How NOT To Succeed At Retail

In exchange for 15 excruciating minutes spent at Linens 'n Things earlier this evening, my wife begrudgingly accompanied me to the next-door Best Buy to peruse the latest-and-greatest in consumer electronics. I was struck first by the contrast between the HD DVD and Blu-ray show floor displays; whereas the Toshiba HD-A1 was pumping out a beautiful picture, the images coming off the Samsung BD-P1000 (1080p HDMI-connected to a Samsung 40" LCD) were blurred and highly pixelated. I'd alread heard about the subpar video quality of the unit, the result of a misconfigured noise reduction filter, but this was ridiculous.

The mystery was solved when I hit the eject button. Believe it or not, Best Buy was showcasing a $799 Blu-ray player and a $2,000+ television with a Video CD; that's even lower resolution than DVD, folks. Then again, I don't know why I was surprised. This is the same retailer who's long tethered the HDTVs on its show floor to a low-quality distributed coax video feed.

The poor sales guy turned beet red when I pointed out the suboptimal configuration, and he quickly dug up a Blu-ray disc and fed it into the BD-P1000. But then he couldn't find the remote control. And without it, we couldn't get past the disc's opening navigation menu. No front panel-only operation….nice design choice, Samsung. How often do your engineers misplace their remote controls at home?

Next, I turned my attention to the game console section. A couple of guys were playing Madden '07 (which looked great) on the Xbox 360; unfortunately the HD DVD drives for the console weren't yet in stock. The closest thing I saw to the Playstation 3 was a 'coming soon' poster underneath a vacant PS2; a dozen Sony fanboys (complete with tents) were camped outside the store awaiting the console's anticipated Friday morning arrival. They'd arrived that morning and were determined to spend the next 72 hours in line, even though the Best Boy employees I spoke with didn't know if that particular store would get any PS3s. No Nintendo Wiis were in stock, either, even for pre-sales display…this Best Buy branch wouldn't have them until at least Sunday.

Finally, I went looking for Zune; my review unit arrived yesterday, so I suspected the store might have inventory by now, especially given that Monday also was the official intro date. The kid behind the counter (who seemed far more interested in the conversation he was simultaneously having with his girlfriend on his cell phone than the one he was having with this potential customer) assured me that they were in stock. "But where are they?" I asked. "Locked up in the back," he replied.

No Zunes on display, for customers to try out. No Zunes on display, to whet demand for this highly touted potential Apple killer. Plenty of iPods sitting on the shelf, though. Wonder who's gonna have the better Christmas, Cupertino or Redmond? Sigh….maybe the predictions of a disappointing upcoming Christmas have less to do with the gadgets available for sale and more to do with those selling them?

Followup: here's more on the hometown tech shopping situation, from the Sacramento Bee….note to Best Buy's operations manager Suzy Pulido, how are you going to sell any Zune units if you don't display 'em?