My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

[ryan36]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

Lol, that's too funny.

I remember when I first started at At&t wireless (in their call center), I was at the At&t store, and this guy was talking a lady into a bunch of **** she didn't need.

I told her what she really needed when he went away, and he saw me and gave me the evil eye for sure.

I didn't realize they got commission, lol.

Retail stores suck for 2 reasons. More and more customers are gonna go home and order it online, so why help if you're not gonna buy? Hell, in the industry I work in, the online places are more expensive, plus shipping and handling. But customers will buy a worse product at LITERALLY 20% over MSRP and think they're saving money because it's "online."

And 2, most retail stores cut help when they're slow instead of adding it. It's an admission customer service is useless.

[Jr.]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

I went to Best Buy once a few weeks ago to trade in some games during their 100% bonus deal. I went to the trade-in section and stood there for 30 minutes, asked 3 different employees for help before someone actually came and assisted me. Once they got to the computer their trade-in system wasn't working.

Ended up going to Gamestop instead and will never go back to Best Buy for that reason

[eXperiment63]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

I've had a mixed bag with Best Buy myself. When I moved into my new house last May, I went there and bought a brand new washer/dryer combo. The steam wash.dry style; so it wasn't cheap. Scheduled the delivery for two weeks out, because that was the earliest they could deliver on my day off. Day before delivery they called me to tell me they didn't have the dryer in stock. I was fuming, as they had it in stock when I forked over the $800 for it.

So, I went back into the store I bought it from and immediately asked for the appliances manager. It took about 10 minutes, but as a retail manager myself, I know it won't always be instant... You do get tied up. I told him the situation, and without hesitation he told me to find any combo on the floor and he would substitute it. I found one set that had the same features as the one I paid for. The set was $480 more than the ones I bought(I bought LG, these were Sammy). Didn't even blink. He substituted it, rushed the delivery for the next day, and didn't charge me a dime.

-------

Six months later, my phone could be replaced. Went in, got the Optimus G they had on sale for $99, and went home happy. Saw online that they were doing a promo where if you bought the phone, you got a free $80 bluetooth stereo headset. Went back, and nobody there had any idea about that promotion, which was in it's second week. The entire staff was completely clueless. They kept arguing it must be an online only deal, as they had no documentation of it. So I kindly pointed out that their website said in store as well. Needless to say, I had to show them how to use their POS system to check if it was active... They couldn't figure out just scanning the two items and totaling to see if a discount gets applied. It did indeed get applied, and I walked out with a headset for free. Their complete lack of knowledge of a promo they were running for over a week really angered me though.

[Dirty Turtles]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

I always have the opposite problem where 95% of the employees ask if you need help and follow you around. I would be thoroughly annoyed though if I stood there waiting for someone to help me and no one would.

[55]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

As much as I loathe Best Buy (or "Worst Lie" as I call them) that is a pretty garden variety customer complaint, ODogg. While I agree that you shouldn't have been treated like that and your review was just, I don't see what you are looking to accomplish by emailing it to 25 different executives. An apology? Free stuff? Some sort of acknowledgement at all? The way you ended your message makes it pretty clear that they've already lost you as a customer, and rightfully so, so I'm not really sure what you're going for here.

[Cletus]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

I've been in Best Buy to buy and trade video games 3 times this year. I've spent at least a half hour each time trying to find the video game guy. The best service I've gotten is from a trainee. People like to complain about Gamestop and some are terrible, but I've never had to spend that much time waiting for an associate in one, and I've been on several Call of Duty releases.

[kehlis]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

Me and my work friends who are all in IT will sometimes go troll the Best Buy down the road and act like we know nothing about TVs or computers. Just so we can feel like the people we help all day.

You guys need to look into other hobbies.

[Chrisksaint]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

If you're looking for something productive you're better off calling their customer service, nothing will probably come at all from this letter.

By calling them they'll at least acknowledge the problem and potentially give you something. Last summer when I was home I went to BB with my mom to trade in some games during one of those 100% bonus things or what not. It was absolutely pouring then and all week and their machine didn't work because of "rain".

I thought that was a complete BS excuse and did not want to take my business elsewhere since Gamestop would have given me much less at the time. So my mom who was with me called them, they agreed it was BS and took down the names of everyone who was involved so they could look into it. Received a $100 gift card in the mail in addition to receiving the credit for my games the next time I went in to the store.

[Brandwin]

For the most part I've had good experiences with Best Buy. Latest bad experience was when I went to pick up The Show last Tuesday. In the past I picked up reserved copies and the game counter. Waited and walked around the area for 15 minutes and no one. Went to customer service and the lady told me preorders are picked up there. Grabbed the game and I was gone.

Still in that 15 minute time frame there should have been someone around. The store was dead at the time.

[bichettehappens]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

I haven't bought anything from Best Buy in a couple of years, but the last thing I remember buying was my plasma TV. Came in a couple days after the purchase with a printout of a cheaper price on Amazon and asked about price-matching (when I bought it, they said they'd price match... in general terms). Was informed that they don't include Amazon in their price match guarantees but they made the exception for me, allegedly.

I'm fortunate to have not had an experience like the one you & the other customer faced. but I agree with Chrisksaint, I'd be surprised if anything came of the letter.

[Redacted01]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

I haven't bought anything from Best Buy in a couple of years, but the last thing I remember buying was my plasma TV. Came in a couple days after the purchase with a printout of a cheaper price on Amazon and asked about price-matching (when I bought it, they said they'd price match... in general terms). Was informed that they don't include Amazon in their price match guarantees but they made the exception for me, allegedly.

I'm fortunate to have not had an experience like the one you & the other customer faced. but I agree with Chrisksaint, I'd be surprised if anything came of the letter.

They usually just price-matched print ads as far as I recall. I don't even think Walmart price-matches Amazon.

[daflyboys]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

I find them overall to be a convenient nuisance. They know that their stores are being used for demonstration purposes only. When buying my large flat screen, the salesman picked up on it, but yet they would just not beat the price. Multiply the number of times they've done that everywhere to calculate the sales they could have had. Even on the little things. I was there the other day thinking there was a B2G1 used game but didn't see a sign. A salesman asked if I needed any help, and in the end I had to ask him if there were any specials on at the time. He never offered. Just not commonsensical sales orientation.

I miss the days of haggling.

[GAMEC0CK2002]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

I actually had a good experience in the home theater department. I was curious about the new Pioneer speakers. The guy in HT went through the trouble of unhooking all the Polk and Denon speakers and hooked up the Pioneer. Then hooked his Iphone up to the receiver so I could hear different types of music on them.

I was going to buy a Pioneer center channel that was $100 on sale. They didn't have any in stock and he let me have the Polk center channel for the same price (normally a $200 speaker).

[Redacted01]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

I find them overall to be a convenient nuisance. They know that their stores are being used for demonstration purposes only. When buying my large flat screen, the salesman picked up on it, but yet they would just not beat the price. Multiply the number of times they've done that everywhere to calculate the sales they could have had. Even on the little things. I was there the other day thinking there was a B2G1 used game but didn't see a sign. A salesman asked if I needed any help, and in the end I had to ask him if there were any specials on at the time. He never offered. Just not commonsensical sales orientation.

I miss the days of haggling.

I've never really known people able to haggle much at major retailers. Sure, at the local electronics store in town, you could work out a deal, but at a large store? The price is the price usually. It is usually services where you can haggle.

[Phobia]

Re: My open letter to 25 Best Buy Executives

I have had nothing but problems with my local Best Buy also. Poor customer service, horrible return policy, and worst of all that is managers who refuse to help the customer.

Should of seen the huge fight I got into with this one manager. I ordered a laptop at Bestbuy.com. My local Best Buy then calls me a week later or whatever saying my order was in. So I drive on over to pick it up, as I walked in I could just tell it was going to be a disaster. I see a women who looks pissed at the counter, then behind her is like 3 other customers waiting. So I get in line for the HOUR long wait to pick up the laptop. They have the customer service girls working both customer service AND online order pick ups.

After listening for 10 mins of this women chewing the manager out that she just bought this blah blah last week and it does not work it is BS she can't get her money back yadda yadda yadda. She turns to me and says "I will never step foot in this ******* store again". I did a nod back like, I feel you.

She finally takes her receipt and her merchandise and storms out. So now they only have 3 other customers in front me yayyyy this is going to go so fast...........NOT. So my fiancee' is getting annoyed also and says she is going to look at the phone cases. So I now move up a spot or so and I look over and see her talking to the phone sales guy. So she comes walking up with the Life Case which is what $100s I think. She says, the sales guy said the geek squad will put on the case for my phone if I buy it.......so I just said that's fine what ever floats your boat.

So now we FINALLY arrive at the counter. It has been right around 30 min now standing waiting and watching these girls do double work. One of the girl finally walks up and asks me what I need and I tell her I'm picking up my online order. So she goes in this little room and starts digging through all the orders, then a geek squad guy is standing right there and my fiancee' asks if she can buy the Life Case and him install it. He starts explaining she can purchase it but he can't install it, its against policy. So she tells him the sales guy in the phone section said he can. So this little back and forth goes on. Finally she just settles on buying it and I will put it on for her.

Mean while the girl helping me comes back and says she can't find my order. She is going to go check in the back of the warehouse. So she leaves for another 5 min or so. She then comes back and still looks lost, so she goes grabs a manager and must tell him I can't find this order. He goes into looking for another 5 min or so and typing stuff in the computer and must not find anything. So he comes up to me and asks to see the computer print out I had stating my order was in. Then he leaves again to go search.

He comes back and says he does not know where the order is, they can't find it. So we get into this exchange of him wasting my time and can you just ship it to my house instead of the store so I don't have to deal with this again, "No sir you must pick it up at the store". WOW by this point I was livid, every direction I turned it was "No we can't do that" and "No that is not our policy". I turn around and said some stuff under my breath and walked off.

I then walk over to the 360 section to see if they had anything I might want. I see NCAA 11 on special for $39.99, so I said hell yea and grabbed it. I get int line to check out its another decent length wait. Guy then rings me up and hands me my receipt, so I said "hold up man, you rang this up for $59, it is $39". He looks at the receipts and says "You'll have to go to customer service for them to fix it"..............."wait, you can't just fix it right here?"..............."No sir".

Now I am pissed beyond belief. So I have to go wait BACK in the customer service line so they can fix it. After ANOTHER 5 to 10 min wait I finally reach the counter and the girl fixes the mistake the guy made. As I'm going to leave the manger is walking from the check out stations of the other side of the store and coming towards me, as I crossed him I told him "**** Best Buy".

It was one of my longest most frustrating experiences with any store. A 15 min exchange turned into over a hour long disaster. Just one mess up after another.

1) Girls working two stations making all customer wait longer
2) Sales guys who don't know what they are talking about
3) Policies, policies, policies you know what those equal "screw the customer"
4) Managers who are zero help (not in just this situation but others too)
5) Wrong price ringing up, forcing me into yet another waiting game
6) Cashier unable to help, I'm sure this is some other policy
7) Customer service being over loaded and only 2 girls working both stations

I swore off best buy for a while, but since have been back a couple times.