I have students that work at different Best Buys and they say it's the biggest joke.
When Best Buy first got into the music biz, it's very obvious they tried to view lessons as mass production and decided that it was unnecessary and too expensive to have a separate sales staff and competent teaching staff.
Solution: make sure to always hire people who CLAIM to play an instrument and when a customer comes in wanting a lesson, that salesman will now be your teacher even if they have only been playing a few months.
They have been the laughing stock ever since but now they think the best way to fix their bad reputation is to team up with a telemarketer scam takelessonsDOTcom who basically does the same thing but just a lot more aggressive and shameless about lying about their imaginary ""staff"" of instructors.
Now, if you respond to an ad because you like the bio an pic of the instructor but ""their"" instructor doesn't work at Best Buy, TOO BAD! It's the classic bait-and-switch""
You are not only going to be told, ""Too late, the teacher in the ad is filled up,"" but the ""counselor"" (salesman) will pressure you to sign up right now with one of their ""certified"" teachers at a Best Buy near your address, you will miss your ""opportunity"" to sign up at all so you really don't have time to meet the teacher first,
They do not want you to meet your teacher before you pay. THIS IS NUMBER ONE OF ALL RULES OF SHOPPING FOR MUSIC LESSONS; TALK TO YOUR TEACHER BEFORE YOU SIGN UP NOT A SALESMAN.
Takelessons/Best Buy has to force you to make the biggest mistake to sign up with them for lessons.
All Takelessons does is SELL the ILLUSION of credibility, the ILLUSION that you need them and the ILLUSION that they are helping you, JUST LIKE EVERY CON! They know how to target people who know absolutely nothing about music.
No wonder Takelessons was able to fool the head of Best Buy. But then again, Best Buy is the only company whose reputation in the music lessons field is as bad as Takelessons.
more