Really it is just about hiring the right people. I worked at best buy in installation for 7 years. I never had a damage claim come out of either bay that I worked at as the supervisor. I helped open many stores, and trained many supervisors on the proper way to hire and train a staff.I hired only full time employees, trained them very slowly which gave me plenty of time to observe their development and taught them the paitence required to do this job correctly, you know, like mr miagi in the karate kid. The ones that could not handle the sometimes snail pace left, and the good ones stuck around. The reason that I only hired full time installers was so that installation was how they kept food on the table and a roof over their kids heads. Good installation work WAS their business, and it was how they STAYED employed. Not to mention the fact that there was a lifetime warraty on the work. As an evil corporate juggarnaut, Best Buy will be around for as long as the customer owns their car. They will be within just about an hour from any major city so if a fuse blows or a wire comes loose while the customer is on vacation, they will have a place to go to get things looked at free of charge. (providing the location plays by the rules)The garbage shop down the road has been around for years, and they have been doing garbage work for years. They charge to look at their own work. They sell discontinued floor models from my store as new, for more than what we were charging when they actually were new. They have hired three installers that were fired by me for doing crap work at my current non best buy, medium box location. Actually, one guy that works there was fired for watching porn in a customers car, but that was before I got promoted here... The bottom line is for every big box location that somebody says "don't ever take your car there" I can name an independant shop that is still in the practice of doing equally crappy work. Like anything in life, chances are you are actually going to have to do some work to find the right place to get your work done. If you are going to be dropping a bunch of money on a system and you have not researched the place that you are buying from or having the work done, then you get what you deserve. I might be the vast minority, but if I get a potential job that comes in that I am not 100% comfortable in doing, I refer them to somebody that is. I give the customers the information needed to make an educated decision. I expect customers to ask questions about me or any of my installers. Installation is what I do. If my store never sells another computer, or major appliance, I really don't care. I am very good at what I do, and there will always be a demand for people like me. Who knows, maybe I will open up my own shop and join the blindly bash the big box brigade. It is so much easier than giving people advice that they can actually use. I should point out that the last statement that I made is not ment to be an attack at anyone, I just threw it out there to get people thinking. I lurked at this site for quite some time before joining, and I have learned alot from many people. Maybe someone learned something from me today.
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