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Best Buy closing UK megastores

by Alexander Sliwinski on Nov 7th 2011 10:02PM

Best Buy will close its 11 megastores in the UK, the company announced today. The company's eastward expansion plans from three years ago failed to materialize, which would have seen Best Buy open 100 stores across the island nation before invading mainland Europe. This follows Best Buy's retreat earlier this year from opening branded stores in China and Turkey.

Many of the displaced staff of 1,000 are to be redeployed among the approximately 2,500 small box stores the company has in the region with a business partner. Many of those stores will be transformed into the "Wireless World" format.

With Best Buy's overseas business focusing specifically on mobile, the company can take account of the stiff competition it faces in the States on big box items. We've seen some of the changes already, like the new game departments in stores.

Source: Best Buy, Reuters

Tags: best-buy, britain, uk

Reader Comments (27)

Huh, as someone who has lived in both East and West London for a while and does go out a lot, I had no idea Best Buy stores even existed here.

@Emophia

Same, an advert or too wouldn't have gone amiss

Best Buy is really a joke. They have terrible prices (although they say they will match any price, they won't match their biggest competitor, Amazon), the staff literally stand around talking amongst themselves while you wait to be helped, and if you do get someone to help you they usually know less about what your asking than you do. I only use Best Buy to try stuff before I go buy it on Amazon.

@Warlock234

You absolutely nailed it on all aspects.

@Warlock234

You must have a horrible best buy then. The one i go to is pretty good.

@Warlock234 i agree, best buy is great for window shopping :P they can keep their overpriced hdmi cables

@tanooki equipped

Ahh the advantages of being a Best Buy employee :D

I never tire of paying less than a dollar for computer cables, or $2 for HDMI cables.

But seriously, I love Best Buy, the one by my house is great and it's definitely my most frequented store.

@Warlock234 They price match amazon for me everytime

They also really shrunk their dvd selection. I went in there to buy movies last month and the shelves were full of brand new movies and straight to dvd junk.

Best Buy seems to be in trouble. They laid off a bunch of staff in one of the stores near me. I tried to buy Battlefield 3 a few weeks ago and couldn't find anyone to help me-- oh and they're now locking up some new games, which is something new, so I couldn't even take it to the counter. And they're making you purchase items through customer service and getting rid of the check out isles.... shades of what Circuit City was doing before they started to go under.

I read somewhere that they're hiring less holiday staff this year than in years past, while other retailers said they are hiring more people than in the past.

I think Best Buy is in experiencing hard times.

@Starcade Actually, they're not locking up new games. At least not in the majority of locations. I actually work for the company and rest assured it's not going anywhere any time soon. They've also hired a lot of new employees over the last month or so for the holidays. This was actually their best year in a long time. So don't believe everything you read.

@Starcade

Hard times indeed. I work in the warehouse in western Canada and we're definitely seeing the weaker side of the economy right now. The warehouse hasn't given out a full time position to normal employees in over 3 years now.

Ok, Best Buy UK obviously needs Greece to float them a loan so they have time to turn this thing around!!!

No one caught the odd militaristic lingo in the entire article?

@Banana Hammock

Or no one bothered to comment on it.

We had a Best Buy?

I hate how they actively avoid helping you if there's an old person nearby they can upsell service plans and junk to instead.

It's happened enough that it can't be my imagination. But their reward points program is great.

Oh well, they still have Carphone Warehouse I guess.

My favorite best buy story was from back around 2000 or so. I wanted to get a Voodoo3 PCI card--specifically to max out the performance on an older mobo I had that didn't have an AGP slot AND to run UltraHLE well.. I was looking around and couldn't find one. A Bestbuy guy asked me if I needed help, and I was like "what the hell, sure, I'm looking for a Voodoo3 PCI card. It needs to be both Voodoo3 and PCI." and he goes, "Hmmmm.... Well, let's see here.." He scanned the shelves, and then grabbed a card and said "This should do what you need!" and he handed me some off-brand nVidia AGP card. I was like "Thanks. Go away."

I love Best Buy. I go there every time I'm thinking about purchasing something from Amazon. Sorry, but no sales tax and Amazon Prime prevent me from buying anything from big box stores unless it's perishable goods.