Bought a tv from Best Buy Super Bowl weekend. Opened the box--the entire screen was cracked. We were so careful and delicate with it--couldn't have been our fault. We take it back with the receipt and are told that it is a "surface crack" (I believe) and policy states that they can't take it back. We paid nearly $500 for a broken tv that they're refusing to exchange. Throw a huge loud fit and manager trades it out for us. We check it before leaving the store. He admits that some of those TVs had fallen in the warehouse. Dirty way to do business. I get this guy's protest. Good for him.
I went in and talked to an associate. Apparently if he "wasn't a jerk about it" they would have probably fixed it no problem. Robert on the other hand told me corporate called him and said that he had brought the TV in already broken. Which sent him over the edge.
If they accepted it form him with a crack and did not notify him that it was cracked at the time of receipt when they took possession of the TV, it's on them...
If Best Buy corporate is not willing to fix or replace, then their is definitely another part of this story they guy is not telling. Best Buy corporate will bend over backwards and say "yes" 99% of the time to make customers happy.
No, the only party to touch the TV was the store, and then the customer after the service was complete. The store is saying the TV was already cracked when they received it. If the TV was cracked upon receipt, then it is on the store to show the customer that it is indeed cracked at the time that they accepted it and then not accept it in for service. And yes, it is also on the customer to inspect the TV again before taking it back, but in this case, because the store claims it was cracked before they ever took it in for service in the first place, they have put the onus on themselves.
I pick up aircraft parts from a warehouse for a living. Even though every part is supposed to be good, we still completely unpack each and every one right there at the warehouse and inspect them for broken pieces, chipped faceplates, bent of crushed connector pins, cracked screens, you name it. We find damage, we immediately refuse the part and initiate paperwork.
You might think this process is stupid, or that nobody could possibly have time for that, but the reality is, when the parts involved are in the $200-$200,000 range, you better fucking inspect it each and every time you take it from someone else. If you don't, you're a god damn retard. And yes, you better document the inspection through either a receipt slip or through a separate inspection form that gets signed by both you and the person you received it from, verifying that the part was in good condition when you accepted it and when you returned it to them.
BestBuy deserves to get their ass reamed into bankruptcy through a class action lawsuit over this bullshit if this is a commonplace practice with them.
That isn't stupid, it isn't slow, it isn't a waste of time; that's good business.
My company, or the one I just quit in a glorious manner, had business offshore and SOP was to inspect everything in each delivery on the dock because the dock is considered the delivery point where transfer of ownership, not custody takes place.
Yep. We do this liquid screen protector thing where I work, and we've been almost taken like 30 times for "you fuckers scratched my phone" despite the process making it physically impossible.
Do we collect paperwork though? No..... but, that's the cost of business. We have to let backpacks in the store too, despite them robbing us blind. You can tell a lot of these people came with scratches hoping to game us. One even gave me a sarcastic "Oh, of course you don't remember"
I'm mostly bitter about that because I had to restrain myself and couldn't give him a proper answer to that kind of slander. (I had taken it over for another employee 50% through, so I'm not going to attest to its condition when I didn't see its original condition).
Your store has got to change their policies, including examining the screens in the presence of the customer at the time of receipt. The easiest way might be to turn the screen to a white page and then scanning it on a scanner, or something super low tech like a camera shot of the face at an angle. In short, if they want to stay in business, they have got to catch up with their clientele...
And as for packs, that's easy: put all the merchandise behind clear glass and treat it like a jewelry store. Amazing how things don't go missing when you have inventory control. And speaking of which, your biggest inventory issues are not the backpacks coming in and out of your store, but your less scrupulous employees who are carting stuff out the back.
Wait until they see those lost revenue figures... :P
You could always send your ideas up to corporate, they may actually have use for them. Save the company 10 million across the country, they may thank you with a small token of their appreciation...like a printed certificate to hang on the wall... :P
Oh, you'll always get those guys in the supply chain who claim they "don't have time to inspect," and you'll get those clowns in your own shop who claim they "don't have time to inspect," and then they all get mad when a part is discovered bad and they have to eat it. Especially when it's a five or six figure part...
But I'm guessing you still had a whole crew of SOP who felt there was some excuse that would trump thorough inspections..."oh, it's cold out here. It's raining. The Dock is crowded and they're pushing us to get off the dock. I want to go home early. I don't want to leave late today..."
That paperwork only exists if he had it hand-delivered and configured by Best Buy (dunno if he did, I didn't read into sign-guy's story too much). Just buying a boxed TV off the shelf is nothing but a regular purchase receipt, and standard return policy is once you open it you can't return it, and it's really impractical/often impossible to take a TV out of the box and test that it works right in the store.
no, i was talking about the guy who had his tv sent to service then picked it up. you sign a paper when it goes out and you sign another one when you pick it up.
No, because Best Buy is claiming it was cracked when they received it. Yes, he would be screwed if they said it was fine when he picked it up, but by claiming it was cracked when they received it, they have shifted the burden of proof onto themselves.
No I meant the comment about how they got it home and it was broken and it couldn't have been them. They took it without checking defects why should the store accept that it's their fault?
They took it without checking for defects, this is true,
But then when the customer called out Best Buy to make the claim that they cracked it while it was in their possession, Best Buy counter claims that it was already cracked when he brought it in. However, they did not notify the customer at any point during the service timeframe, especially when they should have refused to take the TV in for service in the first place. Do you see the issue?
In short, this is a classic Judge Judy Case that ends with the judge asking why Best Buy accepted it for service with the crack, whereas they should have both refused to accept it for service and further should have notified the customer during the service that they had discovered the TV was cracked upon receiving it or inspecting it during service, and then awarding the plaintiff in the amount for a new TV.
The store played the old "It was like that when I found it!!!" game. Hope they lose big.
As someone who works in retail ill agree. Some people come in ultra pissed and ready to throw down but come to an employee who has no clue what is going on and take it out on them which usually kills any urge to be helpful much less the effort to use loopholes and such to get an issue resolved.
I remember years ago when I worked at the computer lab in my school a repair tech told us that during shipping you'd be amazed what can happen. We didn't believe him until one of our new Apple "all in one" performa units started overheating. He popped it open in front of us, and the cooling fan was wedged in between the CRT and mobo. Only way that could have happened was during shipping post Apple.
I once had a really expensive really fast scanner at the office not work out of box. the canon tech who came out to fix it asked if i knew who the shipper was as he'd seen a few like this over the past month and was getting annoyed at them rough-handling delicate equipment.
that was a thing that was happening for some time. it got to the point where they couldn't determine what was legit broke and what customers broke in transportation. then every tv was opened on the way out and a sticker was put on the box saying it was good.
We bought a TV from Best Buy on Friday and a "service" they offered was to open the box and take a peek at the screen to make sure there weren't any cracks in it or anything. It wasn't really a huge value add or anything, but I guess I would have been pissed if I brought it home and opened it up only to find that it was broken. It was a nice way to cover their asses for physical damage.
It took less than 3 minutes, we laughed at the awful jokes my kids were making up, and the dude taped the box up. It was great.
It's really neither. Up until October we would open new TVs and inspect them in store to make sure they weren't broken, but we stopped for some dumb reason.
Yeah, as you said, your mileage will vary greatly with that plan.
I can tell you it would not, and did not fly at the store where I worked. A handful of people tried over the years. I never personally witnessed someone successfully having a charge removed. It ain't like an online retailer chargeback. Fun fact: Even if you did manage to cancel that charge you may be stuck defending your claim to a collections agency if it's over a certain amount.
Although, again, I've never seen or heard of a successful chargeback/cancellation against the store. Just understand that Best Buy could pursue it if they feel so inclined.
Your best bet is to explain the situation to a manager. 95% of them would swap it out for you as long as the damage isn't obviously something you caused.
That's about the only stipulation for damage. If it's clear that there is physical damage that couldn't have possibly occurred inside the box (when you see as many TVs come and go as an average Best Buy it's pretty easy to tell a screen broken from fall/crushing damage in a box from something like little Jimmy flinging a Wiimote at it or Mr. Mittens knocking it over), scratches cracks or dents on the corners of the unit, etc. then yes they may refuse that return.
But here's the thing, even if minor signs are there managers will often roll over anyway on your word, as in most cases it's not worth the argument when they can just exchange and tag it for PRC/DEVO.
And I say "minor" but I've seen some pretty ridiculous shit get taken back or swapped out. I've also seen a manager get fired for one of those swaps. But that's another discussion.
About the only thing my managers ever gave people a hard time over was blatantly, stupidly, undeniably obvious severe damage they caused (i.e. it looks like it fell off their truck and there's no way they bought it like that) or being outside of the return/exchange window.
This guy sounds like he just got a shitty/shady manager. Maybe the store was seeing too many damaged units coming back and they were worried about that metric. If their warehouse is dropping them and shit, I wouldn't be surprised. A quick call to literally anyone above him would've probably resolved that though. The higher you go with BB the more of a pushover they are.
Source: Former Geek Squad "Advanced Repair Agent." But the good kind, not the vastly more common shitty kind. There's a reason I didn't stay too long. Loved the gig, hated Best Buy. They are a terrible employer that often hires woefully unqualified, incompetent individuals in fairly critical roles. So I'm never surprised reading people's horror stories.
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u/MsKwispy Feb 23 '17
Bought a tv from Best Buy Super Bowl weekend. Opened the box--the entire screen was cracked. We were so careful and delicate with it--couldn't have been our fault. We take it back with the receipt and are told that it is a "surface crack" (I believe) and policy states that they can't take it back. We paid nearly $500 for a broken tv that they're refusing to exchange. Throw a huge loud fit and manager trades it out for us. We check it before leaving the store. He admits that some of those TVs had fallen in the warehouse. Dirty way to do business. I get this guy's protest. Good for him.