The coronavirus has been a double-edged sword for Best Buy (BBY 0.20%) over the past couple of months, prompting the furloughing of hourly employees and keeping Geek Squad employees from entering customers' homes, but also creating a boom in demand for home office products to supply other companies' workers who are working from home.
Soon, though, Best Buy may begin reversing the former even as it capitalizes on the latter.
As Vice's Motherboard reports today, internal emails obtained from within Best Buy show that the company may be ready to slowly resume offering in-home deliveries of tech equipment, as well as in-home installation and repair of same -- and as early as tomorrow, April 21.
Contacted for confirmation, a Best Buy spokesperson told Motherboard that Best Buy has "an entirely new set of safety procedures and trainings [in place] that will keep both employees and customers safe during in-home deliveries, installations, and repairs," so that neither employee nor customer need fear exposure to the novel coronavirus.
Before permitting an employee to go out for an in-home visit, for example, Best Buy says it will call the customer to confirm that no one at the home is experiencing any of the symptoms common to COVID-19 infections. Employees will also be disinfecting both their tools and any equipment they work on both before and after service, maintaining "social distancing" from customers, and will not require customers to sign any forms during the visit.
As the spokesperson explained, "tens of thousands of our customers are waiting for us, primarily to install or repair the appliances they need, and we're ready to be there for them."
Even so, Best Buy says going out on such visits will be "entirely voluntary" for the employees asked to perform them.