Cowboom, we hardly knew ye
8Cowboom, your disappearance is another example of corporate blindness. I loved you while you were with us (laptops, tablets esp). I miss you.
Best Buy, you suck. Best Buy Outlet, you suck beyond all other known outlet suckage, in case you were wondering how you're doing. Best Buy executives who shut down Cowboom: hope you lose your jobs and go down as a biz school example of stupidity.
Btw, fabulous Best Buy executives: Cowboom's shutdown makes me far less likely to shop at BB.
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Used to work here:
http://www.techforless.com/
They were pretty good pre-cowboom. Then bestbuy figured out tech for less's business model and created cowboom.
Might be worth checking out if thats your thing. I havnt worked there for about 5 years so I cant vouch for the company anymore.
@darkzrobe
Thx.
@darkzrobe thanks.
I have never heard of cowboom... but exploding cows isn't an image I really associated with anything that would make me purchase something, is there much of a market for this? Seems like butchering would produce more usable meat.
@thismyusername
Best Buy owned Cowboom, and used it as a secondary outlet store.
Lots of remainders, open box, refurbs, and scratch and dents, graded and priced by condition, daily deals, unannounced orice drops, site-wide coupons, stackable coupons. The condition grading was quite generous (they gave addition details), you could purchase a "fair" (which aa defined usually meant scratches), and get something that looked pristine.
At worst you would get something nice w no cables. They were v nice the one time i returned something (a lenovo that should not have been laggy, but was). If they accidentally posted a stupid-low price in error, and you purchased, they honored the order and shipped at that price instead of cancelling.
Over the last several years i purchased or helped purchase a variety of laptops and tablets for self family friends. I usually bought when i heard about a great specific item or during a sitewide sale. A friend used to get a/v stuff from them. It became a go-to place for laptops.
Prices normally came to way less than any place other than Ebay, except you had customer service and could return things.
Best Buy states that all the Cowboom stuff will go to the Best Buy Outlet store. Only that store has been pretty much worthless - difficult to find great deals, overall prices way too high, just an expensive badly designed PITA. Best Buy also has an Ebay Outlet which can be decent sometimes.
Seems like a typical Best Buy corporate decision - customers don't dislike BB enuf, so corp will give them another reason. Kill something that's great and fun.
I buy some BB stuff - usually the $5 blu-rays that show up, sometimes something else, if they get into a price-match fight with Amazon. But their normal pricing....no way. Might as well be shopping at Nordstroms. And their corp attitude....not my cup of tea.
So when a friend wanted help buying a laptop the day cowboom was taken down, i simmered over this personal first-world problem. Another corporation gives me a chance to hate them.
So....rant. why not? Yeah, i feel better. ;)
PS also Cowboom used to send out cute little foam cows to sit on your desk. Guess those are no more :(
We bought our TV from Cowboom as well as a number of Nook tablets and an iPod touch
Bestbuy ripped me off years ago. Haven't set foot in their store since. Cowboom was Okay but it was still Bestbuy.
@Mehrocco_Mole You didn't buy an HDMI cable there did you?
@cengland0 Why would you buy a HDMI cable from Best buy... unless you need it now and don't mind paying a 1000% mark up. (Side note, employees got a Steal on HDMI cables when I worked there... it was cheaper than Amazon pricing on HDMI cables.)
@cengland0 Actually I did. But my son worked there so I got the employee discount. $70 marked down to cost: $4.
Best Buy execs visited us at Woot in 2006. They were a pompous bunch on a thinly veiled fact gathering mission. We were small and quirky so I grant not many took us seriously. Still, their assumption of Bestbuy's powerful leverage affecting the space led them down a path that made them all look very stupid. I love it when incumbent corporate bullies look stupid.
Not to say that any individual working with Cowboom was flawed at all - they did their best to supply wit and culture and fight for deals that would have actually moved the needle. My schadenfreude is rooted in executive activity 10 years ago.
@snapster
I'm shocked to hear that BB execs were arrogant and pompous. Just shocked.
One extra reason to haved liked Cowboom is that they gave me a reason to not completely hate BB. (I like split infinitives. Sue me.)
So....now that Cowboom has been brutally destroyed, and my first-world entitlement feathers have been ruffled......
I need solace.
Let me point out that it's Mediocre's fault i'm not a Kickstarter person, because you informed us thru email, and i was pissed off at my email, and was boycotting it.
Had you informed me of the Kickstarter campaign using Registered Mail with Chocolates as you clearly should have, no boycott of Chocolates in operation, so i would have been a Kickstarter person, complete with a sweet "K" insignia here.
So...Mediocre's Fault. You Owe Me.
It's about time for wonderful MediocreBot Customers such as i to be receiving our cute foam Octopi mascots. My desk is looking lonesome.
When can we expect shipping/tracking info?
@f00l
@jqubed
Thx for my fav video.
Just next time link the entire film so that i can sing-along in a public place full of open-carry people.
Live dangerously!
I always that Cowboom was a rip off when it came to shipping.
I will NEVER EVER EVER shop at a Best Buy ever again for the rest of my life. I am that angry over the CowBoom thing. CowBoom was a good outlet for stuff that likely would have ended polluting the ground water with toxic leachings in landfills somewhere. I found some good prices at CowBoom occasionally; I got a Surface Pro for $175 including shipping. No keyboard or power supply, but those were cheap on ebay. CowBoom was a good thing, so Best Buy had to destroy it.
@MarcNBarrett
Well, destroying good things is what Best Buy does.