Forbes Explains Why Best Buy Is Going Bankrupt Gradually

My New Year's Resolution is to try and figure out a way to make a blog about great business journalism happen in a timely enough fashion to be valuable while also dealing with my professional schedule.

As a start, I'm highlighting an article from Forbes.com by Larry Downes, who is a management consultant not a reporter, on why Best Buy is blowing it.  His deconstruction of Best Buy's incredibly lame attempt to weasel out of taking responsibility for taking orders it couldn't deliver during Christmas season is a PR 301 course.

The company issued a statement that read:  “Due to overwhelming demand of hot product offerings on BestBuy.com during the November and December time period, we have encountered a situation that has affected redemption of some of our customers’ online orders.”

Let’s parse that sentence for a moment.  The company “encountered a situation”—that is, it was a passive victim of an external problem it couldn’t control, in this case, customers daring to order products it acknowledges were “hot” buys.  This happened, inconveniently for Best Buy, during “the November and December period,” that is, the only months that matter to a retailer. For obvious reasons, the statement ties itself in knots trying to avoid mentioning that the “situation” occurred during the holidays.

Amen.  Downes goes on to re-write the statement in a way that accurately describes what happens.  Best Buy's PR people, working too hard to craft a statement that avoids taking responsibility for anything, has brought down more negative press (and my first blog in more than a month).  

A straightforward statement and some kind of offered compensation would have at least started to put the situation behind them.

Comments

[Lance Simonetti]

That explains it all. I think Best Buy encountered problems within their facilities or with their management. We can't tell exactly what it is, but it's causing their production to slow down. Either way, they need to tend to it quickly, or this might cause them to file for bankruptcy if it affects their production.