just be careful with BB when buying some products, like external hard drives. There are many stories on r/datahoarder from people buying HDDs only to plug them in and find the previous buyer has swapped out the drive, resealed it and returned it.

[jmholla]

I stopped patronizing Best Buy when their store phone numbers started going to a corporate call center that couldn't tell me if something I was looking for was in stock at the store.

[roamerz]

They do show stock on their website. For other things such as price matching their chat service has worked well for me and seems to be backed by real people. I can't remember the last time I tried to call in.

[SunshineTheCat]

I've had a similar experience with the Best Buy in my area. They also seem to be really good about keeping things in stock that people actually buy (seems like a basic concept, but you would be surprised).

Also they're typically right on par with Amazon's pricing and no need to wait for it to ship, just a quick trip there and back (although they usually get me buying something I didn't go there for) >:(

[roamerz]

>> although they usually get me buying something I didn't go there for

Me too but I enjoy browsing through the store so it’s (sometimes not so much) cheap entertainment.

[_DeadFred_]

I find it hard to believe this is the real timeline when Best Buy is better than Amazon and New Egg. But I prefer Best Buy to both those now.

[mrguyorama]

NewEgg is still great if you specific "Fulfilled by newegg" or whatever magic checkbox stands for "No actually this is a product we have bought and have in our warehouse from a real company and you are paying us to sell that physical item to you from our warehouse"

Of course, that eliminates 90% of their "inventory", but I only ever wanted to buy computer products from them anyway.

[roamerz]

What would make me question the timeline more is if we still had a B&M Circuit City in town!

[kotaKat]

The rural Best Buys kind of are terrible. “Middle America” and “Empty Nester” targeted locations really don’t give you anything other than medicore middle-of-the-line product selections. What I’d kill for one of the “Urban Trendsetter” format locations…

[CrimsonCape]

Yes absolutely. My local Best Buy is a depressing hollow shell. The drone section is vacant, the PC part area is now vacant (no GPUs, no RAM, no SSDs). I have visited glorious Microcenter in Dallas, which is a long way from here, and a magnitude different (better) experience.