Best Buy will sell ebikes in the US

[Dewey]

This came up in a conversation I had with a Bird Rep last week, he mentioned they will sell their new ebikes both online and in big box stores in the US including Best Buy. This 'Verge' article describes Best Buy will sell both online and stock ebikes in 9 locations from October 2021: Austin, TX, Los Angeles, CA, Miami, FL, New York, NY, Orlando, FL, Puerto Rico, San Francisco, CA, Seattle, WA, and Tampa, FL. The article also describes Best Buy will offer at-home assembly and servicing for e-bikes through Geek Squad mobile services for $99.99. Geek Squad Protection Plan 2-year warranty is priced about 30% of the cost of msrp of the ebike which seems expensive. Currently their website lists ebikes from Bird, Super 73, QuietKat, and a few budget models.

 

[RunForTheHills]

The part about the Geek Squad offering at-home servicing is interesting. I wonder what kind of training they will give their techs and if it will be limited to just the bikes that they sell.

 

[fooferdoggie]

The part about the Geek Squad offering at-home servicing is interesting. I wonder what kind of training they will give their techs and if it will be limited to just the bikes that they sell.

most likely they will use some mobile bike service

 

[Dewey]

They're going to have to rethink their recycling program to accept ebike and scooter Lithium battery packs. What's odd is Best Buy stores still come up as accepting lithium rechargeable batteries in the Earth911.org recycling locator, but they don't list them on the Best Buy recycling webpages

 

[RunForTheHills]

most likely they will use some mobile bike service

That could be, but who would have the national footprint that they would need? Rad?

 

[fooferdoggie]

That could be, but who would have the national footprint that they would need? Rad?

most likely store by store. but who knows?

 

[mjeds]

geek squad? lol really.. might as well hire the 5 year old next door. probably do a better job.

I am a Director of Corp IT Systems for a large company, I have been in IT for 35 years, from helpdesk to coding to Director Level. Geek Squad is by far the worse "IT" and audio/video in home service I have ever worked with. Their people are clueless about anything other than "reset the OS".

they have zero troubleshooting skills, zero ability to think outside their training, and zero ability to follow simple basic instructions, insofar as the several dozen I have had the displeasure of dealing with over the years.

 

[Art Deco]

geek squad? lol really.. might as well hire the 5 year old next door. probably do a better job.

I am a Director of Corp IT Systems for a large company, I have been in IT for 35 years, from helpdesk to coding to Director Level. Geek Squad is by far the worse "IT" and audio/video in home service I have ever worked with. Their people are clueless about anything other than "reset the OS".

they have zero troubleshooting skills, zero ability to think outside their training, and zero ability to follow simple basic instructions, insofar as the several dozen I have had the displeasure of dealing with over the years.

@mjeds Why don't you tell us how you really feel?
Geek squad here is worse than nothing, b/c they screw things up and never document what they did, making it harder to correct.

 

[Dewey]

Maybe their warranty is so expensive in part to subsidize training the in-store & mobile assemblers? I agree Best Buy customers should skip the Geek Squad and take a new ebike still in its shipping box to an ebike-friendly local bike shop or to REI for assembly and servicing, but Walmart's ebike customers mostly report in forums that they take their bikes back to the store if anything goes wrong so they probably won't.

 

[mjeds]

@mjeds Why don't you tell us how you really feel?
Geek squad here is worse than nothing, b/c they screw things up and never document what they did, making it harder to correct.

I won't hire someone that has GS on their resume as "experience" in IT helpdesk/troubleshooting. It costs too much to undo their bad habits and poor training, and they typically don't last long because they can't seem to grasp that being in IT means troubleshooting and working through the problem, not just reimaging a device.

Last one from GS I hired did that 3 times in one day to correct an issue that only required a simple GPO sync. instead he decided it was "easier" to reimage the devices, leaving the end user without a device for more than a day. I have windows 7 devices running CNC equipment since 2010 that have never been reimaged, hell I have never had to reimage or reset any personal Windows 10 machines.

 

[billmeek]

geek squad? lol really.. might as well hire the 5 year old next door. probably do a better job.

I am a Director of Corp IT Systems for a large company, I have been in IT for 35 years, from helpdesk to coding to Director Level. Geek Squad is by far the worse "IT" and audio/video in home service I have ever worked with. Their people are clueless about anything other than "reset the OS".

they have zero troubleshooting skills, zero ability to think outside their training, and zero ability to follow simple basic instructions, insofar as the several dozen I have had the displeasure of dealing with over the years.

In my experience (following up on their PC repairs), Geek Squad often causes more damage than they fix.

There's no way in hell I'd ever let Geek Squad touch an ebike.

 

[RunForTheHills]

I have no need to use the Geek Squad to service my computers (or my bicycles), so I can't speak to their competence from experience. However, I am sure they have some talented techs and some that are dangerous. There is no way that they have the budget to hire experienced IT people, so they will naturally end up with people just starting their career. Hopefully, they have a method of weeding out the bad ones. However, I don't think that it is a bad thing if people who are unwilling or unable to work on their own bikes have another option to get them serviced. I believe that the lack of service options puts off some people from buying ebikes.

 

[RunForTheHills]

I won't hire someone that has GS on their resume as "experience" in IT helpdesk/troubleshooting. It costs too much to undo their bad habits and poor training, and they typically don't last long because they can't seem to grasp that being in IT means troubleshooting and working through the problem, not just reimaging a device.

Last one from GS I hired did that 3 times in one day to correct an issue that only required a simple GPO sync. instead he decided it was "easier" to reimage the devices, leaving the end user without a device for more than a day. I have windows 7 devices running CNC equipment since 2010 that have never been reimaged, hell I have never had to reimage or reset any personal Windows 10 machines.

As much as I liked Windows 7, you do need to get off of it. Being able to get security patches for new vulnerabilities is extremely important in these days of ransomware and state sponsored hackers from China and Russia. If your CNC vendor doesn't support Windows 10, you need to put pressure on them to update their software.

If your network is designed correctly, you won't be storing important files on local drives that aren't easily backed up and most admin workers don't use special software. I am not defending GS for re-imaging personal machines with lots of important documents that may not be backed up. However, in a corporate environment, sometimes re-imaging is faster than spending hours trying to remove malware or solve corruption problems.

 

[Art Deco]

"sometimes re-imaging is faster ...." the sometimes is very important. "If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" is an old expression that comes to mind.

But I agree that more bike service locations is better, and I'm sure that @mjeds would love to leave 7 behind, just like my friend the surgeon would love to, but recertification of medical imaging software isn't going to happen. $$$$.

 

[fooferdoggie]

I think buying a bike at best buy will be like buying one at walmart and close to online. no test rides no service no one that knows anything about them.

 

[RunForTheHills]

"sometimes re-imaging is faster ...." the sometimes is very important. "If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" is an old expression that comes to mind.

But I agree that more bike service locations is better, and I'm sure that @mjeds would love to leave 7 behind, just like my friend the surgeon would love to, but recertification of medical imaging software isn't going to happen. $$$$.

That is true. I know of some sensitive OT environments still running Windows XP because the vendor no longer supports the software and the company won't spend the money to look for and migrate to an alternative. There is always a reason that old unsupported operating system is still there running critical software. It is usually money. Still, responsible IT people need to identify the risk and ask executive management to accept the risk or the expense of mitigating/remediating it.

 

[JRA]

Anyone that buys an eBike at a big box type store deserves the quality of merchandise and service they will receive. Cheap consumerism has its price.

 

[Art Deco]

I think buying a bike at best buy will be like buying one at walmart and close to online. no test rides no service no one that knows anything about them.

But such a deal! Hundreds of dollars off! Do I sound sufficiently cynical yet?
Many small cities now have no alternatives left besides Amazon or Wal-Mart ...

 

[mjeds]

As much as I liked Windows 7, you do need to get off of it. Being able to get security patches for new vulnerabilities is extremely important in these days of ransomware and state sponsored hackers from China and Russia. If your CNC vendor doesn't support Windows 10, you need to put pressure on them to update their software.

If your network is designed correctly, you won't be storing important files on local drives that aren't easily backed up and most admin workers don't use special software. I am not defending GS for re-imaging personal machines with lots of important documents that may not be backed up. However, in a corporate environment, sometimes re-imaging is faster than spending hours trying to remove malware or solve corruption problems.

these are not network attached devices, they are stand alone computers that run CNC machines that they cannot be updated with out incurring a hundred thousand in additional expense to update the CNC machines and their dedicated software.

we maintain cloned HDDs of the devices in the event of failure. they flat out will not run in Windows 10 and the manufacturer will not support any windows 10 installation under contract. files for these machines are obtained by the good old "nike" network. put it on a flash drive and walk it over, they are not allowed to be network connected.


as far as reimaging a device. yes in the event of corruption or malware, yes reimaging can be faster. however in my above statement the issue was 3 users not getting GPO or network policy, reimaging is a waste of time, troubleshoot the problem, reimaging didn't fix the issue with not getting policy since it was a user profile problem. It takes 30 seconds to run gpresult and get the specific error. if you have basic IT troubleshooting experience and training this should be known.

GS doesn't train their people to troubleshoot or work through a problem, their training is to "reset" windows and SELL third party security software and products.

 

[Art Deco]

these are not network attached devices, they are stand alone computers that run CNC machines that they cannot be updated with out incurring a hundred thousand in additional expense to update the CNC machines and their dedicated software.

we maintain cloned HDDs of the devices in the event of failure. they flat out will not run in Windows 10 and the manufacturer will not support any windows 10 installation under contract. files for these machines are obtained by the good old "nike" network. put it on a flash drive and walk it over, they are not allowed to be network connected.


as far as reimaging a device. yes in the event of corruption or malware, yes reimaging can be faster. however in my above statement the issue was 3 users not getting GPO or network policy, reimaging is a waste of time, troubleshoot the problem, reimaging didn't fix the issue with not getting policy since it was a user profile problem. It takes 30 seconds to run gpresult and get the specific error. if you have basic IT troubleshooting experience and training this should be known.

GS doesn't train their people to troubleshoot or work through a problem, their training is to "reset" windows and SELL third party security software and products.

Best and cheapest security in the world. Remove the network card and put it in a locked room.