Best Buy shares dive on news of Amazon Geek Squad competitor

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Best Buy doesn't disclose how much revenue its Geek Squad service generates per quarter, but the ability to teach consumers to use new electronics is going to become more and more important as the capabilities of gadgets increase.

I get GSP Replacement plans on my networking shite all the time.

I worked for BBY for almost 5 years. Geek Squad is actually garbage. They run a CD/USB stick to do a diagnostic. Anything meaningful is shipped to the large DDC. Like in Flower Mound, TX.

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What I don't understand, why on flippin earth is something like Geek Squad even a thing, why would ANYONE in their right mind use this

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Because there are tons of people out there who are completely clueless when it comes to technology?

Yes, the Geek Squad services seem expensive to us techies because we think this stuff is so simple, but when people are so clueless that they don't even have a starting point to begin from when it comes to researching things online, they really need it.

You know how at Christmas when your uncle asks you about fixing his phone/computer/whatever, and it takes 10 minutes to do what he wants because it seems so simple, yet it takes 2 hours talking to him about it and you want to shoot yourself in the head because it's so annoying? That's what people pay Geek Squad for.

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, and how is BB so reliant on this very thing, that they lose almost $1billion just hours after a "new competition" rears it's ugly head?!?!?

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Because if people just want to buy shite for cheap, there are plenty of places online to do it. To tech people, the only reason we go to Best Buy is so we can get stuff now instead of waiting for something to be shipped to the house.

But to many other people, they go to Best Buy because Best Buy will not only sell the product, Geek Squad will support those people and answer their questions and make them feel secure about their purchases. Best Buy's emphasis on Geek Squad services have been a huge part of why they haven't yet gone under while many other retail outlets have.

Does Geek Squad speak English? Most Amazon reps don't.

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What person repairing a computer doesn't use diagnostic tools? Unless you're going to just spend a bunch of time and money throwing new parts in a system to isolate the problem (and then not even be 100% sure what caused it), you're going to run diagnostic tools. CPU stress tests, RAM read/write tests, hard drive SMART tools, virus scans, etc. are all very important to figuring out people's problems, especially when you have pretty much nothing to go on but "it's actin' funny when I'm watchin' the you tubes" as your customer's problem description.

Yes, plenty of the people who work for Geek Squad are garbage and I won't dispute that, but seriously, you criticize them for using diagnostic tools?

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If you have their M.R.I disc you can literally do the shite yourself.

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So far as of today BB is down another $0.11 ... this is soooo bad, and I really think the Market is being exceptionally cruel to them on this instance - and mostly for the point you make in this post. If I want tech support I hate being on the phone, I really really do not like it. I want a physical person I can talk to and interact with - and because of that, I think Geek Squad wont really see much of a hit from the Amazon announcement. Which brings me back to - I think the Market is being a little cruel to BB right now and expect it to bounce back pretty quickly.

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Could be a buy opportunity.

Just make sure you buy $BBY and not $BBBY.

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the ability to teach consumers to use new electronics is going to become more and more important as the capabilities of gadgets increase.

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I'm not 100% on this, but I tend to think the opposite. I watch my young kids use phones, tablets, Rokus, etc., and that tells me that they are pretty damned simple to learn, as long as you have the desire to learn them.

Also, the last couple generations have grown up with this stuff, so it's nothing to figure out a new device. As the older folks die off, the population in general is becoming more tech savvy.

Finally, tech companies realize that they can't just cram more and more features and capabilities into things, but they also have to make them easy to use. This is a big focus right now, and I think it will continue. UI/UX is all about simplification and guiding users through a workflow. Voice control will only get better. More and more things will become automatic. Software will keep getting better at hiding the complexity behind the things we do and making things simpler. That's the fundamental purpose of software.

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I'm not 100% on this, but I tend to think the opposite. I watch my young kids use phones, tablets, Rokus, etc., and that tells me that they are pretty damned simple to learn, as long as you have the desire to learn them.

Also, the last couple generations have grown up with this stuff, so it's nothing to figure out a new device. As the older folks die off, the population in general is becoming more tech savvy.

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While I do mostly agree with you, in my experience at Geek Squad years ago, there were plenty of dumb people my age and younger that still needed Geek Squad's help for ridiculously simple shite. Their clientele is not all grandmas and grandpas.

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Finally, tech companies realize that they can't just cram more and more features and capabilities into things, but they also have to make them easy to use. This is a big focus right now, and I think it will continue. UI/UX is all about simplification and guiding users through a workflow. Voice control will only get better. More and more things will become automatic. Software will keep getting better at hiding the complexity behind the things we do and making things simpler. That's the fundamental purpose of software.

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This is true, but the more they dumb down the end user interface, the less aware people are of how the underlying software and hardware works. When something goes wrong, they have no idea where to begin to fix it, whereas in years past the average user had more awareness of how things worked and thus how to fix them. Granted, increasingly, "fixing" tends to mean "throw it in the garbage and buy another one."