Best Buy

Best Buy is one of the leading retailers of top quality home video electronics, offering an enormous selection from Sony, Samsung, Sharp, Panasonic, LG, Syntax Olevia and many others. Best Buy also offers a wide selection of home and portable audio products, including headphones from Sennheiser, Philips, Apple, Acoustic Research, JVC, Bose, Sony, Logitech, and Shure.

The website is very well organized and set-up, but there are too many similar sounding items to do a general search. Best Buy also carries an incredible number of headphones and headphone-related accessories, so if you want to find a specific product, you really need to type in the brand and model number to avoid looking through many more selections. It took just two clicks to locate the Sony Open-Air dynamic headphones that we were looking for. This proved to be consistent across all of the various categories and brands. The site offers tens of thousands of products, so Best Buy deserves some recognition for its search feature, which locates products very quickly and most importantly, the one you are looking for, as long as you are specific in your query. We tried specific products using only the model name/number and while we did receive multiple entries, the correct product was the first product listing each time. Best Buy offers ‘free shipping’ on select portable electronics and headphones over. We did find it strange that there was a shipping charge on the expensive Sony model, but no such charge on a pair of Bose TriPort Around-Ear headphones. The site allows you to track your purchase and shipment. When it comes to returns and refunds, Best Buy has a strict return policy, which requires the original receipt and a form of identification and it must be done within 14 days for portable audio and headphones. The customer is also responsible for all shipping and insurance charges, unless otherwise indicated. There are no merchandise exchanges if your purchase online. It is quite clear that it makes more sense to return the item to an actual Best Buy location than to ship it back to avoid fees. Defective items will be repaired or exchanged at their discretion for the same or the manufacturer’s equivalent model only. Best Buy does email out notices about discounts, rebate offers, and open box items, and does offer online sales coupons at select times such as holiday sales.

Our experience shopping online was generally positive. We did not receive “free shipping” and the shipment came within five days. We were disappointed to discover that many popular, expensive headphones were out of stock. Best Buy seems to have ample stock of the inexpensive models, but never enough inventories of the better quality ones. The leading retailer of quality consumer electronics is not always the cheapest place to shop, which is ironic considering the name, but it does stock an enormous selection of headphones, portable digital media players, and accessories.