Best Buy's X-Box Aftermath

This article says Best Buy made a few heads roll re: the X-Box "bundling" fiasco. People lined up to get their 360s at the midnight releases and found they had to spend bucks aplenty on crap accessories. "Oh, you want our ad price? You have to buy these low impedence, de-oxygenated, rare earth Monster Cables for $89.99 as well to get that!" Well you wouldn't let your customers have their gaming experience be ruined by not getting the complete solution, would you?

If this hadn't made it to the media these guys would've gotten promoted. If Best Buy really cared about not having unwanted junk forced on its customers the home office back in Podunk, Minnesota wouldn't rank stores (and assign budgets and inventory) by accessories bundled or magazine subscriptions tacked on to checkouts. Ohio's attorney general is already bringing a class action suit against BBY for other chicanery. I only hope customers wise up and start making noise about their magazine racket.

I know retailers are in the business to make money, but I wish those predictions of e-commerce burying brick-and-mortars from the pre dot-com burst would come true. There's nothing at Best Buy you can't get cheaper on Amazon, New Egg, or Dell, Sony, or Apple's websites. Hey, you can even get Entertainment Weekly or Sports Illustrated subscriptions on Amazon now!