Hello BB community,
I want to share a recent experience I had at Best Buy in hopes of alerting consumers to this potential pitfall, as well as providing Best Buy with some much needed advice. First, I've remained a loyal Best Buy customer for years. Despite pressure to shop at local small businesses, I've realized that Best Buy provides more job opportunities for people in my community then several small businesses could provide. I've embraced the benefits a large franchise such as Best Buy can offer, such as the employment opportunities mentioned and the unparalleled selection of products it makes available to us consumers. However, I've encountered a problem that many people worry about and associate with large corporations such as Best Buy, which is the lack of value placed on the individual's business. Being such a large retailer and having so many customers, it is expected that Best Buy doesn't value each customers business as a small "mom and pop" store would. My story is an example of this, and one everyone can hopefully learn from. My family has a "family plan" with Verizon and this past Christmas I went to Best Buy to purchase an iphone for my mother, who is also on the family plan with Verizon. There are a total of five people on the plan and I'm not the primary account holder, my father is. After obtaining the appropriate info from my father I was able to make the purchase for my mother. I gave her the phone on Christmas and taught her how to use the phone. After about a month my father went to pay our Verizon bill and encountered an unusually high monthly charge, about $500 more than usual. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, the purchase of my mother's iphone made all of us ineligible for the Verizon "family plan." So as a result of purchasing the iphone at Best Buy, Verizon altered the terms of our account causing the five of us to incur about $500 in "overage" charges in the span of one month. This was a shock to all of us, including me, who purchased the iphone, because the Best Buy employee who sold me the phone never mentioned ANYTHING to me about any changes that would occur to our plan. We brought this to the attention of Verizon. They agreed that there must have been a misunderstanding because it would make no sense for the non-primary account holder to purchase an iphone which would in effect take all five of us off a family plan, and substitute it for a plan that was 5 times more expensive. Verizon in turn spoke to Best Buy, who initially said they would try to take care of it. We told Best Buy that there must be some mistake, and that I would never have changed our plan and that I was never informed of any changes when I bought the iphone. It was a few days before Christmas so I understand that the woman who sold me the phone was busy, but it would have been nice if she had just mentioned such a major change would occur. My claim of never being informed was supported by the fact that no one in their right mind would ever make a decision that would have been so blatantly stupid and obviously expensive. It was further supported by the fact that we've had a family plan for the last ten years and never changed it, and as a criminal prosecutor myself I wouldn't lie about such a relatively minor thing. This is undeniable, however Best Buy pointed to some form I signed when I bought the phone, which in not so clear language states that I agree to the changes being made, and therefore would not help us in any way. The moral of my story is please inform your sales people to tell customers when such major changes are being made to their cell phone plans when simply buying a new device. I never thought buying a new phone would cause my entire family to be kicked off our family plan. Not informing the customer and just hiding it somewhere in a form isn't very good business practice and is the exact reason why people choose to get more personal service at a smaller shop.
Private Message