IPUrbia

OK, so this post is already past its expiration date. Still, interesting move. Best Buy grabs Speakeasy for $97 million to help boost their business consulting services.

It is a smart move on Best Buy’s part. Having a consistent bandwidth provider allows them to bundle services for more aggressive and profitable pricing structure. It also gives them the ability to expand into hosted applications, including voice over IP and so forth. Nevertheless, Best Buy could use to invest a little more time in improving their quality of service and customer relationships–a quick Google search for “Geek Squad” revealed the first three pages of entries (with the exception of 2 official Geek Squad homepages) consisting of negative posts about Geek Squad service and billing. Given that Speakeasy has built its reputation on customer satisfaction, Best Buy has a tough and discerning crowd to market their services to.