Elgiganten

Kind of like Best Buy, just less… best. Store is reasonably conveniently placed in the city, not too far from the center, about as convenient as you’d expect a discount electronics store to be. The building seems huge, with the logo of the shop covering the entire façade, but inside, the store actually only occupies the ground floor, which is dark, cramped, and not particularly inviting. They’ve tried splitting the place up in sections, but their divisions don’t always make sense. Do I find the new Apple TV under their Apple products section, or down by the TV section? Turns out, in the TV section, except they only have the empty boxes there for display purposes, you get the actual product at the counter where you pay. Cameras in the camera section, and batteries (all kinds of batteries) there, too, but memory cards are under computers. Confusing.
Service is a mixed bag. Some of the employees seem to genuinely do their best, others seem quite indifferent. Selection of goods is quite good, with most product ranges being fairly well covered.
Prices are so-​so. There are definitely cheaper options out there, both online and in brick-​and-​mortar shops, so their supposed commitment to being the cheapest is more of a marketing gimmick than a real policy. I’ve challenged them on it at one occasion, where I could document that I could find a given product about 15% cheaper no more than 15 minutes from their shop, proving that they weren’t the cheapest option. When I asked them if they were interested in matching the price I’d found, they said that that wasn’t anything they were allowed to do. In all fairness, you’ll find plenty of places that are more pricey.
So all in all, a somewhat depressing shop, with a good selection, a discount feel but not bottom-​dollar prices.

This review is only for the cellphone area which is truly the ninth circle of hell. This is a place you go to be tortured by endless endless endless waiting, surrounded by other bored souls clutching their ticket numbers, and to top it off you have to listen to some 8 year old play Angry Birds at the loudest volume setting on the display iPhone.
Boyfriend and I tried to get him a phone on the weekend at Elgiganten where we joined the crowd of customers waiting for the ONE sales guy to help them. Why doesn’t microwave guy come help cellphone guy? Why isn’t there more than one person working the cellphone counter when there are 30 people trying to PAY MONEY to buy a phone?! After 40 minutes we gave up even though we were 2 ticket numbers away from service.
Boyfriend then ordered the phone online for pickup in person. He figures if he goes to pickup the phone in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, he’ll avoid the crowd and finally have a new phone. But NO, hell does not operate the way you wish it would. Even on a Tuesday, there is a massive crowd and even though boyfriend already ordered and paid for the phone online, he still has to join the 30 other people waiting for the ONE sales guy to pickup his phone.
In the end, the phone is coming by post because neither of us can bear the thought of having to enter that store again. Maybe it’s just this store, and maybe it’s just the cellphone area, but it’s a soul-​sucking, life-​draining waste of time =(