I just logged onto the website and looked at my purchase history and it was November 2023.

It was during a BF sale. Haven't set foot in there ever since physical media went away. Pretty sad actually. I remember when they 1st opened in California, what was it like 30 years ago? It was a really fun place to shop and I always looked forward to the ads every Sunday.

Appliances, computers and electronics aren't going to help bring in sustainable regular foot traffic. Isn't video games basically on their last legs there too?

The only things I really buy there anymore are cables and USB drives/SD cards.

They're turning into Radio Shack 2.0.

It was whenever they were unloading a bunch of the Disney steelbooks on the cheap.

Edit: just checked, looks like January 2024.

I haven't entered one of their stores since before the pandemic. I think the last time was for an in-store pickup on some cheap Black Friday blu-rays that had sold out online (like Infinity War). As for just browsing and buying something randomly in store, it's been at least twelve years.

After they started offering no minimum free shipping, I ordered a few action figures and collectibles from the website. Last month, one of them arrived defective and their return center refused to issue a refund after I shipped it back within the return window. Customer service was no help, so I filed a dispute to try and get my money back. Best Buy responded by falsely claiming I'd returned "an empty package or a different item", despite them having already shipped the same defective item back to me. So lesson learned: take your business elsewhere. Imagine having to deal with that kind of shady crap when trying to return a major appliance:

You Tube

I'll order a random cable here and there to pick up when I don't want to use Amazon. It's been at least a year though. It was nice when there were stores that existed IRL in your town that stocked a lot of stuff and were open to the public. Old days ...

I still buy my new PC's there. Bought a Nintendo Switch a couple years ago.

My local Best Buy is half empty. Like the shelves never got fully restocked after Covid.

Comparing them to Radio Shack is reasonable. I wonder if they're staying out their long term leases. I can't imagine they're selling enough to stay afloat with profits.

I usually get my ink and other office supplies from Amazon and they have more options that's why I haven't set foot in Best Buy in close to 2 years now.

But, my 40 inch Samsung 4K TV is getting close to 10 years old now. I don't know what the typical lifespan is nowadays for TVs. Maybe if it dies, I will venture in there for a new TV.

Aug of 2023. Bought a laptop for my Dad. Last media purchase was in December of 2022, and was the Clerks III steelbook. Which may very well be the last disc I bought.

I bought my last discs there last January- Dial of Destiny, Saw X and Texas Chainsaw Massacre all on 4k. Haven’t spent any money there since. I went in once last summer just to see how sad the store looked with no movies, and went in a couple weeks ago to find a long HDMI cable which I would’ve bought if they had it. Noticed they had a shelf with a bunch of projectors, obviously not plugged in. Great way to sell those, guys.

Best Buy first opened here at the start of summer 1999, I went the first day it opened and bought 4 DVDs and countless others after that. Even when I worked for Tower they often had DVDs and some CDs cheaper than what I could get them for at Tower with my employee discount. I know Best Buy was selling them at a loss and that helped put stores like Tower out of business, which makes their eventual abandoning of the market even more despicable. I won’t make any big purchases from Best Buy after this.

I went into BB today for the first time in a while. I was shopping for a new ipad. I swear, I was there in the same section all of 3 minutes & was asked if I needed help by 7 different people. It felt like I was in a receiving line or something. I will not be going back.

How dare they have employees trying to help the customers!

A few years ago I was working on a project and discovered that I needed a USB CD-ROM drive, and it was pretty handy to pop over to Best Buy and get one (a choice of two even!). That might've been my most recent purchase there.

Bought a PC and a TV there last year.

I haven't visited since before Covid actually.

Hopefully, next week to pre-order a Switch 2.

We are down to 1 Best Buy (from 3) and it was remodeled in the last 12-18 months. I've been in there twice in the last 3 months. Once to pick up a basic receiver for a friend and then again to spend the $10 certificate I got on a flash drive.

The store has a steady stream of people in it. I am glad we still have one locally. Sometimes you need something and can't wait the day (or sometimes less) for it from Amazon.

Yup! That was a big complaint pre-Covid that there was never anyone to help you and if a blue shirt walked by it was always "this isn't my department".

For me it was a little over a year ago, to buy a new stove and over-the-range microwave, my uncle was working there at the time (since retired) and got me a hell of a discount. During my visit I wandered around the other departments and was sorry to see how sad things were looking there.

Bought a set of Logitech 2.1 PC speakers for my wifes laptop (since her set died) on January 9th. Since they don't sell DVDs/BDs anymore, the only time I'll ever buy anything there is if mine dies and they have the best price.

Even if they have less business it would be a sad day if they went out of business and if they struggle hope they can continue to reinvent themselves so they stay around for a long time.

15 stores within my zip code so I assume they are thriving in the Bay Area.

The Milpitas store had the best customer service and friendly sales people.

The East Palo Alto store closed sometime in this century.

One time some guy in the parking lot in Palo Alto wanted me to go help or look at his car and said no and he was pissed and said something I could not hear.

I don't want to get kidnapped or killed.

I did not even notice this thread until now, but the last time I shopped at Best Buy was just 2-3 months back when I picked up a replacement iPad Pro, so a big ticket purchase. I also picked up a TV upgrade for my bedroom TV back in 2024s BF week sale at BB, so another hefty purchase. I figure one of these days my living room UHD will give out on me (has to be around 8-10 years since I picked up my living room TV) and I can already picture myself buying a new TV at BB.

I guess blame people like me for why BB is still in business, lol (I am even a BB+ member). However, I do not have a BB credit card, happy to just use my cash back Visa for purchases.

ETA: I would like to piggyback on what Jeff said, it would actually be a bummer if BB's around the Bay Area closed up shop, as my preference has always been to buy a big ticket item like a tablet or tv in person vs on-line.

If Google did not directly offer such killer deals when enticing me to upgrade my phone, I would also prefer to buy a phone in person but sometimes an on-line offer is too tempting to pass up (and it is pretty easy to ship back my old phone, as it is not like having to go through the hassle of shipping back a freaking large TV to a retailer like Amazon).

I was even able to have BB price match their own discounted price on the iPad less than a month after I bought it and it was painless to get money refunded back to my CC, so they have done right by me.

ETA 2: Sad to see the posts about BB trying to screw over folks returning defective merchandise. It sounds like BB just jumps the gun on treating folks who want to return defective goods as a devil customer to be ignored and tossed aside by their Customer Service department. Maybe there is more to the story, but having not had to return anything yet I can't say I know what it is like to walk a mile in the shoes of someone frustrated by BB's CS department.

I had to buy some A/V equipment at the top of pandemic for work in 2020.

I'm sure I've got some online orders over the last few years, likely Black Friday Blu-rays, that sort of thing.

Otherwise, my last in-store personal purchase was 2005. I'd read about people getting scammed at check-out by getting signed up for magazine subscriptions they didn't ask for, or free trials that ended up very hard to get out of, and I was not impressed. The last couple times I went to Best Buy, I paid cash only and the checkout clerk asked me to give my phone number and/or it would be better to use a credit card and I was disgusted. I said no and they shrugged about why I wouldn't want to save money. It was enough that I stopped going.

That location in Denver was pretty bad, too, at that time, with lots of high-pressure commission sales. I bought my parents their first DVD Player from there and the guy kept pushing the protection plan. I said no. He asked, where do your parents live? I said Iowa. "Tsk, tsk, man, I don't have to tell you then how dusty it gets in Iowa.​​ And a little bit of dust in these will take them right out." I said I could buy it now or go to Target. He stopped, I bought, and left. The other checkouts above weren't long after that.

I always root for the home team, but I also had poor experiences, too bad.

I've ordered a few video games online from them when they're on sale, but that's it. I haven't been inside a Best Buy since before the Covid Pandemic.

Hell, nothing new. Years and years ago, probably around 2000, I bought a monitor there that stopped working after about a week. They wouldn't let me return it (within their return window, mind) because I didn't buy their protection plan.

So I just boxed it up, took it to another Best Buy, and returned it without telling them it was defective, and bought a different brand of monitor at either CompUSA or Circuit City. (DIVX was dead by then, and I could shop at Circuit City again.)


That kind of surprises me. From what I understand, back when BB was pushing protection plans like crazy, for the salespeople, it was better that someone not buy something than buy it without the protection plan. If your sales didn't have a certain percentage of those plans, you were punished.

I remember when they were pushing those like crazy... I bought a computer there, declined the protection plan and UPS they were trying to push on me, and the salesman told me that the computer I was buying was junk and would break down so I needed the plan for it. When I said no again, the manager came out, literally pulled me into his office, offered me an Altoid, and then started spouting all of this jibberish about the BIOS and how I needed to buy the protection plan and a UPS (unlimited power supply).

I was so pissed off I bought the computer anyway (without the plan or the UPS) out of pure spite.

They eventually cooled it with the hard-selling of those plans, so I guess they figured out they were turning off more customers than they were selling protection plans.

BB employees hated when you were in the tv section and told other customers about monoprice for HDMI cables.

Was just thinking how shopping for electronics used to be fun, how you’d always see something that you just HAD to have. Last time I felt that was when they had 3D demo material running. I actually didn’t let myself look at too much of it because I didn’t think I’d be able to buy a 3D display anytime soon. In the old days there’d be a projection TV set up with surround sound playing a laserdisc movie, and you’d see that thinking “someday that will be mine.”

Now the industry killed 3D and there’s nothing exciting left. The only real “wow” factor going into a store now is the size of some of the screens, but you can’t really watch too much on them. Most have the soap opera effect turned on also with no way to get at the controls to fix it.

As I mentioned, Best Buy has all their projectors sitting on a shelf unplugged and nowhere near any screen. They have a picture of Shaquille O’Neal saying how great they are, but no way to see for yourself. I’ve heard the 3D on projectors, which many still support, is better than any TV but I’ve never been able to see it anywhere. If stores wanted to stay relevant and not lose people to online shopping, they’d make a far better effort to show off this stuff and make us not want to leave without it. If all they’ve got to show us are the boxes they come in, then why shouldn’t we just spend less money ordering them online?