BestBuy.Com

[xhail13]

Why is cancelling an order so annoying? Unlike most sites which allow you to cancel an order online, BestBuy makes you call customer service to cancel something.

On top of that, as soon as you put in an order (even pre-orders), they put a hold on your funds. When you cancel an order, they don't contact your financial institution to let them know that they no longer need that hold. This means your funds will not be available until the financial institution releases the funds (3 days to a month).

I've contacted BestBuy customer service so they can contact my bank, but I have not received any reply yet and my funds are still on hold. I believe I contacted customer service on Monday of this week.

[Dorothy-BBY Community Supervisor]

Good afternoon xhail13 -

Allan, from our Community Connector team, will be reaching out to you regarding your concern.  I appreciate your patience until he is able to touch base with you.

[Allan-BBY Community Connector]

Hi xhail13,

Being without access to all my money would be extremely difficult for my family to deal with, and I’m sure this is the same for you. Giving our customers the ability to cancel their BestBuy.com order online does sound like a great idea, but I do have to be honest that I would not know what the specific reasons are that we don’t provide our customer’s this option.

When an order is placed on BestBuy.com, and paid for with a credit card/bank card, an authorization for the amount of the order total is requesting from the customer’s banking institution. Once the order is shipped and invoiced the funds are transferred from that bank to Best Buy®. If the order is cancelled prior to it being shipped and invoiced the funds are not transferred to us, and the customer’s funds should be available to them once their bank releases the authorization from their account.

Since we are not the bank we have little control over when these authorizations are released by them, but the fact that you posted this on 9/30/2010 is concerning to me. This concern is due to the fact that I see your order was cancelled on 9/14/2010, and most banks release these authorizations within one week of the authorization request if the funds haven’t been transferred by then.

I would appreciate it if you could send me a private message if the fund authorization has still not fallen off your account, and to send me a message just click on the link in my signature.

Thanks for posting,