BestBuy doesn't deserve to sell Klispch!

[oscarsear]

As an aside I did get great benefit from the BB bad Klipsch attitude. For my 1st AV system I mixed speaker product and from a BB in So. Cal. came across a sad looking solo Klipsch SS 0.5 sitting upon the floor next to other side channel speakers that were actually hooked up for display. I knew Klipsch (I used my Khorns in this system) and purchased that little speaker without any audition. I was told that they'd have to "find" another one to make a pair and would try and locate the speaker grill for the one from the floor. Well they did both and I pounded the store manger for an additional discount for buying a floor speaker... and I got it. The speakers worked quite nicely.

2 years later I got a full Reference AV set-up and sold off the sub-woofer and the little SS 0.5's on E-bay. The Paradigm 1200 sub-woofer sold for about 1/2 puchase price. But, there was a feeding frenzy for those SS speakers. People were begging me to end the auction early. They sold for 300% of purchase price!!! Thank you BB!! [][Y]

[Indyjeep]

Trey, when you said Klipsch is the top selling line at BB, did you mean unit sales volume, revenue, or net margin per unit?

If this is true - and BB only handles a limited product line of yours - then there should be little problem to get them to both stock and display Klipsch with the full reverence and high profile they deserve.

In the absence of shinola going in the manager's pocket and concentrated sales effort, if a certain brand is the top seller due to high consumer demand, then the primo display and endcap displays should be jammed with their product. Based on the five BBs I cruise in St. Louis, Klipsch is in 3rd place. Bose and JBL both have more, and better, displays and product placements.

Give me some hard numbers, and a part time gig chasing the BBs in a fifty mile radius, and St. Louis would be in the top ten metro areas in the country! []

The main reason they arent on endcaps or big huge displays is because Bose and JBL will pay for those areas...like we have 2 encaps that have always been Bose because thats what they pay for. If Klipsch is still the top selling unit even without that shouldnt that mean that they are doing a great job without all the advertising special effects? Klipsch does have a big part though for the fact that our HT demo area is all Klipsch, no matter where you go, at least should be, there should always be a TV, DVD player, HD Reciever, and Klipsch set-up all together in every HT dept. And so far Ive seen that.......From Indiana to Missouri to Colorado.......Klipsch is great, I love their product and will always recommend their product over others...

[sheltie dave]

Indyjeep, while Bose and JBL may pay for their special room/endcap(s), if I were the manager and a Klipsch salesman pointed out that my store was generating more sales net revenue, transactions, and profit moving Klipsch speakers, I would BUST MY BUTT to maximize my store leader status.

Business people love to have the prettiest girl at the front door. It sounds like Klipsch is BB's prettiest girl.

[chevellerh]

I definitely agree Best Buy doesnt portrait Klipsch products as well as they could or should, but without best buy i may still be without a decent (not great, yet) audio setup. The one thing that really got me interested in Klipsch was the flyer offered about the Synergy III series, prlly the only company that offers actual spec sheets at best buy (not brochures showing all their pretty designs) I could tell this company actually was proud of its worksmanship, not like some other brands that gain most revenue based on reputation and presentation. Klipsch definitely should not become one of these companies buying there way into show rooms.... I think the quality is self evident

[Indyjeep]

Why change something when its already going right for them? They are pulling off what no other speaker company that Best Buy carried could without the advertising. To me that shows what Klipsch is made of.

[sheltie dave]

I'm neither ripping Klipsch, nor advocating Klipsch change much.

What I am beating the drum for is an adequate, if not a dedicated, room for Klipsch, ie Bose's. It is really simple. BB spends 20K for a decent room with adequate soundproofing. In return, they generate another 100K a quarter in revenue off increased Klipsch sales with no loss of other line sales. It is a no brainer. BB needs to do a cost/benefit analysis, which will show they will come out well ahead by going the additional expense route.

If your product is good enough AND flying off the shelves, market pressure will drive BB to better present Klipsch across the board, and not at a select few stores. Think macro rather than micro.

[tommiwan]

I read most of this thread, and saw lots of complaints of BB not having Klipsch set up right, and this and that, so I thought I would give my experience/thoughts.

Someone previously made a good comment that any display in a retail store is difficult to maintain because you have Joe Customer coming in thinking he knows what audio should sound like messing with the settings, or some kid who thinks he's funny cranking it so that the store next door can hear it.

My local BB in Independence MO has a display with a nice HDTV, and I have sat there and killed time (waiting for dinner reservations) and I must say I think they have it sounding pretty good. I just wish BB, or some other store around me carried the reference line, and I'd probably go sit there more often.

Now I feel that I've said a lot of positive things about BB, so let me just say BB sucks. (personal opinion) I'm not some BB advocate, just have to give credit where credit is due.

[Indyjeep]

If you have a Magnolia store around you than you can go there and get Ref. series now, because BBY got rid of Boston Acoustics and brought them in. Great trade off.

[JJkizak]

How much would it cost Klipsch to come up with a kick *** switch box that can't be messed with? Brillant color connections and wires that can't be crossed? LED's that don't burn out? A voice that comes out of the box that says "Hey you dumb *** you crossed the wires"? Nothing but push buttons instead of changing wires? Chinese push buttons are pretty cheap.

JJK

[Tom Adams]

Trey, when you said Klipsch is the top selling line at BB, did you mean unit sales volume, revenue, or net margin per unit?

If this is true - and BB only handles a limited product line of yours - then there should be little problem to get them to both stock and display Klipsch with the full reverence and high profile they deserve.

In the absence of shinola going in the manager's pocket and concentrated sales effort, if a certain brand is the top seller due to high consumer demand, then the primo display and endcap displays should be jammed with their product. Based on the five BBs I cruise in St. Louis, Klipsch is in 3rd place. Bose and JBL both have more, and better, displays and product placements.

Give me some hard numbers, and a part time gig chasing the BBs in a fifty mile radius, and St. Louis would be in the top ten metro areas in the country! []

The main reason they arent on endcaps or big huge displays is because Bose and JBL will pay for those areas...like we have 2 encaps that have always been Bose because thats what they pay for. If Klipsch is still the top selling unit even without that shouldnt that mean that they are doing a great job without all the advertising special effects? Klipsch does have a big part though for the fact that our HT demo area is all Klipsch, no matter where you go, at least should be, there should always be a TV, DVD player, HD Reciever, and Klipsch set-up all together in every HT dept. And so far Ive seen that.......From Indiana to Missouri to Colorado.......Klipsch is great, I love their product and will always recommend their product over others...

I apologize if this sounds harsh, but why would you do that?? Are you not doing just exactly what folks here have complained about when it comes to salesmen pushing a product because THEY like it? I'm sorry, but all I want out of a sales person is unbiased information so that I might be educated in order to make my own mind up about what I want to purchase. If I want opinion, I'll ask for it. What if the person you're dealing with just doesn't like the "Klipsch sound" for whatever reason (their entitled to like what they want BTW)? Have you considered that pushing Klipsch on them doesn't cast you in a very good light??

While I applaud your enthusiasm for Klipsch and truly feel your intentions are good, it nonetheless justifies saying Klipsch is better than something else.

Tom

[Indyjeep]

Trey, when you said Klipsch is the top selling line at BB, did you mean unit sales volume, revenue, or net margin per unit?

If this is true - and BB only handles a limited product line of yours - then there should be little problem to get them to both stock and display Klipsch with the full reverence and high profile they deserve.

In the absence of shinola going in the manager's pocket and concentrated sales effort, if a certain brand is the top seller due to high consumer demand, then the primo display and endcap displays should be jammed with their product. Based on the five BBs I cruise in St. Louis, Klipsch is in 3rd place. Bose and JBL both have more, and better, displays and product placements.

Give me some hard numbers, and a part time gig chasing the BBs in a fifty mile radius, and St. Louis would be in the top ten metro areas in the country! []

The main reason they arent on endcaps or big huge displays is because Bose and JBL will pay for those areas...like we have 2 encaps that have always been Bose because thats what they pay for. If Klipsch is still the top selling unit even without that shouldnt that mean that they are doing a great job without all the advertising special effects? Klipsch does have a big part though for the fact that our HT demo area is all Klipsch, no matter where you go, at least should be, there should always be a TV, DVD player, HD Reciever, and Klipsch set-up all together in every HT dept. And so far Ive seen that.......From Indiana to Missouri to Colorado.......Klipsch is great, I love their product and will always recommend their product over others...

I apologize if this sounds harsh, but why would you do that?? Are you not doing just exactly what folks here have complained about when it comes to salesmen pushing a product because THEY like it? I'm sorry, but all I want out of a sales person is unbiased information so that I might be educated in order to make my own mind up about what I want to purchase. If I want opinion, I'll ask for it. What if the person you're dealing with just doesn't like the "Klipsch sound" for whatever reason (their entitled to like what they want BTW)? Have you considered that pushing Klipsch on them doesn't cast you in a very good light??

While I applaud your enthusiasm for Klipsch and truly feel your intentions are good, it nonetheless justifies saying Klipsch is better than something else.

Tom

Touche.......

[Deang]

Consumers have a lot of power -- you should use it.

"Man, I was going to buy something from you -- but it doesn't look like anyone cares enough about the stuff to set it up right or take care of it."

One person doing it might barely make them blink, but a dozen or so every month will raise the pucker factor. How about a nice consumer complaint to their corporate HQ.

"...because of this, I will no longer be shopping at Best Buy for my Home Entertainment needs, and will certainly be persuading my friends and family members to shop elsewhere."

[skonopa]

Here are my experiences with the local Best Buy in Fredericksburg, VA. However, did find out they built a second Best Buy down near Massaponnax, but never been in that one, so I cannot comment on it. I can only comment on the one in Fredericksburg itself (in the "Central Park" area).

They used to have a really nice speaker room with the various makes and models of speakers arrayed, such as Klipsch, Bose, Sony, JBL, etc. The room was seperated from the rest of the store and pretty quiet back there. Also, the displays usually have always been setup and working pretty good. A couple times when I found the Klipsch display not working, I usually told somebody and they fixed it (interesting that the Bose display always seemed to work correctly). In the event that I could not find anybody, I usually ended up fixing it myself. One thing that always annoyed me was that it seems somebody always cranked the gain on the subs to "max", thus resulting in an enormous amount of over-powering bass. I wonder if it is the same kids that like to crank thier car subs up to max to thinking how "cool" all that bass must sound (when in reality, it sounded like complete $#!+, in my opinion). The only other annoyance was that they canned everything via those touch pads, thus making it impossible for someone like me that wanted to listen to my own material on the speakers.

However, they then remodeled the store, taking away the speaker room (basically, completely walled off that whole corner - not even turning it into anything! That was a pretty significant amount of square footage back there, so I have no idea what the hell they did with all that floor space - turn it into additional "warehouse" storage?). Now, they got the Klipsch display setup in with the rest of the "home theater" speakers, including all those HTiB setups. Now, they got the big Synergy floorstanders (the F-? series) hooked up in a two-channel configuration with a very generic canned demo (again, no way to plug-in/listen to my own material). However at least with the HTiB's, I can often find an empty input to which I could hook up my iPod to listen through, with some of them with built in CD/DVD players that I could put a CD in. Last time I checked the F-3's, only one speaker was playing any music with the other not even working. I tried to see if I can fix it (figureing the speaker wire was not hooked up). The speaker was hooked up, so it must've been in the switching box itself that was messed up.

However, than very recently (basically just this past month), they again remodelled the store to now include a Magnolia Hi-Fi. However, they actually did a good job of setting everything up in there, although it is still not quite complete (this is brand-new). I did listen to a pair of the RF-82's which I though sounded quite good (although I wished they picked a better choice in recievers instead of that little Yamaha squeak-box. I told them they should hook up that nice big Denon AVR-4807, and they will hear a marked improvement in the sound!).

One thing going for that particular Best Buy is that the sales staff there seems to be very pro-Klipsch. I've been in there numerous times and talked with various sales associates and nearly all of them had nothing but good to say about the Klipsch. One instance, I was tinkering around with a Bose Acousticrap setup (more out of boredom, plus just wanted to confirm they indeed sounded like the crap that they were - I guess the ol' "Know thine enemy") only to have a sales associate tell me that I should listen to the Klipsch Quintets sitting right next to it. He went on touting how he had one of the nicer Yamaha recievers the store carries complete with a full Synergy F-2 setup. I responded how I thought that was indeed a very nice setup, but I already have a Reference 7 setup with B&K gear. He was pretty much flabbergasted at that time (and was probably wondering why the hell I was wasting my time screwing around with a Bose setup).

The pro-Klipsch mentality seems to extend into the Magnolia part of the store as well. Those guys are constantly gushing over how awesome the RF-82's and the RF-62s they had in there. I've always enjoyed going in there to just play around and to chat up the sales staff there.

And lastly, I was playing around with the little Klipsch ProMedia 2.0's (can't wait to the pair that I ordered comes in), and had something like six people standing around beside me just to see what the heck I was listening to. I am hearing them talk amongst themselves saying stuff like "man, that sounds awesome" and so forth. Finally, one of the kids asked me just what the heck I was playing on there. The track was "Falling Into The Night" by Layne Loxley's Regenerator - that I got off the ProgPower VII sampler CD - a three-disk compilation given to everybody at the door attending ProgPowerUSA show. This was some very indie prog metal, and apparently it was really turning some heads in that store last evening. I guess this says alot about both the music as well as those mighty little ProMedia 2.0s.

Ah yes, much fun can be had in the local Best Buy! [6]

[Indyjeep]

but sometimes I wonder.....how much better are the other big box retailers at this? Fry's, Circuit City, H.H. Greggs, Ultimate Electronics, CompUSA? I mean I've seen good setups and bad setups. But also have seen them in other retailers too. The only demos I have been impressed with is a small little specialty shop called Ovations in Indy. And a Magnolia demo of some Martin Logans...

[rivieraranch]

Luckily I was able to listen to a pair of RF-82's in the Magnolia room at the Best Buy located in Sunrise, Florida. The speakers were spaced apart properly enough to allow a decent audition. The salesman played an Alicia Keys "live" DVD (clearly doctored up, as she was out of synch). We switched over from RF-62's to the RF-82's and back again. Then we popped in an Eagles DVD where they played partially unplugged. Clearly the RF-82 did a better job than the RF-62 or the Definitive Techs, which the salesman preferred, despite their veiled sound.

This location has a horrible setup of the Klipsch Synergy speakers with the push button deals. The F-3's are probably around 12 feet apart but you can't back up more than around 8 feet; the configuration of the display prevents one from hearing what this speaker would do.

[theplummer]

If the BB stores in Indy are par then BB has a long way to go before they are up to "snuff".

I have never seen a store (on the north side) that the system works.

The one with the Mag HIFI inside did all they could to talk me out of Klipsch and into the ROOM WITH THE GOOD SPEAKERS.

their support needs help as well.

None of which makes me happy.

(there is not a store in Hope)

HECK, I'D JUST BE HAPPY TO FIND A STORE THAT KLIPSCH SAYS SELLS HERITAGE, THAT ACTUALLY DOES!!!

[theplummer]

The one with the Mag HIFI inside did all they could to talk me out of Klipsch and into the ROOM WITH THE GOOD SPEAKERS.

Lol, Colter and I had the exact same experience...except it was even worse. We were talking with one of the sales dudes and were wanting to hear the sub-12. We even told him that we were klipsch fanatics and the dude straight up told us that klipsch was the worst brand they sold and that we should go listen in the magnolia room....my goodness that was an awful experience, except for the fact that Colter was totally dissing the dude to his face and the dude didn't even realize it! (the best was when colter opened the door to the room and said "nope, that one note bass crap isn't coming from outside" I about died from trying to hold the laughter in).

We of course made sure to let the sales dude know that everything in the mag room sounded like crap before we left []

But it's one of those things where you shouldn't try to fight the market...seems like klipsch needs to come out with a model to blow away that crap in the mag room.

THEY ALREADY DO. IT'S CALLED HERITAGE!!!

[JetJockey]

I'm with you guys, up here in Kitchener, Ontario, its the same thing. Klipsch speakers not hooked up, horrible dim little corner of the store hidden away with crap no name type stuff and Bose, LMAO!! Drivers smashed in, crushed or missing/broken grills.

Klipsch, do us all a favour and stop selling to these retarded retailers.