Sometimes it’s the quiet ones who end up doing the most damage. I always thought of Larry Downes, the co-author of the mega-selling Unleashing the Killer App, as an unusually gentle and wise soul. But this was before Downes unleashed his all-too-critical powers on Best Buy, transforming himself from a cerebral author into a bomb throwing critic of America’s leading consumer electronics retailer. In Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually, a brilliant article he published at Forbes last month, Downes finally told the truth about the terrible customer service at Best Buy. And the article went viral, of course, amassing close to 3 million page views and even forcing Best Buy CEO, Brian Dunn, to issue a response.

Best Buy is committing a “huge strategic blunder” in thinking their service is any good, Downes told me when he came into our San Francisco studio last week. The retailer, he explained, offers neither the lowest price nor provides decent customer service. It’s thus stuck in retail no man’s land – caught  in that dead zone between big box retailers like Walmart and high-end operations like the Apple stores. Worse still, Downes explained, Best Buy’s service stinks so badly because it trains its staff in how to sell rather than in making customers happy; thus, these staff are trained in up selling and cross selling which explains, he says, why most of their carefully scripted encounters with customers are so unpleasant.

So what is to be done? Downes laid out three solutions to reinvent Best Buy: 1) Integrating their on and offline operations; 2) Making the stores fun; 3) Radically changing the in store product mix. But can Best Buy really be saved? I wonder whether its business model might be so antiquated and the experience of shopping in its stores so miserable that its demise might be even more imminent that even Larry Downes predicts.

TechCrunch Gadgets editor John Biggs wrote about whether Best Buy is really finished last month.

I was just reading over the excellent (and long) story about Best Buy at Forbes and wondered, in light of today’s B&N announcement to pull the Nook financials out of their sinking brick-and-mortar business, whether stores like Best Buy and media giants like B&N need to exist at all.

First, before we begin, let’s talk about the Forbes’ article’s money shot:

The writer, Larry Downes, clearly found a bum Best Buy in his travels, but recent Christmas kerfuffles in which Best Buy didn’t ship lots and lots of presents made the company look even worse. I personally haven’t been into a store in years although I do often pop into Office Depot and wander through their jaundiced electronics section.

First, is Best Buy really so bad?

Our own Chris Velazco, who worked at a Best Buy in New Jersey (and actually appeared in some BB commercials before we whisked him away), found his own experience there to be fun and rewarding – if limiting. He admits that the pay wasn’t that great, but the company had some interesting benefits for full-time employees.

“Full timers got tuition assistance, that would’ve been nice as a part timer who worked there for five years,” he said. Matt Burns, who worked at Circuit City, described it as a veritable worker’s paradise. “We had a couple guys in my store making more than $80,000. Surprisingly the Flint store was until the end one of the top stores in the region.”

I asked them what Best Buy can do to turn itself around.

“So you pay better, get real salesman instead of kids, and in turn provide a lot better experience to the shopper,” said Burns.

I bring these easy quotes in because first Downes really doesn’t ask anyone at Best Buy what they think about working there, which I suspect may be the root of his perception. The employees are marking time, at best, as they look for something better. In a world where Zappos and Bonobos offer 24/7 superhuman service and Amazon (true story) lets you sometimes keep things you want to return and just gives you your money back, Best Buy’s primary mission should be to make sourpusses like myself and Downes feel like they just walked into, well, an Apple Store. They can’t do this by short-changing workers and upselling folks constantly.

The world needs a Best Buy. Where else will they buy their TVs? But then again, considering the resources required to ship ten or so units to each Best Buy, set them up, and then drive the unit home when it’s bought, you might as well just warehouse them somewhere central and ship them ad hoc to buyers. You can claim that you “feel better” by going in to see the different TVs, but is that really true? Barring a few differences, a TV is a TV is a TV, just as a laptop is a laptop is a laptop. They are commodities.

Best Buy is a giant. It may or may not be able to turn itself around and current financials make things look bleak. But America needs Best Buy – or something like it. However it also employs a lot of good people and a lot of fools. Anecdotally, I think this general concept of bundling, upsell, and the like is tragically flawed. There were reports here in Brooklyn of folks at Best Buy and Radio Shack being forced to buy cases, chargers, car adapters, and other junk in order to buy an iPhone or iPad. It’s these stories that you remember, not Chris Velazco’s smiling face greeting you in the phone section.

Customer service has changed considerably since the days of the sullen cashier at Service Merchandise telling you it’s not his department. Best Buy has arguably changed with the times, but perhaps, in an era when it’s more efficient to ship a laptop from China to Scranton than trust Chris Velazco to sell it for you at a large, well-lit store, it’s already too late.

“I wouldn’t touch you with a thirty-nine-and-a-half foot pole.”

There’s a bit of inherent risk when shopping online. You’re handing over your credit card to a retailer that promises to ship you something in return. Most of the time transactions are completed without issue and orders are fulfilled as promised. Sometimes things go awry, though. And sometimes Best Buy ruins Christmas.

Best Buy started reaching out to customers earlier this week — you know, mere days before Christmas — that the retailer was unable to fulfill orders placed as far back as November. Big Blue was sorry but they were canceling the affected orders. Happy holidays! Signed, your merry friends at Best Buy!

Consumers traded the safety of buying an object from a brick and mortar store for the convenience and often lower prices found online. As Best Buy proves here, buying items online is still a bit risky even in 2011. Consumers just do not know for a 100% fact that they will get their product. Sure, receipts are issued and shipping estimates are given, but there are just too many variables involved for complete trust. Shipping companies can also break the chain, too. You just never know if the FedEx man is going to chuck your LCD monitor over a gate.

Generally though, the bigger the retailer, the more safe the transaction feels. Amazon, Walmart, Newegg and, to a lesser extent now, Best Buy should be considered trusted retailers. These massive companies should be able to fulfill online orders with minimum exceptions. But issues do arise. Customers are sometimes left without their order, feeling used and abused.

Don’t worry about Best Buy, though. The retailer isn’t hurting its bottom line by canceling orders en mass. The Wall Street Journal quotes an analyst stating “It’s a hiccup for the company” and “It probably won’t make a big difference for Best Buy’s holiday sales.” Oh good. Because Best Buy’s earnings were the first things I thought of when this story broke. Screw the customers. They don’t matter anyway.

Apparently if those with canceled orders whine enough, Best Buy will issue them a gift card for the inconvenience. Of course those that suck it up and move on get nothing.

There’s no way of knowing how many of these canceled orders were to be holiday presents. Reportedly many of the canceled items were sold on Black Friday. But even without Christmas looming, Best Buy held these orders hostage for nearly a month. They violated the trust of their customers. The retailer essentially cast a wide net, collecting just as many orders as they could, likely knowing it would be unable to fulfill them all. It’s greedy, unacceptable and just plain wrong. Merry Christmas.

Oh, and just in case you need help, the CEO of Best Buy posted a tip to his Facebook page.

Be careful, the Kindle Fire is hot. Burning up you might say. Get it? Because it’s the Fire? Never mind…

Amazon’s first foray into the tablet world seems to be a runaway success. The Fire has occupied the top spot on Amazon’s best sellers list for weeks even prior to the device shipping. Now, at Best Buy, the $199 Fire sits higher the 16GB iPad as the top selling tablet on the retailer’s website. Yep, it’s safe to say that Amazon is well on its way to officially winning the Android tablet wars.

Amazon’s first color tablet had a banner Black Friday weekend. The retail previously stated that it moved four times more Kindles this year than last (although hard numbers were not given). Consumers are seemingly eating up the Fire.

The device received a fair amount of criticism from early reviewers. Most wrote off flaws and bugs to early software bugs, but also the $199 price. Compromises had to be made to keep the price down, they said. However, reviewers and consumer alike are singing the good graces of Amazon’s content-first scheme. Like the Fire’s main competitor, the Nook Tablet, the tablet is marketed without much talk of computing specs. Instead, Amazon and B&N talk about the device’s media consumption capabilities, a strategy ignored by most Android tab makers but successfully employed by Apple. Specs are dead.

It’s hard to predict if the Fire will retain its lead over the iPad at major retailers like Amazon and Best Buy. The $199 price will certainly carry it through the upcoming holiday but interest might wane after the holiday spending season. Then again, the growing ranks of Fire owners will likely take to the social media networks and publicly praise the device. The only thing that might suffocate the Fire is the iPad 3 — but that’s not likely to hit until February or March.

Update: The post now reflects that this applies only to BestBuy.com.

Apple Stores are awesome places to shop. All the latest Apple products are on tables, just waiting to be used and abused. The employees are generally very knowledgeable and they tend to let shoppers wander without pestering (they have an app for that). Oh, and the free tech support at the Genius Bar is, well, genius. The techs don’t try to sell unknowing customers surge protectors or gold-plated USB Monster Cables. Apple Stores are without question retail done right. Then there’s Best Buy. As their latest TV spot reminds, they sell Apple products, too.

It’s the age old tale. Company makes phone. Company codenames phone (sometimes multiple times). Company dabbles back and forth between a couple names before ultimately choosing the wrong one (*cough* HTC ChaCha *cough*). Carrier changes the name of the phone anyway, usually back to the better name (but sometimes to a ridiculously long and uselessly vague name). Happily ever after.

Today the cycle repeats with none other than the holy grail of Android handsets, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus? Or is it Prime?

You remember back before the leaked press shots and the official announcement, all of the rumors centered around a different name: The Nexus Prime. And what a perfect name it was. But sometime between then and now Samsung won the right to insert their Galaxy moniker into the name, effectively squeezing out the “Prime” bit altogether.

Personally, I think keeping manufacturers’ individual brands out of a phone as sacred as a Nexus should be some sort ancient law, but seeing as the whole smartphone thing is relatively new I’ll settle for Best Buy and Verizon taking things into their own hands. Which is exactly what it looks like they’ve done. Right on the cover of this December catalogue for Best Buy is an ad for the Samsung Nexus Prime for Verizon (above), and if you flip a few pages you’ll see a second ad with a price tag of $299.99 on-contract (below).

What’s odd is that Verizon still has an email sign-up page up on their site for the Galaxy Nexus. It does, however, exclude the word Galaxy in the URL. Perhaps they’ve left that up so as to not spoil the fun Nexus Prime fun (this is, after all, a leaked catalog ad), even if it is simply the Galaxy Nexus dressed in Verizon colors.

Still no official word on availability, but it can’t be too far from now. Samsung absolutely wouldn’t miss out on the Holiday rush, especially with such fierce competition this season.

Best Buy this morning announced its acquisition of mindSHIFT Technologies, which provides managed IT, cloud, data center and other professional services to small and mid-sized businesses all across the United States, for $167 million. mindSHIFT is said to serve more than 5,400 clients and 25,000 managed desktops nationwide.

According to a press statement, mindSHIFT will continue to operate under its current name and management team. All 500 employees – who work from mindSHIFT’s offices in Boston, Long Island (NY), Minneapolis, Morrisville (NC), New York City, Philadelphia and Washington (DC) – will be making the transfer to Best Buy.

Here’s how the retail giant pitches its acquisition of mindSHIFT:

“The combination of mindSHIFT ‘s capabilities and Best Buy’s points of distribution through its retail, Geek Squad services and Best Buy For Business operations is expected to create a competitive advantage that would provide an opportunity for the two companies to capture greater share within the estimated $40 billion small and mid-sized business MSP market.”

The acquisition is reminiscent of Best Buy’s purchase of Geek Squad (2002).

The transaction is expected to close by year’s end, subject to customary closing conditions.

The news comes on the same day as Best Buy’s unceremonious exit from the UK.

Here’s one to file under “completely unexpected” — remember HP’s long-dead TouchPad? Well, apparently it’s got some life it in yet, as Best Buy will be allowing their customers to purchase a 32GB model for $149 so long as they buy an HP computer at the same time.

The deal starts on November 1, and I suspect Best Buy and HP will be hyping it like crazy next week. This whole thing begs a far bigger question though: where the hell are these things coming from?

It’s been a few months since the TouchPad Fire Sale of 2011, so shouldn’t supply channels have dried up already? Even HP’s own employees had to go through the wringer to get their hands on one, and now they’re back in circulation? As it turns out, these leftover TouchPads may be the result of a last minute production run meant to clear supply channels out of end-of-life components. Estimates put the number of TouchPads ready to sell at between 100,000 and 200,000, but it’s unknown whether or not Best Buy will be getting all of them.

I get that it’s probably part of some pre-holiday promotion to drive computer sales, but the whole thing just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I can’t really blame HP and Best Buy for trying to make a few bucks off of a loss leader like the TouchPad, but it seems unfair considering some early bargain-hunters had their orders abruptly cancelled.

For those of you thinking of jumping on the deal and returning the computer later, be warned that your mileage may vary. While I’m sure some stores won’t have any problem tweaking your transaction, others are likely to shut you down as soon as you walk up to customer service.

Social mobile app directory Appolicious is announcing a major new partner today—Best Buy. The consumer electronics retail giant is launching the Best Buy App Discovery Center, an Appolicious-powered mobile app directory designed to make it easier for consumers to locate and find recommended iOS and Android apps.

On the new platform users can search for apps that are organized into more than 1,200 categories, such as “Preschool Early Reading” and “Travel Destinations.” Search also features auto complete, making it easier for consumers to see if the directory has the app they are looking for. All search uses Appolicious’ algorithmic app search based on social, user-generated and editorial signals.

Beyond just providing an app directory, Best Buy is also curating apps as well. The site will list
the most popular apps in Android Market and iTunes App Store and features Best Buy Blue Shirts’ App Picks, which are recommendations from BestBuy employees. Consumers can even drill down recommendations by by specific store and store associate.

And the retail angle is BestBuy’s Price Cuts feature. The directory will include an updated list of price reductions in Android Market and iTunes App Store. For example Adobe Ideas app is discounted to $5.99 from $9.99 on the directory.

This is a big win for Appolicious, who also has formed a content partnership with Yahoo. Founder Alan Warms tells us that the BestBuy deal is the first of several similar partnerships that will be announced.

<img src="http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/app.png"

Best Buy today announced that it will be offering the iPhone 4S, with in-store pre-orders available now and availability beginning October 14.

Just like at Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, and Apple, the iPhone 4S will cost $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model, and $399 for the 64GB model. All three carriers offering the 4S will be represented.

If the 4S seems a bit to pricey at the moment, Best Buy is also offering the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS, which have been marked down considerably. The iPhone 4 comes in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB flavors and is available for AT&T, Verizon and Sprint starting at just $99 on-contract.

The 3GS, meanwhile, can be had for free with a signature on the dotted line.

We reported earlier this week that Staples and Office Depot are running sales promotions for the ailing BlackBerry PlayBook, and today another big-box retailer has jumped into the fray. CNET reports that Best Buy has begun to sell all models of the PlayBook with a hefty $200 discount.

That price break brings RIM’s 16GB model down to $299, the 32GB model to $399, and the 64GB model to $499.

Unlike Staples and Office Depot’s promotions though, Best Buy’s price cut is a straight discount — no mail-in rebates involved. Best Buy had previously offered discounted PlayBooks in Canada, and they not too long ago lopped $150 off the price of the most expensive PlayBook.

Kicking off a mid-week sale is a bit strange for a retailer like Best Buy, whose sales periods run from Sunday through Saturday. RIM has recently said that “the official retail price of BlackBerry PlayBook has not changed,” and that they have struck promotional deals with retailers that are intended to drive PlayBook sales during the fall season. It could be that RIM’s plans are kicking into gear earlier than expected.

Still, the timing seems more than a little suspect. With yesterday’s announcement of the Kindle Fire still fresh on people’s minds, it’s possible that Best Buy’s mid-week sale was put together as a response to the Amazon tablet. Selling for $199 out of the gate, the Fire kills the PlayBook at the price game, and RIM’s tablet could be fighting for relevance and mindshare come the holidays.

Those looking to nab a PlayBook on the cheap may want to hurry: the 16GB model is already backordered on BestBuy.com. Then again, some people are convinced that a PlayBook fire sale is coming down the pipeline, so choose your deals wisely.

Disclosure: I am a former Best Buy employee, and still appear in Best Buy commercials.

It was widely reported that Best Buy was sitting on over 200,000 TouchPads before HP enacted their drastic price cut, but the fire sale has come and gone, and that would normally be that. Instead, a notice in Best Buy’s Employee Toolkit system shows that their contentious relationship with the TouchPad may not be over just yet.

The image, sent to Droid Matters by a Best Buy insider, indicates that Best Buy stores will once again begin to receive TouchPad shipments. Due to the swarms of bargain-hunters last time round, employees are being instructed to stick to a ticket system and take down the information of the interested parties that come their way.

While it’s possible the notice has been pushed out just in time to make a big splash on the front cover of the Sunday circular, you shouldn’t hold your breath. Different areas tend to have different shipping schedules, but if this holds true, it’s more likely that the units will begin trickling back into stores during the middle of the week. At this point, it’s still unknown whether the notice only applies to some stores or the whole lot of them, but thanks to a bit of corporate foresight, your nearest store may soon have a new recording in their phone system that could clear up the specifics.

It’s a bit of a surprise, to be sure: 16GB TouchPads are selling for nearly double the going rate on eBay, a testament to the fact that people have all but given up on more traditional sales outlets.

HP’s own site admits that they are only “temporarily” out of inventory, and that coupled with news of a major retailer suddenly receiving stock gives me pause: how many of these things does HP have left? And more importantly for some, how many are shipping with Android inexplicably preloaded? The answers, it would seem, may come later this week.

If you’re one of those folks who doesn’t need the latest and greatest, it may tickle your fancy to know that Best Buy is giving away the iPhone 3GS. The sale will only last through today, and is only available to customers signing a new two-year contract with AT&T or renewing their contract.

The iPhone 3GS has been going for $50 on-contract from AT&T for a while, but getting an iPhone for free is pretty rare indeed. Then again, Best Buy has to make some room for another very special Apple product that’s on its way. Can anyone guess what that might be?

Anyways, the 3GS has already passed its second birthday (that’s basically a centennial in phone years). With a two-year agreement, you’ll be toting around a phone made in 2009 around the same time that the iPhone 7 comes out. By then, who knows the extent to which your 3GS specs will be out-dated.

Best Buy and Samsung are going to move a few more Galaxy Tabs next week. Starting on Sunday, if you buy a top-tier Samsung 3D HDTV for $1500 or $2000, you’ll also go home with a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. So, in other words, if you buy an over-hyped HDTV, Best Buy is going to unload a GalTab on you. Sounds great for the buyer, but the one-week promotion speaks volumes about the current state of the Android tablet market.

The move is smart, though. Consumers aren’t latching onto Android tablets partly because they don’t know about them. Outside our silly little word, the iPad is the only tablet most consumers have ever heard about. This bundle will at least get the tablet into the hands of a slightly different demographic.

Buyers have the choice of either a 46-inch or 55-inch Samsung 3D HDTV. Both feature LED backlighting, 240Hz motion, and, of course, 3D technology. They’re rather pricey options, and a good deal more than competing TV sets from LG or Panasonic — but you get a free $500 tablet with the Sammies.

This signals that Best Buy, and maybe the manufacturers, are starting to realize that non-iPad tablets aren’t an easy sale. This comes after Best Buy redesigned its computer department to better feature and display Android tablets. They now have the same placement as notebooks, but that might not be enough to cycle through inventory quick enough. The retailer reportedly has a massive back-stock of unsold HP TouchPad tablets after only selling 25,000 of their 270,000.

The promotion starts this Sunday, August 21 and runs through August 27.

Citi and Best Buy have teamed up to launch a mobile rewards application for iPhone and Android devices. The “Citi ThankYou Rewards” app ties together Best Buy’s inventory systems with Citi’s “ThankYou” Rewards program, a service which allows Citi customers to earn points by using their Citi credit card or performing other banking-related activities.

Now, Citi customers can use the new mobile app to track their rewards points in real time, keep an eye on items they want to buy, and then pay for those items using their earned points.

The free application was built through a collaboration between the two companies, one a major financial institution and the other a leading retailer. As a customer shops in a Best Buy retail store, they can scan the barcodes of the merchandise they want to purchase. The app will display how many points are needed for each item.

And when the customer is ready to checkout, those items are placed in a virtual cart within the app to complete the process. A confirmation email is sent to the customer’s registered Citi ThankYou Rewards email account, directing them to the in-store pickup counter at Best Buy to get their merchandise.

The application also allows users to shop the Best Buy ThankYou Rewards catalog and schedule items for in-store pickup at the location of their choice or have them sent to their home address.

In addition, the mobile app lets Citi ThankYou Rewards members shop for other merchandise in the Rewards catalog not sold through Best Buy. Those items would be shipped directly to your home.

Says Ralph Andretta, EVP of Loyalty and New Products at Citi, there are millions of redemptions available via the ThankYou Rewards program outside of Best Buy, but Citi was excited to partner with the retailer which it sees as an innovative company like itself. This app demonstrates what Citi wants to be, Andretta says: “the best digital bank in the world.”

More details regarding this announcement are available at this morning’s webcast, going on now at www.liveatbestbuy.com/livestream.

Less than two weeks ago, Sprint cut the price of its Google Nexus S 4G by half to just $99 on-contract. That had me pink in the cheek with barely controlled glee, so you can only imagine my reaction when I saw that both Best Buy and Amazon were offering the device for free (and nearly free).

Best Buy promises all the Google phone you can handle for free as long as you sign on for a two-year contract, while Amazon lists the handset for $.01 (still on-contract). The phone originally launched with Sprint in May for $200 with a two year agreement, and then got cut to $99 when AT&T picked up the Nexus S 4G a couple weeks ago and listed it for a Benjamin at Best Buy. Obviously the deals at Amazon and Best Buy beat both carriers’ prices, but you’ll have to be a Sprint fan to take advantage of it.

Honestly, we didn’t expect a phone like this to fall into the free bin so quickly, so if you aren’t already salivating over a soon-to-be-launched phone, the Nexus S 4G is definitely worth consideration. Specs include NFC support, a 1GHz processor, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 4-inch Super AMOLED display and a 5-megapixel camera.

[via Phone Arena]

Well, this is… interesting.

It looks like AT&T customers are finally (just 7 months late!) getting an easy, subsidized way to get a Samsung Nexus S that plays friendly with the right 3G frequencies: beginning on July 24th (with pre-orders going up today), the handset will be going for $99 on a 2-year contract exclusively at Best Buy.

The interesting part: as far as I can tell, AT&T isn’t actually a part of all this. While Samsung’s very careful to say that the handset is “optimized for AT&T frequencies” in the press release, they make no other mention of the carrier’s involvement. At the least (even when one retailer has the exclusive), they usually have some generic quote from the carrier babbling on about how excited they are. Looks like Samsung just avoided AT&T almost entirely here.

You can check out our full review of the Nexus S right here.

The Specs
· 4” Super AMOLED™ Contour Display
· Support for AT&T’s 3G Network
· Android 2.3 Gingerbread (Pure, unmodified Android)
· Front-facing VGA (0.3 Megapixel) camera
· Rear-facing 5.0 Megapixel Camera and Camcorder
· Wi-Fi
· Bluetooth 2.1
· Tethering
· NFC Support
• Frequency: GSM850/900/1800/1900 UMTS 850/1900/2100
• Dimensions: 123.9 x 63 x 10.88(mm)
• Weight: 129 grams
• Display: Super AMOLED™, 480 x 800 pixels
• Battery: 1500mAh Li-ion standard battery
• Talk Time: Up to 6.5 hours
• Standby Time: Up to 450 hours

SupportSpace, which helps companies provide remote technical support with a range of customer service solutions and a network of ‘experts’, has raised $12 million in funding from Gemini, BRM and Emergence Capital.

The round brings the startup’s total funding raised to nearly $37 million.

Founded in 2006 by Doron Elgressy (president) and Yair Grindlinger (CEO), SupportSpace enables companies like software/hardware vendors and retailers to offer remote tech support services to consumers through a so-called ‘Virtual Expert Network’ which empowers independent experts to provide tech support services to consumers on a range of connected devices, on their own terms.

SupportSpace supports thousands of customers on a daily basis and claims to deliver over 5 million minutes of service per month. The company currently employs 75 people in the United States and Israel and claims to have revenues of “tens of millions of dollars”.

One of the companies they have partnered with is retail giant Best Buy, in an effort to boost the remote tech services business of GeekSquad (a subsidiary of Best Buy), enabling customers to purchase remote tech service products and service plans online or at BestBuy’s 1,100+ stores.

Other customers include Panda Security, Check Point Software and Lavasoft.

(Via The Marker – in Hebrew)

It seems that Best Buy is ready to right HTC’s wrong by selling the two together. NetbookNews found the bundle (SKU 9999159200050028) but it’s sort of buggy right now. I can’t view the whole product page, but I am able to add it to my cart from the HTC Flyer search page. It’s listed as available online only so it might not hit the brick and mortar stores. What happened is the bundle was probably found before it was officially set, but hopefully, for the HTC Flyer’s sake, the bundle is real. [Best Buy via NetbookNews]

Another day, another sold-out Mac product that points to a refresh. This time Best Buy is the culprit, noting that current MBA notebooks are not shipping from its stores. This usually means that a refresh is coming within the next few days and is most probably a minor upgrade of little interest to the average user but that will piss people off who just bought an MBA in the last week to no end.

Amazon is still taking orders but Best Buy isn’t selling them right now.

via BGR