Hi, folks. Stormcatcher here again, the "happy" gent that made the "Activation failure + no credit given for points = Bait & Switch?" post here a few weeks ago.
It's been over three weeks, my account STILL won't let me login with the old or new credentials, and the two or three times it DID work, my point balance was still wrong. This is after an initial call to customer service for help and an agent there who I think inadvertently made things worse by trying to merge my account and reset my credentials (though in his defense, the RZ zone's activation and verifcation coding simply doesn't work), two cases assigned for troubleshooting on my behalf (Removed per forum guidelines), automated e-mails sent to my old account (which was supposed to have been deleted) AND my new account, confusing me even further....and then the last straw, today: an e-mail stating that I had an $80 bonus point coupon available on the site. Surprise, surprise...I couldn't get to it because none of my credentials are working, still. Can't use what you can't get to.
I'm done. At this point, I can find merchandise for comparable prices even from online retailers that don't have to resort to promising things to their customers that they can't deliver. Seriously, how hard is it to run an online customer loyalty program? Has anyone behind the scenes at RZ considered that if they can't get the stupid site to work, maybe they should consider snail-mailing the certificates to the customers? It'd be a heck of a lot less frustrating than what I've gone through, that's for sure. (As an ironic side note, I notice that I've never had an issue logging in to these forums. Anyone have an answer for that? Maybe the web support techies for this site can have a loooong chat with the folks trying to run MyRZ.com and together they can get the verification and activation system to work?)
In spite of my ranting, I would like to thank someone from the Customer Service department here: Sarah, you've been wonderfully patient and very kind in your efforts to assist me, and I appreciate it. You and your team have a very difficult and thankless task trying to support this mess, and I salute your perseverence and positive attitude. Well done! You needn't contact me back on this, since it doesn't look like it's fix-able. But if you're willing, you could do me a HUGE favor by passing this post along as far up the managerial chain at Best Buy as you can. I'd like them to know a couple things:
1. I'm fully aware that my taking my business elsewhere won't hurt Best Buy's bottom line. It's a big company, with a lotta stores - and there are plenty of folks that will keep shopping there even if there are more holes in the RZ site's programming than swiss cheese. But just so the powers that be know, I live in Minnesota. In fact, I'm about 8 miles away from their corporate headquarters in Bloomington, and people here in the Twin Cities take their politics AND their customer relations very, very seriously. And if any of the locals here are going what I went through with this, it won't be pretty.
2. There was a news story on Yahoo not even a week ago talking about the issues with the RZ.com site, and the fact that a notice was sent out to several members that their point balances might be showing an incorrect total due to a glitch in the system, and that the problem is being worked on. That seems to be a common thread in many of the complaints I've read in this forum. If it's serious enough to show up as a news blip on Yahoo, that's not a good sign.
3. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Best Buy doesn't actually NEED this program? I would have been perfectly happy to continue shopping there without it, and the system it uses of small-denomination coupons that expire in a given period of time kind of seems like a waste. Believe it or not, sometimes it actually makes more sense to pull the plug on something if it's not working. And I wouldn't be able to go into a Best Buy to purchase something now on general principle, because I'd probably start frothing at the mouth when the poor cashier made the sales pitch for the Rewards Zone program to me. I've done retail before as a job, and I know what a grind it can be. You have a lot of friendly, hard-working people in your stores that probably have enough to deal with on a daily basis, as it is. Is it really necessary to make them share the burden for this mess?
Sarah, thank you again for trying. If I need to do anything specific beyond clicking on the "unsubscribe" link in any of the automated e-mails from RZ to prevent further e-mails from RZ, please let me know.
@BBYgamerdude
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