Excuse the naivety of the question, but I actually live in a gloriously Best Buy free area, with the closest ones being 2 hours to the west and an hour and a half to the east. I just had a potential client tell me he’s going to have Best Buy do his installation on a new house that’s being done by the builder I do a huge amount of work for. I don’t care one way or the other if I don’t do the installation, but I was utterly baffled by Best Buy quoting on a new construction job. I never heard of this when I lived in Houston and you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a Best Buy. So, have they entered the market, or is this guy as dumb as he sounds?

*edited to note that I can find no indication that they do from google

Installation maybe but never heard of them pulling wire. My guess is the builder is pulling the wire and bestbuy is bringing out a couple of tvs, mounts hdmi cables and sonos boxes.

Well, the builder panicked when I told him. I usually do all his LV.

A person I work with now worked for them a long time ago and they rarely considered any building codes at the time. Anything is possible seeing they do electrical now too [Link: bestbuy.ca]

Interesting. I’d be terrified of a Best Buy installed outlet.

As far as new builds go, I can’t imagine they’re even aware that building codes apply to them.

I’m just going to sit back and watch the show unfold.

First, offer a bunch of reasons why you should do the work.

Then, when they don't use you, "sit back and watch the show unfold"

Ask for their license and insurance.

I worked at Ultimate Electronics back in the day and the install dept. regularly did pre-wires on new homes. So anything is possible. But not many wires to run when all you are installing is SONOS, a wireless router and a few samsuck TVs.

Unless we are dealing with some special case, the builder owns the structure until it is complete and has 100% say as to who works in it.

If the builder was unaware of the customer getting a person(s) to add wiring in the home, then he should absolutely have words with the home owner. It is the builder's ass on the line at inspection time, if some hack does something to fail his building. This goes way beyond just hiring the cheapest dumb arse to throw wires in a home.
They have to be approved by the builder and most builders are NOT going to approve someone they have never worked with, without their own insurance and licensing. Taking full responsibility both legally & financially for anything they screw up.

I'm still confused on whether they are going to WIRE the house or just INSTALL gear once house is completed.  Two very different things.  It may very well be the latter and builders electrician is going to wire the house.  Of course, they may just be throwing Sonos Ones and a Playbars in and call it a day.

I did a basement AV job and the guy had bought so much from BB that his freebies covered everything he would have bought for the system. At one point, a woman form Magnolia came out to see what was happening and when she saw the coax and speaker wire for each Def Tech tower, she asked what the coax was for. I told her it was for the amplified woofers and she swore they didn't have that. I assured her that they did and she should look into it while I continued with my work.

I got an e-mail yesterday about Amazon setting up remotes- I'll be interested to see how well that goes.

I have DP 9060's

Def Tech seems to recommend running them straight speaker level and setting them to large. If you aren't using a seperate sub say No Sub.

Best Buy did do prewires way back in the day, probably 12/13 years ago. It was called New Home Solutions, I think.? We did a couple at a store level in Magnolia, but it was a cowboy type of job. They got out of it eventually, too much wire falling off the van, I would guess...

For MN we have a Power Limited electrical license for low-boltage. Some of the BB guys do actually have that license. So who knows how they may try to work that in at the stores. If one guy at corporate has the license, then techs at the store may get away with just being "registered" with the state.

Best Buy/Magnolia absolutely does prewires in chicagoland. And have forever.

And they have separate RCA jacks for sub, right?