Dear Best Buy,
I am curious. Do you care at all about the customers that you “service” or have you just decided that because you are one of the larger electronic distributors that you can treat your customers any way that you want. I used to be a dedicated Best Buy shopper as well as my family and friends. I would go out of my way to get all of my electronics and media from your company. That is no longer the case. It seems that since the competition has dwindled that Best Buy has decided that as a corporation customer service is no longer a necessity. I will NEVER shop at Best Buy again nor will I encourage any of my clients or co-workers in the entertainment industry to do so. Allow me to tell you why…
Recently I decided to upgrade my cell phone at a Best Buy Mobile location instead of through my service provider. I could have gotten a slightly better deal through my provider but given that Best Buy has an insurance plan that a client referred me to I decided, against my better judgment, to try shopping at Best Buy. What a mistake that was. I bought a cell phone and the associates in the store were very helpful, however when it came to the insurance plan there was a problem. The store could only accept certain debit cards. At this time my insurance was canceled through my provider and never put back (more on that later). Given that I could not get the insurance through best buy I decided, or so I thought, to keep my providers insurance. I returned a week later unhappy with my purchase as I didn’t like the phone, and the very expensive case I bought broke from a 2-foot drop off of my couch. This didn’t seem like an issue until I got to the store and was told that I could not return the case. In all of the many return policies that Best Buy has, none of them state anything against returning a phone case especially in such a short period of time. I was told that this was a warranty issue and that I needed to take up the problem with the manufacturer. After arguing that point I was offered a replacement of the same case, which was at this point useless as I was exchanging my phone for a different model. At this point the manager Eva of the Westland Mall mobile location was able to authorize the exchange of the case for one that fit the model that I now was buying. Fast-forward to about 40 days in the future, my new phone gets broken. I call my provider and find that I have no coverage and I haven’t for the past month. To my surprise the insurance was de-activated on the same day that Best Buy offered me their insurance plan, when I bought the first phone. Best Buy told me on the day of purchasing my phone that it was re-activated but after doing research with my provider I found that this was never possible because ONLY my provider can do activations of insurance. When bringing this error to Best Buys attention I was pretty much told that I couldn’t be helped, at first. After being on the phone with Best Buy customer service for about three hours I was finally told that Best Buy could make steps to Re-activate the insurance that they had cancelled for me because at this point in time I had had the phone too long to activate the insurance myself. Best Buy also informed me that I would be paying a $50 deductible whereas their Black Tie protection had no deductible. I was fine with this because I was so tired of being on the phone that I just wanted to get the situation resolved and wash my hands of Best Buy for good. I called my provider to make my insurance claim and to my surprise the deductible was not $50 but instead is was $199, a big difference. I called Best Buy to ask them why I was quoted such a low number and I was again told that my only option was to take the Black Tie insurance which had no deductible and Eva was kind enough to offer me a loaner phone free of charge. Given that Eva once again demonstrated true customer service I decided to take yet another chance on Best Buy. Well During this whole process I was in the midst of moving and I also work three jobs (all in customer service) and I am a student. When I finally found spare time to go into Best Buy a couple weeks later I was told that the offer was only valid for that weekend and it was no longer an option.
As a person who works extensively in customer service I don’t see how it is ever justifiable to give an offer to make a customer happy and then slap a 48-hour expiration date on it. It would have been easier to accept it if the offer was never made at all. I have worked in customer service for years and have seen people redeem everything from coupons to gift cards long after their printed expiration dates. I have also never once seen a company spend so much time explaining why they won’t take care of their customers when it would be so much easier to just take a small loss in order to maintain good customer service. I was given more excuses than I can count why this matter “couldn’t” be resolved yet when I offered solutions that were more than feasible I was given nothing but resistance and offers to spend more money on insurance, which I initially didn’t have a problem with until I was reminded of how Best Buy has begun to treat their customers. Even considering the fact that I NEVER wanted to shop at Best Buy again I was still willing to at least use the insurance plan ONLY because Eva made such a valiant effort to redeem the company. I then realized something very important. Due to the lack of competition Best Buy has decided that customer service is no longer necessary. Ten years ago this issue would have been resolved immediately, I say this because myself and many people around me have always praised Best Buy on how they “used to take care of their customers” whereas now we all notice the same trend. Once the money is in the register “the customer can go screw themselves!” I can at least say that on an associate level Eva and her team did the best they could within their store, but once the situation went past them it was obvious that the matter would not be resolved. Even writing this I have no doubt that I will not hear any type of reply on behalf of the company, which comes as no surprise. My money is already been spent, why would you care now. What I can say is that I will not spend another cent in a Best Buy store, and I will adamantly discourage those around me of offering their money to a company that is purely concerned with profit margins and bottom lines. When there are an over abundance of websites and other stores to shop from, there is no reason why one company should think that they can treat their customers the way Best Buy treats the ones they have left.
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Anything I post is generally up for intelligent debate, if you want to challenge feel free. All I ask is that you actually have some sort of basis for your comments and that you don't bore me with generic Best Buy Fan Boy post.
If you feel the need to result to insults thats fine. I will just assume that I have exceeded your IQ level and bid you good day!
Ryan-BBY
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