Thursday, January 17, 2008

Best Buy Sucks!

Earlier last year I read an article on msn.com about Home Depot once being a favorite stop for couples but not anymore because they have turned into Time Stealers - where their customer service and store is set-up in a way that steals time from their customers; not very efficient, in other words. Well, Best Buy did that to me and I am no longer a customer of theirs.

Mike & I wanted Guitar Hero III but it was sold out everywhere we went. We decided to purchase it online at BestBuy.com and pick it up at the store (saves us time going from store to store looking for it and no shipping fee). The gift certificate we had didn't cover the entire cost so we put the rest on our debit card. The whole transaction went rather smoothly.

When we get the game home and begin playing it we discover that the guitar in the bundle is broken. It's too late to go to the store to exchange it so we have go to bed without getting to enjoy the genius of GH III.  The next morning we head over to the same Best Buy from the previous day and here's where the anger starts.

Rather than simply exchanging the game for a new one Best Buy does a complete return/refund on the broken game and then a completely new purchase for the new game. During this process I find out that my debit card has been charged the full purchase amount rather than copying the split transaction from the day before, which was clearly represented on the receipt.

Apparently, according to the guy behind the counter, the system in the store is not compatible with the website's system and it is not possible for them to simply duplicate the transaction. Thus, the whole cost is applied to my debit card and the prior amount is credited back to the gift card.  However, the guy behind the counter hadn't been trained to advise his customers of this critical detail because Best Buy apparently doesn't think this type of inconvenience is worth highlighting..

The guy behind the counter said our gift card had been credited with the amount from the original purchase which I had discarded the night before after depleting its value.  When I brought this information to the guy's attention he said that I could call the phone number listed at the top of the receipt and request a new gift card and they would mail me a replacement. Seriously?!

All I had to do was call this number, most likely wait on hold for a long time, perhaps repeat this story several times to different people before a duplicate gift card is mailed to me, most likely taking at least 7-10 business days before I receive it.

Moral: Best Buy does not value the time of its customers.  Best Buy is a Time Stealer.

There were several ways in which this could've been handled better, without making me angry or feeling completely devalued.  For instance, the guy behind the counter could have just given me a new game without processing the exchange in the system; he could have called the number for me; he could have handed me a new gift card right there; he could've told me all of this information prior to the transaction so I could've exchanged the game at Game Stop or Game Spot or Game Crazy or anywhere else where I would not have had this problem.

Instead, Best Buy thought nothing of wasting my time nor inconveniencing me not once but twice and three times if you remember that it was their broken game that I was returning in the first place. I hate Best Buy and will never buy anything from them again. I cannot tolerate businesses that forget about customer satisfaction or customer convenience.. Bastards!

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