Some workers were laid off as of last Friday, others showed up to work today to find notices on the door that the Best Buy or Future Shop location they worked at was now closed.
The Best Buy stores that are now closed or will close soon are:
- Queensborough
- Nanaimo
- Victoria
- Langford (Westshore Town Centre)
- South Surrey, British Columbia
- Lachenaie, British Columbia
- Sherbrooke (SmartCentres Sherbrooke), Quebec.
and the Future Shop stores:
- West Kelowna, British Columbia
- Montreal (Forum Entertainment Center), Quebec
- Laval (First Pro Ste-Dorothee), Quebec
- Winnipeg (Regent), Manitoba
- Calgary (Macleod), Alberta
- Ancaster, Barrie South, Ontario
- Mississauga (Erin Mills), Ontario
More store closures may follow as the company move to smaller concept stores in an effort to combat overhead as customers visit stores to try out items but shop online for cheaper deals.
how rude, coulnd’t the company at least face it’s own employees before pulling a move like this, guess I’ll shop at other locations than Future Shop or Best Buy after pulling a stunt like this.
futureshop? whats that I stopped going there years ago, there staff is always rude never get good service and lied to, i go to staples or online.
Just one more reason why I shop at local businesses instead of box stores wherever possible. I may pay a little more but I often find the savings is in my time and customer service experience
there is such a thing as pay in lieu of notice. if you are getting one or the other, you’re covered.
yeah it’s kind of loser-y to not face the ppl you are laying off, but does it really make a difference?
Depends how much pay in lieu of notice they give, often with bigger layoffs they give you some notice and you can start looking for a job earlier
Some people call Best Buy the “Amazon’s showroom”. It’s inevitable. Future shop just sucks
I don’t get why you guys are angry about the workers treatment. It is not like a regular office, they have to risk theft and tempering of goods if they give them advance notice. It’s just how this kind of thing is done. I’m sure the good workers are arranged to have their new job in other locations. And the rest will get their severance package that is protected by law. It is sad, but I really don’t see how you can do it otherwise.
Besides, they are closing down because of smart customers like us who are extremely price-sensitive. We price-check and do loads of research online, which make their knowledgeable workers redundant. They can only blame us.
Adora then no stores should have been told on Friday, its unfair to the ones who were not
Besides, they will match prices and give you a discount on it so its not all about people like us, if anything we should be shopping there, matching Amazon and getting the price match diiscount
One in the south end of barrie is closing. No worries, there is a best buy in the same strip mall. Kinda like how Tim hortons opens across the street from Tim Hortons.
Lachenaie is in Quebec, not BC!
I find it interesting that most of the Best Buys closing are in BC (Queensborough, Nanaimo, Langford, Victoria and South Surrey). Maybe too many of us are getting better deals in WA state?
Unfortunately stores like this cannot afford to give “notice” of layoffs due to theft issues, but the severance package their employees receive is about 12 weeks, which I think is very fair. Still sad though. A lot of other employees in still-open stores did mass layoffs as well, which wasn’t reported. So many Canadians are shopping online or in the US, taking jobs away from other Canadians. I wonder how many people in total were laid off yesterday?
Hahahahaha, treat thier employees just like thier customers.
EC beat me to it, but I was going to make a cheeky comment to the likes of:
Yes, my local Best Buy, which was the Lachenaie store, was 15 minutes from Terrebonne, Quebec, 10 minutes from Mascouche, Quebec, 5 minutes from Le Gardeur, Quebec, but FYI, once you drive those 15 minutes in Quebec, you end up in BC baby! : )
Oddly enough, I actually drove to the Anjou, Quebec Best Buy on the 31st of January, to find their store closed ‘temporarily’ from 2 PM to 6 PM, which I found strange but figured was simply an isolated incident.
The following day, without consulting my E-Mail (which had this post in it), I drove to my local Best Buy store (Lachenaie), only to find it shut down. They had a security guard posted outside to hand out pamphlets with information about extended warranties and some time-limited coupons for percentages off on purchases starting at $100 for other nearby (or near-ish) Best Buy stores.
Frankly, I do not agree with comments that favour online retailers such as Amazon over big box home electronics stores. I love stores like Best Buy and would certainly never buy electronic hardware from a place that I could not simply drive to to return said device should there be a problem with it.