I just wanted to clarify some things that many of you may be curious about. I work for a big box store that just recently extended out into a more specialty field. I'm trying not to use any names in fear of one of my superiors tying this thread to me some how or another.

Let me give you some background on myself. I started off in car stereo then went into security and then into home theater/structured wiring/whole house audio. I am extremely meticulous and quite critical of myself and others work. I dont know how but I got sucked into BB.

Ive always enjoyed trimming out theaters and seeing something come together, but didnt get that many opportunities in previous companies that I have worked for, (due to builder work). I transferred to BB in hope of doing what I truely enjoy, that being getting to do more installations and less/no prewires. I have been successful in doing so but have come to a moral dilema.

They brought me on at a good rate and I have been content until I had to TRAIN a guy that they hired from comcast to find out that he makes about 3 dollars more than me. Now down to the good stuff and correct me if Im wrong but I dont know anyone who would hire a person to install so called high end theaters with their only experience being a damn cable guy. I feel like Im being a traitor to the trade showing these guys what I know. In all honesty I dont know why it bothers me so much. All I can say is they hire a bunch of amateurs at best and expect them to go in and install like a seasoned installer after 3 weeks of training, MAX. They throw these guys to the wolves and then wonder why they have so many damage claims and unhappy customers.

I think that my main issue is that I feel like Im guilty by association. What sparked my anger is a forum on here that relates to cedia and trunk slammers. I totally agree that big box stores should use cedia approved installers to ensure customers that they get what they pay for! Not some cable guy that doesnt have a clue about anything!!!!!! It angers me that Im probably the only enthusiast in the whole damn company. I may have to start my own company so that I can keep my work ethics up to par because its just like a slap in the face every time they have some newbie go out on their own for me to go behind them and redo what they just finished.

This message was edited by disturbed on 08/28/05 01:07 ET.

They don't give a crap...it's a numbers game. They don't count on referrals. It dosn't matter if a customer is unhappy. New customers will continue to come in because they have no way of knowing any better.

It's a vicious cycle and it's always going to be this way.

JBJ's right. Most of us have come to enjoy the freedom and challenge that comes from working for small to mid sized AV firms. Bix boxers are all about full color inserts in the Sunday papers. We're all about making long term relationships and banking on referrals from satisfied customers.

Big Boxers will always have a high employee turnover rate. That's part of the nature of being a big boxer.

When Mr. and Mrs. customer call the store to talk to the nice young man who helped them out last year with their home only to find that he no longer works there, it reflects badly upon the company, but like JBJ said, they don't give a crap. As long as new cash is flowing then everything's hunky dory.

The box mover mentality has been around long enough that there should no longer be any such thing as an unsuspecting consumer. I think that most people aren't surprised when they have to fight traffic and stand in line for an hour to get a question answered about their home theater purchase from Big Boxer, Inc.

Hiring a Comcast installer is typical blind ambition. Somewhere up on the food chain, some pseudo white-collared twit probably decided that since this guy worked for the cable company that me must know a lot about "stuff". Perhaps he fixed a problem at the home of a manager and they were so impressed with his service that they lured him away from Comcast with a dollar an hour raise and the promise of a bright future.

The difference between Big Boxers and other large corporations like say.....General Motors, is that when it comes to working in the retail sector for retail money, you're going to wind up with a whole bunch of younger, unmarried folks who are willing to take a chance at working long hours for modest pay because they get the opportunity of doing something "cool". I've never know any UAW workers to make careers out of assembly line work because they get to play with cool toys.....they do it for the great pay, benefits and pension plans.

Big Boxers aren't going to offer those types of things. Why should they? For every person who leaves the retail sector do to maturity, change in family structure, money, etc., there's always another willing 18 year old to pop up in his or her place.

I can clearly remember being a youngster in the industry and complaining to my dad about the pricing that was coming out of Highland Appliance, Fretter, Electric Avenue, etc.

The words of advice that he gave me are "remember that you can only GIVE things away for so long"

Clearly, Big Box Inc. has figured that out as they are now agressively moving into the last profitable sector of the industry, and that's the custom market. (and for those of you youngsters out there.....yes, there was a time when you could make a decent living off of selling televisions, audio, car stereo and appliances).

In the next few years, we're all going to see a major, major attempt by Big Box Inc. to take away all that we have left, and it's going to be up to all of us to decide whether we're going to help enable them or help defeat them.

Oh and Disturbed..............

If you're as good as you say then finding a better job should be no problem.

Hmmm....

I've got 2 questions:

Whats a 'damage claim'?

And 'whats an unsatisfied customer'?

Must be a cable or BB thing!

If your REALLY dedicated to this LIFESTYLE, find a CI or a small retailer that is interested in the clients satisfaction and apply!

'Corperate' people never get to meet the clients and are de-sensitized to the actual needs of a particular client!

Package "A" or package "B" may not fullfill there needs.

THATS why they call it CUSTOM!!!!

I get a great amount of satisfaction knowing I have 'filled the bill' and the client is happy.
Thats why i do what I do!!

Does your company have any positions as trainers? You should be paid for that. Does your job description include training? If not, you should not be training, or you should be compensated. Unless it turns out, of course, that trainers actually get less than installers!


An important thing about cable guys is that they are not trained to understand what they do, they are trained to complete an installation. As such, they might know the moves of wiring a system but do completely the wrong thing because they do not know why they are doing any one thing.

I worked with a cable guy who had had satellite training (in some kind of class ? ? ?) and who told me that every F connector dropped a signal by a decibel, and that a suck-out (an F connector where the dielectric stopped short of hitting the end of the connector) made things much worse.

I didn't argue. I told him I had never realized that. Then I made four short cables, that's eight F connectors, strung them together with F81s, and looked at the signal before and after with my signal meter (what's that, he said?). When the signal difference was less than a half dB, he had to reconsider what they taught him. He had the moves, but not the sight.

They taught him that it was BADBADBAD to put extra F connectors in an installation and BADBADBADWORSE to not shove the dielectric up against the back of the connector. They got good installations from someone who did not understand jack.

I worked with a cable guy who had had satellite

HEY, I'm SBCA certified!!!

Got the card right here in my wallet!

About 4 months before DTV decided they would do everything themselves, they thought I should be 'certified'
I'd only been installing the stuff for 8 years so, I suppose some training was due!!!!

Judging from the amount of service calls I get after they install there services to my clients home, I think I'm clearly over qualified to work for them!!!!

Installing an HDTV reciever to a 19" tv and running 'ch 3' out to the home theater makes me think these boy's are lost!!!!

I used to make some of the same arguemnts above. I ran into all sorts of installations from the top CI firms and I used to make light of it. And then it hit me ( which is why they are the top and I am not ) that business success is about money and if customer retention affected their bottom lines they would and could do something about it. A small CI firm had better care about customer service as it is about all it can offer. Where would you want to be, making 300k-1 million per annum gross as I suspect do most pertenders playing on this site or 10-20 million as do the largest CI firms or 100s of millions as do the big box boys.

I would not like to work for BB nor most established stores as my experience is that no store cares about quality installations if they've been in the retail business for any length of time. It is all about present sales and customer retention does not figure into this calculation. With this mind set your installers are like employees at fast food joints:replaceable parts. You can always find someone else to do that work, especially if your gross sales do not depend on customer service. But the fact remains that those firms for whom customer service is least important are those who are most successful. I sense a good deal of envy or unconsience fear. Our good buddy from BB makes the latter point often enough. The fact is I would kill to have as many leads as BB has people walk out without purchases. If I had sufficient current business it would not be as profitable to devote the time to customer satisfaction. Are service calls profitable? How many clients actually repeat and do so in meaningful jobs ( that is add to that job what amounts to a new job )? BB clearly does not value its employees or it would surely not pay less for a worker who knows enough to train then for its most recent hires. Nor do they evidently care much about its custom business. It is clear from the original post that they do not value intelligence in their emplyees and those who are the brightest are the fastest to leave. However, when and if they decide to care they can do as good or better job than most of you. They have the money to build training facilities and the maketing might to get their suppliers to provide installation classes. BB chooses to ignore customer retention and CI because they are so profitable with their current business plan. They are getting into it for much the same reason every store now offers it whereas they did not back in the bad old 80s; there is money to be made and best to keep those extra profits in house then let them move out of house. You will see,folks, that in Red State America Walmart is king even if that means the destruction of the local economy. CHEAP COST, not quality is what sells. Think all those MBAs working for BB might possibly know a bit more about maketing and their tarket market then those of us writing so smugly here?

Alan

The sad part is that all it would take is some higher up from BB or other to start reading the threads here, and if they were looking for any answers, Ta Da... they just found them. Fortunatly, based on their business model, they will have their own version of "custom", much like the sale, it will be get in, get out. For those of you that think this won't work, think again, if I could train 500 installers across the country to follow simple installation instructions, based on maybe three types of packages (projection theatre, plasma theatre, other?) it is possible they could get pretty good and quick at doing their job. No one will care that it's not really "custom" as long as it is good enough. Which is really all the typical BB customer would expect. Now if they are selling the same packages in each store, nothing stopping them from offering a nice MX remote or other, only one person somewhere in the chain would have had to program the remote, and it's just an upload from there. Heck, for the amount of remotes they could sell, someone from UR would program it for them. Some will think, "what if the customer has some of their own gear?" here is the owners manual for your new remote, it can learn the functions of your own gear.
As stated in a couple of other threads, this will be good for many of us. They will train and give experience to a whole lot of installers, who will eventually want to work on more complex projects and we can hire them.
They will do 100's of jobs where the customer will eventually find us, and have us come and "re-do" their systems.
They will promote our side of the industry with advertising budgets none of us could ever have.

I started out delivering and setting up televisions for Good Guys about 10 years ago. I am so glad that I left. They really do not give a damn about anything other than the bottom line. I have to guess BB & GG have similiar operating methods.

I have had so much more satisfaction working with the smaller companies and doing stuff for myself.

Oh yeah, in the 3 years I was with GG, I think we had 1 test and absolutley no training. I beleive the main question was, what 3 major components does a A/V receiver comprise of?

Regards BB....

I think that CEDIA should not have BB as a member. Nuff said.

As an aside, I was at our local BB today. Shame on me.....

Parked illegally in the firelane?

One of those stupid Geek Squad VW's.

Yeah, I dropped a hint about a possible phone call....

I never knew I was just pretending.



People get what the deserve. I was the one that started the whiney future for small shops thread a while ago because of shock at seeing my margins disapperaring. Now, not from any of the responses because most were piss poor, but realizing that the paradigm is shifting I am more positive. As Ahem said, I believe, time was you could make living just sellinjg TV's, no more. Nonetheless not every person wants a Walmart experience or solution. I do not care how nany training centers you have some customers have needs that can not be satisfied by large operations. There are things a 40 hour a week guy simply will not do that I and my guy(s) will because we have so much more personally vested in the business.

I went out and got my GC license, any BB truely a one stop shop for complete theater redo's? True room design and rebuild? There is money out there, I agree they big boys covet it, but this is a rich man making it heaven sort of thing, too much baggage for some gigs.

And to get back to the original thread issue, I wish some of the trainees I dealt with back in the day were ex-cable guys, at least they would know the diference between coax and cat5.

You do all realize that disturbed is not and has never been an employee of Best Buy, don't you? It's probably the same putz who pretended to work for Magnolia in a thread (a while back).

Ernie - thanks for (as usual) not stooping to the level of childish conjecture that has been running rampant on this forum of late. Useful comments that would further this discussion if others would let it have been your hallmark - I respect your comments even on those occasions that I disagreed with you. Are you going to CEDIA this year? If so you (and Larry Fine) are amongst the people I'd like to meet in person.

Audible - you make some valid points that would be all that more relevent if the original poster was telling anything truthful. You've put some thought into your comments and I really wish we'd see more of that here. I know that you also attempted to provide meaningful dialog in Julie's thread (about my letter to CEDIA) and were brushed aside. Thanks for that. Will you be at CEDIA? Send me a note and we'll meet up (perhaps with Ernie and a few others).

Carl - if you are reading this, please send me an email. I tried to send a message to the address in your profile but I suspect that it is a false address.

To those of you who have chosen not to comment in these discussions - Thanks for not jumping in the fray - Supportive comments would be lost in the mix and there are enough angry idiots making a case against us.

Everyone else - Julie made a great point in the earlier discussions that I could never manage to answer all of the people who said we can't provide a quality install or sales experience. I've decided not to bother, especially when so many of you are using an area far South of your brains to compose your thoughts. I must admit that there are a few of you who I had held a great deal of respect for (because of your comments in other areas) that I no longer do. I'll show you the respect that you can't show me by not naming you here.

I understand (and respect) those whose convictions are strong - even if I disagree with you on every point - as long as there is some semblence of logic in your argument But I really cannot respect or even acknowledge posters who use statements like "everyone knows..." or who claim that you are not true CI unless you build wall units or run high voltage.

17 years, 2 companies founded, a handful of retailers as a direct employee and a few purely custom (no retail) companies that I worked for - I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who knows me that would claim that I'm clueless as to what constitutes custom install. But, as I mentioned already, responding to spurious arguments started by the uninformed are truly a waste of my time.

All I can say is that I wouldn't work for this company for any amount of money if I didn't see passion for the business, care for the customers and a dedication to quality by a huge swath of the people who work with us. Hell, if that weren't the case I'd take on one of the better paying jobs offered to me by a few CI manufacturers.

If any of you really feel strongly about this subject and would like to explain your points in person - and allow me the time to respond in kind - I'll be at CEDIA. Send me an email and we'll meet up. Friday is pretty open for me.

Jeff Wagner

I don't see the validity in asking people to take time out of their busy CEDIA schedule to meet with a competitor to raise points about what they may be doing wrong.

I'd like to ask everyone involved in this forum what they see as the biggest threats to their livelyhood in the next five years. I'd be surprised if BB/Magnolia doesn't make the top 5.

Actually I don't consider BB any threat to my business at all....

It's just way to easy to beat them up when the service is so bad.

Sorry Jeff, but BB is no more than the Wally World of consumer electronics in the eyes of most consumers, and that's not likely to change due to the Magnolia deal. Will BB continue to sell massive amounts of low price goods? Absolutely. And they'll probably even manage to plod along in the installation business in the future as well.

But be a real CI company?

Not.....

If you have truly been around the CI world, as you say, then you know in truth that what BB is doing, doesn't even remotely relate to what the true CI companies do.

Case in point is the PDP install. No professional CI company would install a PDP with a piece of wiremold running up the wall concealing the power cord. That, or running the non-rated cord in the wall, is EXACTLY what a hack installation firm would do.

Go ahead, tell me that I'm wrong.

One might conclude I am an arogant SOB because of something I've written. I dislike THON because he has domonstrated a consistant stream of stupidity I find offensive. My problem really, but that's my rationalization for taking personal shots at him. I have mercifully never met him so for all I know he could be a great guy ( but I'd not wager on that ). What ever throughts enter my brain either come out my mouth or are typed on to a keyboard. If that means you wish to take a few shots at me then I guess one could amass some evidence to justify that conclusion. What has Jeff done to merrit the rude and strident responses? What has he done? Not who does he work for? What has he done to be treated so rudely. Maybe it's me. I do tend to over react to some posts but AHEM's, seemed to me to cut too close to the bone and seem a tad personal.

Why the absence of civility. Best Buy will put you out of business? Perhaps. Or maybe it will be Walmart, alarm guys, cable tv installers, or more probably former IT pros. The real issue is that Red State America has changed and that change may or may not include some of us remaining in business. Taking a dump on Jeff will neither change your fate nor help you get an other job. It is one thing to argue that large organizations are too beaurocratic to succeed at custom. Plenty of examples of this to make the case. One might make the case that discounters or retail stores in general are too consumed with making the sale to succeed at custom. Making an reasoned, well thought argument is one thing but taking a dump on a guy who participates on this site just because of who he works for is wrong. Don't answer his posts if you are offended but I think some of you have made your attacks personal. While they are directed against BB they sure feel as if they are directed at Jeff. Bad form.

Alan