Best Buy, Worst Experience
This goes in the category of ‘You really don’t care about your customers, do you?’ Recently, some chip went out on my iPod, and I was ‘forced’ to get a new one. I’ve never been a very patient person, so I decided that rather than order the iPod directly from the Apple store, I would just pick it up at a local retailer.
The only store to have one in stock, as far as I researched, was Best Buy. So, wanting to make sure they had one available, I went to their online store and purchased one using the ‘in-store pickup’ option. According to their website, I should wait about 45 minutes for the store to confirm the product was in stock.
Well, 2 hours later, still nothing. I called, and after being transfered to someone who seemed quite surprised I was asking them about an in-store pickup, I was told that my iPod was available, and would be ready when I arrived. Great. I head on over during my lunch hour, and go to the service desk. Being a prepared customer, I handed them my order number, photo id, and purchasing credit card. They guy behind the counter typed some things into the computer, and then picked up the phone, and told the relevant department to bring my iPod to the front counter.
Now, seeing that I placed the order for in-store pickup almost 3 hours ago, and everything was confirmed, shouldn’t my product be at the service counter already? But anyway… After another store employee brought the wrong iPod about halfway, and then turned around to get what I really ordered, my new toy was sitting on the counter. The guy at the service counter looked at the computer, and told me that ‘The order never really cleared from BestBuy.com, so I’m just going to ring you up again here, and then you can just cancel your online order when you get home.’
What?
That’s really your solution to this? I think this was the nice/lazy way of saying ‘Yeah, it seems like we messed up, so let’s double your credit card bill, and then make you fix the problem yourself.’ I didn’t have the time to argue, though I would have loved to, so I just gave in, bought the iPod AGAIN, and cancelled the online order when I got back to the office. If the iPod wasn’t in my hand begging me to open it, I would have loved to say ‘No Thank You’. Sometimes something you really want can screw with even your best judgement. Let’s just say that I’ll never let my desire to ‘have it now’ ever lead me to buying anything at ‘Best Buy’ ever again.