When you type in Best Buy, Customer Service in Google you will be greeted by a list of customer service horror stories.
From a 2003 post: Workbench, Worst Customer Service
From Best Buy's Own Community Service Feedback Board on November 2008: Re: Best Buy Customer Service is a Joke
From a March 2009 post on Passing Thru: Adventures in Customer Service- Best Buy Embraces The Suck
Maybe this explains their attitude. It's not as if the customer hasn't been warned.
If you do a minimal amount of online research you know that when you shop at Best Buy you're not going to get the kind of customer service you think you deserve. Heck, you just have to go on their own message board - It's like a cyber neon sign shouting out to consumers Buyer Beware. You'll Get A Great Price But After That -- .Good Luck.
And yet, when the depths of their lousy customer service is actually experienced - it's still a shock to the senses because it can be so maddening and unreasonable that it can make otherwise reasonable people swear, " I'll never walk into another Best Buy,"
Of course, few people actually hold that commitment. That's what Best Buy counts on. Eventually, the anger subsides and people grudgingly return because Best Buy has great stuff at great prices.
But just think how great the retailer could be if in addition to Great Stuff at Great Prices they had Customer Service with a heart? If they allowed individual managers to use common sense and common decency? If they had a policy that said, if you wouldn't want your mom treated that way, don't treat the customer that way, even if it slightly bends our policy.
That doesn't happen at Best Buy. The Policy is The Policy. At Best Buy there are never extenuating circumstances.
Recently, the Best Buy store in Roseville, Minnesota refused to help a Humphrey Fellow from Brazil with her computer that was obviously a lemon. They were following policy ,but a reasonable person would say , there were some extenuating circumstances here.
When the Humphrey Fellowship Program, a diplomatic program sponsored by the State Department,started their annual session this year, they gave the students stipends to buy a computer at Best Buy for their nine months in Minnesota. The Fellows, who are all mid to upper level administrators in their own country's governments,are brought to the United States for a year of intense study and professional development with the hope of strengthening ties between their government and ours.
The Fellowship Program specifically told the students not to purchase Best Buy's famous extended warranty because they wouldn't be here to take advantage of it, and because it is expensive.
When Elisabeth- who is a Deputy in the Department of Justice in Brazil went to buy her computer, she pitched in some of her own money and bought an HP laptop. In December it crashed, the Geek Squad n Best Buy said it was a hardware problem and shipped it off to HP.
Two weeks later, HP returned the computer saying it was a software problem.
After reinstalling everything again, Elisabeth had her computer back and it worked fine for two more months. Then the same thing happened. Because her English is not on the level where she is comfortable negotiating , she asked my friends Pixie and Jay, who are her sponsors for the year, to come with her.
The folks at Best Buy's Geek Squad looked at the computer and said, " It doesn't work, we'll exchange it."
Thinking that she was entitled to a new computer, Elisabeth decided to spend even more of her own money to upgrade yet again.
Except when they asked for help with selecting a new computer,the person they asked was the manager who upon finding out that she did not have the extended warranty basically said, this is not a direct quote, " We don't replace computers."
So for the next 20 minutes of so, the manager was up against two lawyers, Jay and Elisabeth, and Pixie a professional facilitator and neither the attorney's logic nor Pixie's passion can get him to budge. He stays calm, he repeatedly uses the most aggravating refrain known to humankind, " I understand your frustration," but no impassioned plea, no logic will deter him from his daily task, the policy is the policy.
He doesn't care that the computer is obviously a lemon. He doesn't care that Elisabeth is part of a diplomatic program. He doesn't care. Not his problem. Not the policy. " He understands their frustration"
Had Elisabeth gotten an extended warranty it would have required her to send the computer in question back to HP four times before she could exchange it for another computer. With it taking a minimum of two weeks per service call, that would be 2 months of her time here in Minnesota where she would be without her computer.
Four times sending it back to the manufacturer before you are entitled to an exchange? Does anyone have time for that kind of exchange?
Hopefully, Elisabeth will contact HP directly and hopefully the good folks at HP will recognize that there is a serious flaw with this particular computer and they will happily exchange it for the upgrade that Elisabeth is so willing to purchase. Hopefully she can do this directly with HP and avoid Best Buy all together.
Stay tuned. Of course, if you have any suggestions of how to help Elisabeth exchange this flawed computer , please share.