Best Buy reviews

3.5

59% would recommend to a friend

(41,830 total reviews)
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Corie Barry

35% approve of CEO

38% positive business outlook

Best Buy has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 41,830 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Best Buy employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Einzel- & Großhandel industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

42K reviews
2.0
May 26, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Depending on the market and store, the pay may be pretty good. Best Buy offers a decent level of job security, and the benefits are overall pretty good. They do offer full Health benefits, stock purchase plans, and a very good 401k program. They all offer Tuition Reimbursement, however they require you to work 32 hours a week to be eligible for this - more on that in the negative area. They get some great special offers for employees, like discounts with Cingular, and Comcast, and discounts on new GM cars, they used to have Ford and Honda, but they dropped them unfortunately. A few times per year they will have cookouts for employees. Compared to a store, the corporate level is like Heaven on Earth.

Cons

Each store is completely different. GMs and other Managers can influence a store drastically, and many times they will give promotions based on favoritism(or in some cases if you have an affair with your GM he will get you made a supervisor at a nearby store - and yes, this did happen at my store). Unfortunately, if you have to move you will likely have little luck with transferring. In my case, the store near where I moved to wanted to reduce my pay by $4 because "that's what they paid their people here", and they could only get me under 10 hours a week. Best Buy claims to care about its employees, but not enough to keep them within the company. Perhaps at higher management/corporate levels they are more willing to try to retain employees, but at the store level, they simply don't care. Often times managers will be moved around often, and will have little or no idea about their areas or how to run them. So getting things done is difficult. I know Best Buy has policies for handling things, but many times the store management will not know these policies, deny these policies exist, or claim the policies are being misinterpreted or do not apply. As a result, most of your co-workers will not care at all. In fact, the easiest way to survive at Best Buy is to avoid contact with people as much as possible. If a manager is in the area then you should spend time with one customer as long as possible, this looks best to management. They also tend to confuse people who are loud and obnoxious in meetings with people who are motivated about their jobs. In my experience those people would sit around and talk sports with each other all day.

5.0
May 24, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great culture! Results-Only-Work-Environment: They focus more on results rather than on face-time in the office. Most employees receive laptops so they can do their work away from the office, if needed. You are not constantly watched to see if you are working for your whole entire shift; they just trust you to get your work done. Great amenities at Corporate: At corporate, they have a fitness center, dry cleaning, car maintenance, two Caribou Coffee locations, cafeteria, U.S. Bank, video games, pool table, child care, and grocery delivery. Great strong and lived-out values: Best Buy's values are (1) Have fun while being the best, (2) Learn from challenge and change, (3) Show respect, humility, and integrity, and (4) Unleash the power of our people. They are great, grounded values that you can see lived out by even the CEO. These values instill a great, fun culture among all employees. Great employee discount on products: Best Buy offers a very steep discount on its products which is a big incentive for many individuals.

Cons

Some other large companies may offer a slightly higher starting base salary: When looking at other companies' offers, I may have been able to receive a higher base salary pay, but looking at all the other factors of working at Best Buy, the small pay discrepancy was not a big deal. I do believe they are comparable to other companies in their industry, other companies such as Target. The only other downside I can think of is the location. I have not met many people that live super close to Corporate, but luckily they have a carpooling program that is used by a number of employees to save on the gas consumption.

3.0
May 23, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The benefits, and the knowledge you can get if you actually take the time to use the e-learnings the company provides. If you get a store that really follows the overall community sense of the company, you will also gain some new "family" and friends. Most stores I've worked in have been very close knit.

Cons

Due to the age differences and natures of different jobs, it sometimes can be like a "high school," where some co-workers just want to gossip and torment others. Also, managers can easily pick favorites, and make things harder for others. Plus, some managers who just care about money will be more likely to try and force the workers to adhere to unethical business practices, such as overcharging customers for service up front and not wanting to partially refund them if part of that service could not be performed.

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Glassdoor has 43,379 Best Buy reviews submitted anonymously by Best Buy employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Best Buy is right for you.