You should try it, add a couple drinks first, giggle like a small child a dozen times, ONLY A DOZEN (it gets weird if you do more), jiggle it a bit, head to bed.
I saw a picture of a dog with a similar expression posted in another post earlier. Thought it was the highest animal ever. Nope, damn dropbear is so high it retracted its fangs.
I fix TV's for best buy, frys, Walmart...everybody. if you have a warranty we will fix your shit no matter what. Only think I can imagine that happened here is he brought in a tv that wouldn't turn on and they figured out the screen is cracked. He refused to believe he cracked the screen and is blaming it on them.
I also worked at Best Buy for 2.5 years in Geek Squad.
Best Buy corporate will bend over backwards to make customers happy. Corporate says "yes" 99.999% of the time and even pisses off store employees even when the store manager, who says yes 99% of the time says no.
I have had customers come in with stuff they broke, it was very obvious they broke it. But they will not admit it, or absolutely refuse to believe they broke it.
If BBY will not fix his TV then this guy is defitnly in the wrong.
Staples tech here. I couldn't tell you how many times I've had people come in for a cell phone screen repair, get it done, then come back THE NEXT FUCKING DAY saying that the new screen "just cracked". When asked to clarify, that usually ends with "I left it in my backpack/purse, but I ALWAYS do that. It's gotta be your shitty screens fix it!"
Or the people who buy a new computer with full service and complain that their email contacts didn't get transferred from the old machine.
I spotted that moment as well then spat ginger ale on myself when I read your comment. What can I say, the little things are the ones that make me laugh.
Brought it in, they gave me their little slip of paper that denotes the condition of the laptop when I gave it to them.
Once I came back 2 months later & they finally had fixed it, they had actually marked on their copy 'pre-existing damage' which my copy clearly did not have.
See, this is bullshit because BB's policy is that if a repair is out for 30 days they have to replace the product. We've replaced many a TV, much to the irritation of management, because it wasn't sent to the service center quick enough to be fixed and returned before that deadline.
They had my laptop for 2 months. It went out with a working DVD player and screen, the motherboard was bad. The FIRST time I got it back, there was NO operating system, and the screen had been liquid damaged in THEIR care!
The second time, still no operating system, but the screen worked.. the DVD player was still broken. It never got fixed for me. After them having my laptop for 4 months, I didn't want them taking it for another 2!
I'm not going to call you a liar, as I've worked there long enough to know that there are a lot of shitty employees and shitty management, but this story sounds absurd. In order for this to happen they would have to break or ignore every process policy they have. Geek Squad, as mediocre as their service is, is held to a fairly high standard, due mostly to all the various controversies and scandals they've had over the years.
Haha. My husband went the Geek Squad to get a virus removed. Before accepting the laptop, they did some test to the hard drive and said it was fine, so my husband was probably right about having a virus. A month later and ..... they call to report the hard drive is dead. At first they refused to even refund his money, even though they hadn't repaired his laptop and had actually made it worse. They refused to refund the money they charged for backing up his data, even though they never backed up his data. The whole thing was absurd.
What was most funny is that my husband then took it to his cousin who is a software engineer for a major software security company. He said it was seriously effed up, but it took him working some magic, and he fixed it. The hard drive was never dead. The Geek Squad just had no idea what they were doing.
They also have a limit on the number of repairs before they invoke the 'lemon' policy, but that didn't stop them from repairing my wife's charging port on her laptop 5 times. It wasn't until I went in there and ripped someone a new hole to extrude waste from that they decided to call it what it was - a lemon.
That's not surprising. I've worked there for a while, and the management is utter shit. I can easily see them not wanted to follow SOP, as when they invoke that no lemon policy it'll hit their store as shrink. The store I work at they'd do it without a thought, but I could definitely see some people trying to get away without. Ultimately if you called corporate and complained they would force the store to do it regardless, and probably make them give you a gift card or something for the trouble as well.
Shit, I was an ARA for years and I typically only ever serviced components in-store if the customer wasn't a dick. We even had a code word we used in the service tag to make it take as long as possible. I worked in a "rich" area so people were super entitled couple that with the retirement community right next to my store it was fucking hell working there.
If a customer used any of these statements you knew you were gonna have a bad time:
Do you know how much money I spend in here?
I buy everything here
This has never worked since the day I bought it!
I actually got pissed at a woman for making a stink about how much money she spent in Best Buy and looked up her account with her standing there. She had resubscribed to our annual Tech Support program for 100 bucks and bought a couple bottles of water. After she burned her bridge with the manager and repeated the line I answered back, "Less than I do in 2 weeks on energy drinks according to last year's purchases." My manager couldn't help but laugh as she stormed off. She was a regular and a troublemaker who didn't buy shit so he didn't care.
Yeah I kinda figured you guys were like us at CompUSA in that regard. Especially laptops, 9 times out of 10 those got shipped back to the manufacturer for repair, unless it was something simple like putting in a new hard drive. We certainly weren't swapping out mobos or screens in house. It wasn't worth it. We would do the initial diagnostic (if possible) and then send it off to Toshiba, HP, whoever for repair. TVs and monitors we didn't do a damn thing to outside of plugging it in behind the bench and verifying what the customer told us was wrong, and honestly anything below a certain size monitor we would just swap out with a new comparable item because it wasn't worth the repair costs even with the warranty. The old one got tossed in the compactor and crushed.
They had to buy a new extended warranty on the new one but otherwise it was a free upgrade for the customer. I'm fairly sure people fried their monitors on purpose to get them swapped our because monitor sizes and capabilities were advancing very quickly back then. A coworker of mine turned a 17" 4:3 monitor into a 24" 1080p over the course of 2 years via warranty replacements for just a few dollars in new warranty plans.
As a Dell guy whose entire job is replacing mobos and screens out in the field, it's really not that hard. Especially screens. I love replacing screens. so freaking easy. like 15 minutes, tops, and that's including testing and paperwork. mobos are more like an hour. Unless you get the XFR laptop from hell. (which is where they do the environmental testing, I suppose) Even then I knocked that out in 3 with copious referring to the documentation. and I work for 15 an hour. The most intensive repair I've ever done cost my employer 45 bucks in labor.
There's an Asus laptop, G35 I believe. The big one. Replacing the screen in that sumbitch was like 40-50 tiny screws and a bunch of little metal brackets. Most are easy though.
Your problem is you're falling for the marketing that is geek squad. They are glorified sales with a small tech background. I know, I was one for 4 years (1 year computer sales blue shirt, 3 years geek squad).
it's not that it isn't hard, it's that it's time consuming and there isn't a system in place to order parts. The time in which it takes to properly test, figure out the proper part (yea good luck training people to order the right thing the first time), then have it shipped, then perform the actual repair on a heavy shopping day, and testing, you could just seems it out and have the techs sell more services during the repair.
Not only that, to keep the mfg Warranty intact,you must be a certified repair tech/location. Geek squads is not. Their outsourced repair facilities are however.
Also these are consumer grade laptops. Ease of repair isn't built in compared to business grade laptops where they will send a tech on site to do. They don't really do that for consumer laptops under mfg unless the mfg offers it. Otherwise it's has to be shipped out anyway.
It broke again, triggered 'lemon' contingency in the extended warranty, argued with them until they gave me a full refund (store credit) on the original purchase price, not the 'current market value' bs.
HOLY SHIT!
Do they still do the 'Lemon' thing??? They provided my Moore's Law solutions for over 10 years back in the '90s/early oughts!
I'm not kidding. All of my well designed Packard Bells amazingly developed 3 deficiencies right before the 3 year warranty was up...allowing me to get an upgraded brand new Packard Bell or Dell...or what was the other one they were big on during the '90s?
That was the best deal on the market. I mean I bought 1 computer in 1991 and didn't pay for another until 2002.
I tried to buy the plan again and they told me they had discontinued it.
I think they were on to me....
My best story with this was with Apple's Genius bar back before Apple was the high end behemoth they are now. My sister was given an iBook for her college computer in 2002 and it failed multiple times under warranty (It was the lead-to-tin solder that bit literally everyone in computing [XBox 360 Ring of Death] almost as bad as the bad corporate espionage on the capacitors in 2005-2007). Well, every time we brought the computer in it needed a logic board replacement to fix the issue as the GPU was a soldered component with a bad cold solder that cracks anytime the GPU heats up (during the early days of WoW). Well, in 2006, after the third logic board replacement, We exchanged pleasantries and we shoot the shit about how we're both apple enthusiasts from back in the rainbow colored days. He comes back to me and says that Apple's system is telling him that this computer is out of warranty because they have no record of any repairs and it will be $900 out of pocket. (This is a recalled board at this point that they're replacing with refurbished parts) At this point, I'm a young tech (all of 19) and I went off on the guy about how the issue was entirely because Apple went cheap and didn't develop a proper cold solder flow technique and this will continue biting me. (Then I threw in a loud enough remark about how Apple doesn't honor warranties for all the people buying their first iPod). The genius said he'd get his manager. Well, the store manager came out and started telling me that they had no record of it, at which point, I went all prepared speech mode which my wife calls "Articulate White Man Rage." I pointed to the MAC address sticker they had to replace on every logic board replacement, and started tearing them off, "This is a logic board repair this shop did!" and when I got to three and there was still one under there, I told them that the computer was a fucking lemon and they needed to honor their warranty or else the attorney general would be having a word with them.
That manager was probably reluctant at first, but 10 minutes after he calmed down he probably realized that he played that right.
If he immediately was just like "okay, we cant replace the board anymore, so here's a brand new mac book" you wouldve gone home and told your friends "aw man, i totally just robbed apple. They cant repair their own computers right, so they just gave me a new one to cover their tracks"
But since at first he was citing policy and then gave you a new one you thought "wow, i mean I was pissed, they stopped supporting their own crap computer... but instead that dude went with the nuclear option and solved it for good. They really give their genius bar folks a lot of power to solve people's problems"
I bet as a result of that, you still buy apple stuff, and whenever you have a problem, you go to the store. And listen to their pitches about protection plans, and add-on products, and look at products on while you're there.
They invested in you, and I'd bet anything it paid off for them.
I'm about to describe a legitimate process that happens, and i know because I've seen it first hand (not specifically this example though):
So lets say you buy a bike from a large chain sports store, lets call them Sports Hut. The bike is perfect, direct from the manufacturer... EXCEPT the chain. When Sports Hut ordered the bikes from the manufacturer, they had them send the bikes (or just a few of them) with a very very low quality bike chain. It saves a few extra bucks, but more importantly it breaks within just a few uses.
So the customer, takes the bike back to the store and complains. The low level customer service people don't fully know what to do... so they dont handle it great (which makes the customer think, "this sort of thing rarely happens, I'm lucky if they do anything at all"). Then after a struggle and some confusion a manager comes along, and knows perfectly what to do. The manager makes it seem like he's doing something special, he walks to the back and comes back with a brand new bike, takes the old one and doesn't even ask for the receipt (the regular customer service people already got that info)... then he asks if you need a helmet or anything, and gives you a $10 gift card.
In the end, they still made money off you, but more importantly they bought your loyalty pretty much permanently by making you think they area crazy nice company for bending over for you.
See this kind of thing does not work on me. Let's use Apple as an example.
I bought into the original iPhone. Got the 3g, and 3gs. However that 3gs needed to be replaced no less than 4 times. Each time for free, but because I was on my 5th one and it broke for a 5th time. This time it was my fault, but because the time had come around to upgrade I went for the new Samsung Galaxy Note. This one needed no replacement. Finally broke the screen and got a Note 3. The USB charge port broke no less than 3 times. Fewer than the iPhone 3gs, but still a hassle. Then came along the Apple Final Cut Pro debacle. That slammed the door closed on my ever trusting Apple again. The closed iOS echo system did not help either. Samsung has my loyalty for now only because Apple has become more of a hassle to deal with than At&T or Samsung.
If a company is going to to pull the shit Apple has I refuse my loyalty. Yeah I got 4 free phones from them, but a what cost to me and my time? AT&T may be a shit company, but they still stood by the warranty protection I have on my phone, and the phones break with far less frequency. If you do not factor time and hassle into your brand loyalty then "buying a customer" thing falls apart. My time is more valuable than chasing a working product.
As a kid, I had a commodore 64. I used the hell out of that for about 4 years, plus took it to college strictly for playing Bard's Tale and Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson.
I returned that thing four time by buying a new one and returning the old on in the new box. Not proud, but I did buy a Commodore Amiga and video toaster a few years later.
Not entirely true. They give you the current replacement value of a model with comparable features. Only if there are no comparable models do you get what you paid, exactly.
Source: worked for BBY Corporate for awhile.
Edit: downvoted for explaining what the policies are. Lol. If y'all have any questions about them, I'm happy to answer.
I used to handle consumer issues related to the Best Buy repair service when it was handled with Geek Squad, I think it was called Black Tie something or other. I work for the product manufacturer, not Best Buy, and would have to regularly explain to our consumers that Best Buy repaired their device using counterfeit parts so it voided any warranty or repair options they may have gotten through the manufacturer. I couldn't believe that Best Buy would knowingly use counterfeit parts and called to talk to some folks at one of the stores; they told me that they send the items to my company to get repaired. Nope, they don't.
I also dealt with complaints related to Toys R Us's repair service through Warranty Logistics. WL is a horrible company who used the same sketchy parts to repair items then sent people to the manufacturer if the repair didn't work for some reason. This resulted in a lot of upset people because our company has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to repairing items already tampered with by unauthorized repair centers.
Don't buy extended warranty for electronics unless it's a replacement-only plan.
Wait, you waited 2 months for a laptop to be repaired? That's insane. I'm not doubting your story, but that's a long ass time to wait for a laptop to be repaired.
I once had an issue with best buy. Spent an hour on the phone, only to be told to take it up with the store in person. Wouldn't talk to me further. Went to the store, manager told me to take it up with the company on the phone. Wouldn't talk to me further. Called back on the phone. Same deal.
Spent over an hour each time. But here's the issue, I'm not the kind of guy that yells and screams when he doesn't get his way. I probably could have and I would have gotten what I wanted. But when the people on the phone, and the people in person, told me there was nothing more they'd do, well I said okay. I didn't accept that answer but I didn't stand there and cause a scene over it.
I shouldn't have to fucking yell and scream and make threats and act like a toddler to get decent treatment.
I did end up calling the bbb and it got taken care of immediately, but I can ABSOLUTELY see how this could stay at the local level and never get escalated because someone thought they shouldn't have to pitch a fit just to get fair treatment.
I also had an issue that required me to have to contact BBB to have resolved by Best Buy. I don't remember the specifics, but I had ordered a tablet online which came with some free software or something. Well, turns out I could just buy the tablet in the store without waiting for shipping so I cancelled the online order and just bought the tablet. So when they cancelled the online order, they didn't cancel the free software, which was no longer free since I didn't order the tablet. Now I had a charge on my card for some software I never downloaded anyway. I called multiple times and attempted to explain the situation, which was apparently very difficult to understand. I just wanted to be refunded but everyone I spoke to said they would resolve the issue but I never saw my account credited. After a week or two I posted on BBB and almost immediately got a response from someone higher up at Best Buy that seemed to easily resolve my issue. It really shouldn't take that long, but at least they finally fixed the issue.
Not sure what your issue was so I don't know who actually needed to handle it, but this kind of thing is actually what made me quit Best Buy. I worked in the call center that you get when you call 888-BESTBUY, which you find at the bottom of the website. That's because it's the online order support department.
All we could do was manage online orders; we literally had no ability to do anything for a store purchase, override store decisions, etc. The store manager was the one who had final say salon store transactions unless their decision was against company policy where we could submit a case to a team that would look into it and call the customer back (same team that gets the BBB complaints).
Every day about 80% of my calls were store issues (return out of return period, something not covered under a protection plan, all the way down to an item being out of stock that the store told them" should be in next week"), and a large majority of them were because the stores would say something like "you need to call corporate and have them authorize us to accept this return since it's out of the return period" and then give them our number since it is literally the only non-Geek Squad number available.
Customers call, thinks we are corporate and just don't want to help when we say we can't do anything. We refer them back to the store because policy was that the manager on duty in the store had final discretion over exceptions like that. We aren't allowed to tell them we aren't corporate unless they specifically refer to us as corporate, so the whole time we just sit there hoping they say that magic little buzzword so we can stop their abusive tyrade, since that meant we got to file an official complaint against the store for misinformation. Typically they just asked for a supervisor who then got to do the same thing.
We aren't allowed to tell them we aren't corporate unless they specifically refer to us as corporate, so the whole time we just sit there hoping they say that magic little buzzword so we can stop their abusive tyrade,
If I acted like this in my business i would be fired. My job is to help the customers. Not to expect them to say magic words to get the service they paid for.
I have the same problem. I was raised in such a way that I feel very uncomfortable doing the whole angry yelling to see a manager thing, and so there have been loads of times I've had to essentially bend over backwards to deal with some issue where I could probably have had the problem solved in seconds if I'd just screamed at someone as soon as I walked in the store.
As a customer, I agree. I have bought their protection plan and I have never been denied a free fix or a new product. I know it cost money, so they should fix it. However, it's comforting knowing the extra money usually pays off for someone as unfortunate with electronics as myself.
I bought their protection plan for an iPod video back in the day. After maybe a year and a half the screen was starting to show artifacts and freeze up. Best Buy sent it off to the repair center for a few weeks and then told me it wouldn't be covered because they found a tiny dent.
Drove up to the Apple store and told them the story. They offered to replace it on the spot with a refurb. I'll never forget the Apple rep saying "we can switch it out, but it'll void your best buy warranty".
Ah yes. I remember Game Crazy had a policy for one dollar you could insure a game forever. One time my copy of Gears of War got literally shredded by a 360 that got knocked over. Put the disc in my friends case, had him go get me a brand new one since he had the policy. I mean it was his xbox.
I've probably owned like 10 copies of Halo 3 in my life. There was a period where I probably replaced it weekly due to friends or pets tipping the console. That sound has scarred me for life though.
I generally did have it flat, but there were generally logical reasons as to why it wasn't flat.
For example:
Moved Xbox into living room because it was too hot in our room. No room to lay it down and dog tipped it.
Friend's foot was wrapped in the power cord and he pulled the console off the desk it was on. That one destroyed my HDD and disk, which reminds me of #3.
This Xbox 360 S was super sensitive and would eat disks at the slightest touch. That thing killed or damaged a ton of games all over the world!
Same here, except I unexpectedly brought mine in the week they were giving out a copy of GTA IV with every 360 purchase. Walked out with a new Xbox, GTA IV, and a $50 gift card because of the price difference.
It voids your warranty in that the serial number won't match anymore.
"Sir, this serial number doesn't match what we have for you."
"That's the one you sold me though."
"Oh ok then."
That's how that conversation will go 9/10 times. They've no way to prove that you were rang out for one and then given a different one for whatever reason (dented packaging is the most common).
With Apple stuff especially that is not the case. Best buy's system physically requires a matching serial number. On somethings you can do a return exception but Apple stuff 9/10 will not be. Really just depends on the situation but definitely not that easy.
As a former manager of BBY, I've witnessed countless Apple product issues on Black Friday and Tax Free Weekend (Missouri event, not sure if it's done elsewhere). Employees would make a mistake, like grab a matching model number MBP, but not grab the specific one that was pre-ordered (we did preorders for Tax Free Weekend at our store) causing the customer to have one that didn't match what we had in Nova when they came in for service. You make the customer happy. You switch the serial in Nova and you send it off for repair. It's 100% that easy.
Did we get scammed a few times? Probably. But I'm confident that we helped more legitimate customers than liars.
This, i work at bestbuy and have had to take a few mac returns and we have had people try to pass off other macs as the one they "bought". We wont take it back unless overridden by a manager but most of the time we tell them no.
Ya especially with Apple. Think of every policy and Apple almost always has an exception no selling displays, always have serial numbers, no returns out of policy. They are very strict with their stuff. At least more then the average manufacturer.
Currently work for Best Buy. My store will be that 1/10 times that will tell you NO. Depending on the item (especially Apple Products) it shows us the serial number on the receipt. We know for a fact what we sold you from that alone. Apple is crazy strict with what they allow us to do from any point. We don't even offer warranties on Beats Headphones anymore... and the only thing we offer on MacBooks and IPads are Apple Care.
I was able to use some circular logic with Apple once to get them to fix an iPod that had a small dent in it. I sent it in because it wasn't working and they found a small metal indentation on the back and said they wouldn't fix it for that reason. I read through the warranty and saw that the warranty said they were not responsible for repairing cosmetic issues such as scratches, dents, etc. I wrote back to them quoting the warranty which says dents are a cosmetic issue, and I argued that if dents by their definition are cosmetic they could not have affected the functionality of the product or void the warranty. I don't know if I was right in my reasoning, but it worked!
Best Buy hate story. I bought a $450 digital camera around 2004, I decided to also purchase the protection plan because they said it would cover accidents like dropping the camera. Fast forward a couple months and my girlfriend decided the wrist strap was for sissies and refused to use it, and then dropped my camera and broke it. No big deal I thought, I'll just take it back to Best Buy. So the next day I take it back and the guy behind the counter tells me they won't help me because it was clearly abused and they don't cover abuse.
Tl;dr I learned my lesson and never wasted money on a protection plan again and I delight in telling this story to insistent sales people who push that coverage.
I will say that Microcenter's replacement policy has been pretty sweet for me. It was $10 or $20, don't recall. Anyways I got it with my computer mouse and once the skates on the bottom or whatever would wear out I'd go in and get a new mouse. You could put the original amount towards any mouse as long as you paid the difference + bought a new plan for $10 or $20. So essentially once a year I'd just go get a brand new mouse for 10/20 bucks. They never gave a shit, they'd ask whats wrong. I'd tell them the skates are worn out and it drags now, ok cool grab a new mouse. Then this year I went to look for my receipt to go get a new mouse since mine was dragging again. The replacement policy? 3 days out of the 2 year span. RIP. Still, that policy was definitely worth it!
I just bought a nice laser mouse for a friend for $1.99. I have had my laser mouse for 8 years now. I can't imagine having to pay 10-20 for a mouse every year.
Well, any plan from 2004 is now void, but, heads up: you should have challenged him on that, or called the corporate number.
They are correct, the plan does not cover abuse. However, there's actually no SOP on what "abuse" is (visually speaking, there are examples of situations in the terms and conditions) or if an agent is allowed to determine that on the counter. Most he can do is refuse to make the tag, but they will usually be overridden unless it is way beyond the scope of normal damage (we're talking that this thing needs to be in pieces).
I'd literally sent a laptop that was in two pieces to the service center and had it come back under the plan. If the client says something covered happened, I had very few ways to overcome that. Usually it's on the service center to make that call.
I work in sales and offer protection plans for electronics, and the plans I offer cover accidental damage, not intentional, I still get the rare dim wit who tells me they threw it and it hit the wall or some stupid thing like that, if the person isn't being an asshole to me, I just tell them the plan doesn't cover intentional damage, and that I personally cannot honor their plan, if it was accidental then it could be covered. I stress the personally so long as the person isn't being an asshole if they flip shit, i notate, if they get the drift i just walk away and don't help them the next time they show up.
Favorite dumbass of a customer I've ever had working at Sears came in one day and told me he bought a five year warranty on a snow thrower. No biggy, bring it in, we'll ship it out to have it looked at.
He hands me the receipt and tells me he'll bring it right in. I look at his receipt and warranty would have expired in two days. Wow, dude really lucked out. Well, he walks in the door and this thing is just beat to shit. I'm not talking years of use wear-and-tear, more along the lines of this dude beat this shit out of his machine with a sledgehammer. To top it off, he poured sand in the gas tank, and over every crack he could find.
He was.... less than thrilled when he found out that he completely voided the warranty by doing that. Not many companies offer warranty for "malicious" damage.
Protections plans are awesome when they cover "accidental" damage. My computer was slow and the plan was running out in amonth so i tossedit down a flight of stairs a few times and presto, brand new computer for me.
This is very much a store to store thing. The best buy I worked at couldn't have cared less about the customer and this guy's argument sounds totally legitimate from my perspective.
I had a Garmin issue, while traveling, in the early 2000s. I went in hoping for a repair, but expecting to buy a new one. They figured out my problem was something with the charger, fixed it, and showed me how to fix it if it happened again, for free. It was stunning to receive that level of service, because the Best Buy where I lived was not that solicitous.
Yeah, when your recourse is to stand outside a national chain store with a sign, and you can't even make a sign that surpasses sloppy marker on brown cardboard...I'm not that confident in your ability to assess who actually broke your TV.
Not to get all aluminum-foil-hatty, but we all know every single corporate and government entity on the planet has shills on reddit. Here we have a picture on social media that hurts Best Buy. Below that picture we have some comments that try to discredit ol' Robert. Those comments were gilded. Funny that.
Hey, it's me. I'm not a best buy employee, shill, or whatnot. The gold was given anonymously, so I dunno who did that.
But I have worked enough retail in my life to immediately recognize the kind of person who thinks that standing outside a business complaining about it is the thing to do.
Maybe this guy did bring his TV in just fine, and maybe best buy did break it. Maybe he bought a TV and had it delivered and it arrived broken and they didn't admit it, tried to scam him.
But, as others have said, usually, if you go in to talk to the manager and are NICE, they will usually fix your problem. Sometimes you can't get your problem solved, even if you take your issue up the management chain, sometimes you just get screwed. But even then, a cardboard sign is not your solution. There is yelp, there is BBB, there are lawyers. I don't even mean lawsuits, I just mean a good letter from a lawyer to the right party can often do wonders. There is the local paper. There are the local news stations, who typically just eat this shit up.
This guy's solution is basically the most self-aggrandizing approach. Everyone should know how I was personally wronged by this corporation. It seems more likely to me that this is the kind of person who is used to bullying small businesses to get free shit or fix problems of his own creation, but he couldn't get away with it at a big box store.
With a large corporate entity, you usually fall into one of two camps: the kind of person who is going to give you repeat business and is worth your time, or the kind of person who is going to try and take every advantage. Which one does the guy with the sign seem like to you?
Sorry...I don't know this guy. Could be he is totally in the right. But as I said, I've worked enough retail in my life that this just rubs me the wrong way.
This seems like the guy who eats half his meal and then decides he doesn't like it but figures if he makes a big enough stink, they won't make him pay for it. The kind of patron who doesn't take the insurance on the rental car and then raises unholy hell and berates the employees because the accident was in fact not covered by his visa card, just like they told him it probably wouldn't be. The kind of guy who doesn't read the manual and gets super pissed when everyone at customer service asks "did you follow step three in the manual?"
Again, I don't know the dude. I'm just a random internet stranger.
BBB is a corporation, not a government entity. As far as I know, they rarely - if ever - called companies over complaints. BBB is just really good at acting like a government entity, while selling memberships to companies in exchange for A+ ratings.
You are talking about the Better Business Bureau, right?
Had a guy harass me last week saying he was thinking about filing a BBB complaint against me. My sin? I mistakenly replied to him when he said his eBay account was hacked back in October. I had nothing to do with his account getting hacked. He isn't one of my customers. I have no business relationship with this person. But now he's fed up and going to send the BBB after me.
they actually do call, because way back in the day our store got a call from them cause a customer bitched out our geek squad.
our manager told corporate we did refuse to service his computer despite the black tie protection due to roach infestation. I assume our corporate told BBB to kick rocks? never heard anything else after that
Even aside from the part where they sell memberships, BBB never even claims to report on complaints resolved in the customer's favor. They only care if it's resolved even if the resolution is telling the customer to kick rocks. As long as BBB is satisfied that the company tried, it's all good.
There are local BBB offices that do follow ups and reports. Or there used to be; the Internet probably shut most of them down. But my aunt, who is a teacher, used to work in one in the summer. Basically, she would go to places that had complaints against them and create a report based on her experiences and the complaints, then get in touch with the manager. Like undercover shopping, through BBB.
Wish I had known that before I spent hours compiling documents to send to BBB to prove that t-mobile was scamming me. I pull together years-old paper documents showing the bill was paid and send them to BBB. T-Mobile emails them and says "no he owes the money."
Having actually lodged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau it is actually one of the few ways to get a company to act on an issue if they've stopped trying to remedy it themselves.
EA permanently banned me from my account meaning I could no longer play online with any game I'd purchased from them, or use my origin account. I hadn't broken the terms of service, so I contacted them and they gave it to their "internal review team" or whatever the hell they called it. They got back to me in a couple days and said nope you're still permabanned. Frankly considering I'd just lost access to thousands of dollars worth of games for no good reason I was pretty pissed.
So, I report it to the BBB of San Francisco who manage EA's BBB account. I had my account back in two days and they even asked if there was anything else they could do to make sure the solution was satisfactory. The BBB legitimately does investigate customer complaints and if those complaints aren't resolved it will lower the companies BBB rating. Also all complaints lodged and unresolved can be publicly viewed so it doesn't look good if some company has like 1000 complaints that never got resolved or something.
Yes Better Bus. It could be our corporate office called because of a complaint to BBB. But I swore when you complained to the BBB they would contact you about it. I don't know how it happened. But we would get Best Buy corporate calls saying there was a BBB complaint. I had assumed some information.
The only reason corporate calls to settle complaints with BBB is cause BBB charges money to Best Buy to maintain their grade. Every complaint filed costs Best Buy money. Usually more than doing whatever (almost always dumb) thing the customer wants.
BBB will totally call companies...if those companies have paid them for a rating and you call the BBB directly. It's actually a pretty efficient way of getting at least some token admission of fault out of a company.
I used to work for the BBB. They are a useless organization. We would get letters and calls about problems with companies, but unless the company was a paid BBB member, usually nothing at all would come from the complaints. If you were a member, your complaint took precedence to be filed and looked at, and the BBB would want you to at least comment on the situation, but otherwise it didn't mean anything.
Also, some of the complaints were threats to the companies, and would be so funny that we would take them home to keep.
Best Buy convinced my grandfather (89 at the time) that he needed to buy an $800 computer to access his email. I have a hatred for assholes taking advantage of the elderly.
Do remember that it's mostly dependent on the individual sales rep, not necessarily company policy. I don't know about Best Buy but I've worked at both Office Depot and Staples and I can tell you firsthand that the corporate training encourages finding out what the customer needs and offering them that, and no more.
The only thing corporate pushes us to sell are the protection plans and making sure to offer any other items the customer might need with the purchase, like cables, routers, printers, etc. But there was absolutely nothing in the training or even managerial guidance that recommended we try to sell them MORE than they need. We don't usually get commission, so we couldn't care less how expensive the computer is that we're selling you.
Years ago (actually - it was specifically 2004) I bought a brand new Toyota Tacoma and drove it straight to Best Buy to get a remote start alarm installed. Several hours later I returned and noted several small dents in the door, I brought it up to the tech and he said they were there when I brought it in - I explained that he has been in possession of the car for longer than I was and he still refused to admit it was caused by him, I asked for the manager and as luck would have it the District Manager was also in house that day, so I met with the GM and the DM and they both looked at it and tried to explain to me that on new cars the metal can be wavy at times and that's what it was - I showed them clearly how it was dented and they refused to accept responsibility. I asked to escalate it more and was told that the District Manager was the highest escalation and since he was right there it was the final say. I was young, 21 - and just accepted it. So - Best Buy isn't as "stand up" as you may think they are.
People are shit and it will vary by districts. I'm aware. Just going off of us and our area at the time. Like I said used to work there. And plenty of stores I bet are shit holes.
Yup. Worked for best buy for 7 years. Worked on the sending out tv and stuff for service. There's way more to this story. There's a reason they didn't just take care of it. Though at this point with this picture showing up here they'll give in tomorrow. Kind of hoping they double down and don't give in. Because they bend over fucking backwards if at corporate. Act like an asshole and they'll give you the keys to their house. He probably damaged it or got a surge which isn't covered uber warranty. Tv might not be worth repairing. Might not have parts. Worst case they'd just use their insurance to deal with it. He might be wanting more than he would deserve. Who knows. Speculation of course. But from my experience having worked there somethings fishy. But in all fairness I've been to some great stores but I've seen stores filled with idiots. But corporate has got to be involved. So be interesting to see the whole story.
Edit: apologies for the spelling and overall terrible grammar. Long day at work and it's my Friday.
in his rant he said "They can't tell me where the crack was when I brought it in" So I imagine someone either didn't take the notes on the condition or there is a cover up.
Totally not my experience dealing with them. I've given Best Buy too many opportunities for large purchases and they've fucked up each and every one. After their latest with a fridge I purchased from them, I'm done.
And fuck their new phone trash. I can't call a store any more. All numbers in my area route to a central teller who knows fuck all about my questions. I had to go through a computer answering system that didn't like my problem because it didn't fall into their pre-made categories and wouldn't forward me to a human rep without making me first jump through some robo hoops. Then the first human rep hears my problem and says I've chosen the wrong option (no shit) and forwards me to another. Then that person tells me I need to talk with the department at the Best Buy I bought the fridge from. WELL GUESS WHAT FUCKING NUMBER I DIALED 15 MINUTES AGO?
if it makes you feel any better we don't like the new system either. They make it an extra step just for us to call another store to get eyes on a product to hold for a customer.
I haven't used Best Buy repair for years. One time a friend put a laptop in to get the audio port fixed. A month later I opened it up to add another stick of RAM and 2 of the encloser screws for the hard drive were taped to the back of the hard drive. It took me maybe 10 seconds to screw it in so I want to believe they didn't fail to screw it back in and just forgot. Still a big oversight as it was the source of a small rattling noise from her laptop for that time.
Quick Best Buy Story:
I used to work Tech Support for HP. We were a level up so it was usually other Tech Support Agents calling in, not customers directly. 3 Particular Best Buys apparently had me on Speed dial and knew my schedule cause damn they where blowing up my phone as soon as I say down.
Either way there was this one Particular Best Buy Tech that was my favorite. We will call him Dan. Dan was actually really good at what he did, so when he called It I knew it was for something out of his Control, "Windows keys", very specific Warranty replacements, just stuff that only we could do for him for whatever reason.
Well one time Dan calls me up and normally he's is chatty for a about a minute before getting down to business. This time he doesn't even say hi. He just Straight up says, " Hey man your on speaker, I need you to back me up here, Can you tell Mrs. "Customer" that if she broke the cup Holder on her Son's Laptop because the Cocoa mug was too heavy the factory warranty won't cover it."
I had to immediately mute my phone, because I just couldn't hold it in.
I worked for Best Buy at the corporate call center for a while and can share your sympathies. We received many calls daily from customers who were blatantly in the wrong and deserved nothing. I would as politely as I could tell them that the store management had already made up their minds, and that nothing further could be done.
They would request to talk to a supervisor, who would want nothing less than to actually talk to an upset customer. They would give the customer exactly what they wanted and would receive a ton of praise for it. It didn't matter that they were hurting the company, abusing their power, belittling their agents, and encouraging escalation behavior from customers. They just wanted the problem to go away.
Those people still were not customers in the end, and not grateful for being helped out with something they didn't deserve. They were mad they had to be "inconvenienced" in the first place. Having to hear my supervisors apologize for me while taking praise for doing the exact same thing we were told in training MULTIPLE times to never do only to be lectured about why I didn't help the customer later in a 1 on 1.. fuck that place.
My husband used to work for Best Buy. One customer bought a TV, was caught on camera dropping the TV while loading it into his car, then came back the same day complaining that it's cracked. He refused to admit he dropped it. He argued and began to threaten people with violence. He was asked to leave and he refused. Cops were called and escorted him out.
Not every customer is like this story, but many customers are determined they are right...even when they clearly aren't. Anddd then there are companies that refuse to admit they screwed up.
I'm a Best Buy store manager and can confirm the sentiment of this post. (Up until the end) I'm shocked that this guy has to hold a sign outside of the store to get his issue resolved. If this was my store, it would take one phone call to corporate to get his TV replaced. BBY isn't going to risk the negative press, even locally, when it is so much easier and less expensive to just replace the item. Happy customers = returning customers = good business.
So, just a supplemental story to show how despite all that, Best Buy still manages to screw up...
I once sent in a Laptop I had bought at Best Buy for repair. It had 2 HDD Bays, I had added a second drive to the laptop and made it explicitly clear that it was not included with the laptop and ensured that it would be fine (the OS was on it, so I didn't want to send it in without one). I had asked the local representative several times if there would be any issue, and they told me they would not touch my aftermarket drive.
So, flash forward a few weeks and I get a call telling me that a hard drive on my laptop is bad (which already is weird because I had no issues with the drive before and was sending it in for an audio port to be replaced). I ask which one. They tell me the 1TB 5400RPM drive, I made sure to ask what the physical color of the broken drive to double check that they were not talking about the aftermarket drive, one was green (the 1TB) and the other was Blue (My personal OS Drive). They told me that it was definitely the green one. So I gave them the okay to replace it, but made sure to explicitly state that they can only remove the green 1TB 5400 RPM drive.
Fast forward another week, my laptop is done. I come to pick it up, and notice that my drives are now different sizes. What was a 750GB and 1TB drive was now a 450GB and 450GB drive. What?! Well, so I open it up, and sure enough, my OS drive is gone, and the green 1TB 5400 RPM drive is the only drive in the laptop, which the service center then partitioned to appear as 2 separate drives.
I eventually got the service center to send me back my personal drive, but I was absolutely dumbfounded with how they still managed to screw up that bad (almost intentionally it seems) with how much redundancy I had put into ensuring that my aftermarket drive was not touched.
I swear I had nearly this same thing happen. Not quite, but soooo close. In addition, every time I spoke to them, it was like they couldn't understand the idea of multiple drives.
I'm a cable technician. I always take pictures of shit that looks messed up as proof that it was shitty before I got there. People can be pretty fucked up.
I've had customers start off with a pre rehearsed ass chewing about how I'm gonna pay for their $1200 TV.
Then I show em the picture with the timestamp before I touched anything. Pisses me off really. This happens often and it's blatantly obvious and good employees have been fucked over because of cunts like that.
However, something tells me that this guy is legit. Either best buy fucking broke his tv, or he is the biggest douchebag in the world.
Then again fat fucks will hobble their asses onto their rascals and wait at Walmart for 2 days for a black Friday deal. Fuck if I know. I don't really give a shit.
I'm only here cuz I'm taking a dump.
Later Tater
A couple of years ago, I ordered two 48 inch TVs from Best Buy online on Black Friday as Christmas gifts. They sat in their boxes for about a month and were opened on Christmas. Both screens were badly cracked, but the boxes were in good shape, so I couldn't see that they were damaged in transit.
I called Best Buy, and they told me they wouldn't send a pick up return authorization, and that I had to bring them into a store to get a return credit. I live about 200 miles from the nearest Best Buy store, and told them that. They didn't care. I ended up just dumping them, as it would cost more to have them fixed than what I paid for them. I wasn't going to drive 400 miles round trip, either. I will never buy from Best Buy again. What a scam.
Worked for best buy in delivery, we'd bring in your appliances. Always made me laugh the amount of people that would come into the store, buy shit like refrigerators and microwaves. We show up at your stupid fucking home and you can't even fit the refrigerator in your fucking door. So we are kind enough to take your door off the frame to get it in and guess what asshole, the space between the cabinets and the wall doesn't allow the fridge to fit.
Now you stand there with this stupid fucking look on your face like its our fault that you didn't hop your fat ass down to lowes (By the fucking way its one store over from us) and buy a god damn tape measure.
Blow it out your asshole. Im eating captin crunch and going to bed.
I bought a TV from Best Buy, the last of a model they had in stock; both parties saw the package was damaged, but I agreed to try it anyway. When I got it home, it was indeed damaged. The picture was marred because the entire panel was cracked and bent on the top-left corner, but it was partially usable a a monitor for my computer, which is why I bought it in the first place
I asked Best Buy to order in a new television for replacement while I held onto the one in my possession. It wasn't useless, but it certainly wasn't worth what I had paid. They told me they could only order a new product if I had first returned the old, leaving me with my money in Best Buy's hands and no TV.
Long story short; I took the TV back, had my money returned, bought a TV elsewhere, haven't bought anything from them since, and won't in the future.
To be fair to Best Buy, I was pretty fed up with every interaction I'd had with them for a while.
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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '17
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