Best Buy reportedly testing deals to push AT&T and Verizon, restricting activation and in-store sales

When buying a smartphone locally, choices usually boil down to either a carrier store or the one-stop shop that is Best Buy. Apparently, though, Best Buy is testing out a plan that would see stores pushing a single carrier instead of multiple, as well as only shipping phones purchased rather than handing them out in store.

A report from The Mobile Report cites internal Best Buy documentation for a new pilot program that would introduce strict new rules for how carriers are involved in Best Buy’s physical retail locations. The changes in question would see Best Buy stores having individual deals with major carriers, particularly AT&T and Verizon.

These deals would see a few key changes.

For one, third-party staffing would be present within Best Buy stores. These vendors would push customers to AT&T or Verizon sales and activation to customers in the store.

Beyond that, and considerably more impactful, is that Best Buy stores in these deals would be left unable to activate devices on a different carrier than the one that store is working with. So a store partnered with AT&T would be unable to activate a device on Verizon, and vice versa, even when buying a device unlocked in the store.

The only carriers exempt from this would apparently be Lively (a carrier focused on older adults) and Google Fi Wireless.

Devices purchased via these carrier vendors would also not be available within the store. While customers will still be able to purchase unlocked devices in the store and activate it with carriers, the phones these vendors would be pushing on Best Buy customers would be shipped to the customer after they’ve left the store. Devices purchased through these vendors would also not be eligible for Best Buy protection plans.

Stores in the pilot program can’t even accept returns in-store of devices that were purchased for alternate carriers, with employees told to refer the customers to other Best Buy locations.

The internal documents can be viewed at The Mobile Report.

The whole deal seems, frankly, pretty confusing and a bit of a mess for customers and employees alike. So far, though, this is only a pilot program that kicked off in November and goes through portions of 2024. There’s no word yet on how many stores or what specific stores are partaking in the program.