Best Buy IdeaX

[#1]

With Best Buy being a Electronics/Technology/Media Store, a Customer Service Department dedicated specifically for gaming needs through it Toll-Free Phone Customer Service that deals in only Gaming should be created and established. Since Video Games are always a high selling products and with Best Buy having the Gamers Club Unlocked Program, it would be a way to push it more. This Department could help Best Buy Customers in many ways and help fix problems such as:

• Any problems with Pre-Order bonus's or other digital orders/items (EX: Codes not received)

• Price Adjustments of video games when best buy lower the price, especially with keeping GCU Discounts in mind on top of the adjustments.

• Problems with GCU Activating correctly at purchase or not applying to games correctly

• Problems with Pre-Order $10 Certificates not showing up on accounts when they should

• Any potential Trade-In Problems

• Not receiving Welcome coupons from GCU when signing up

• Any Gaming Promos not applying correctly to a order

• A big one is also the hassle of dealing with a majority of both phone reps and in store reps who after a year still does not know the in and out of the GCU Program

• It will help keep the work off of the Forum mods since a majority of the problems on here are for adjustments problems and also GCU not apply discount right and the normal everyday phone reps and in store reps are giving false or informed information since it not there specific department.

• and many many more reasons

Others customers probably can also input very good reason to make this happen. Especially since due to the normal everyday employees who have not much knowledge of many of best buy special programs especially GCU there is more frustration and problems that the customers must burden with constantly having to keep trying over and over until they get that single employee who is informed.

[#2]

to handle the staffing question that is easy. A good chunk of calls probably at least 25 to 30% are probably gaming or gcu related since it is a big part of best buy and it GCU program. Also due to the fact that majority of the CS Reps are not trained in GCU or best buy other Gaming Promos and the Adjustments problem it cause the normal reps to take on average of 30 minues to a hour sometime even more to solve the problem for a single customer. With a dedicated line of CS reps trained specifically for this department i proposed with all the the needed knowledge you could cut down call times by probably 90% turning a 30 minutes call into a 10 minutes or less call getting more customers helped faster therefore clearing up the strain on people calling for other stuff to the normal everyday CS Reps. So in theory all best buy would have to do is transfer a set amount of current CS Reps from the normal CS Department and train them in the new department and transfer them to the new department using the employees already in place without the needs for new hires.

[#3]

@allan The current price match guarantee faq has been updated to correctly reflect the process for post purchase price matching.

[#4]

+1!

i just had to run back to my closest store to fix a GCU purchase that didn't ring right and LITERALLY no one working in a packed store knew the specifics of GCU purchases (specifically the service desk thought it was only three GAMES per YEAR, omg seriously), not even the managers. I mean, c'mon. 

I really miss the gaming area's counter that actually had people around it who knew the area for when such problems occur.

[#5]

I'm with everybody else. After going through a huge issue getting my GCU activated (I bought the dark blue "gifting" card) and getting hung up on when I called in for a price adjustment on Battlefield, this needs to happen. I've been pretty fed up with my limited dealings with Best Buy so far. The GCU is a great program, but my interactions with Best Buy employees and customer service reps have been less than desirable. 

[#6]

This is a fantastic idea, it would be so much easier to deal with issues this way. I wish this materializes soon - gives a lot more confidence to people like us who buy stuff at BestBuy week in week out and have to deal with CS pretty frequently, for various reasons.

[#7]

@dreamer131313 You act as if the gaming section is the biggest money maker for the chain. It's more than likely not. Gaming is usually a money LOSER for stores. For me my gaming purchases and purchases in general at Best Buy have been reduced to price matching some other retailer or only buying stuff when I have a MyBB certificate that's going to expire soon. I went from somehow qualifying for Elite or Elite Plus the last several years to now being back to a base MyBB member because quite frankly for the type of buying I do of games/media(cheapest possible price) the prices have really sucked since the GCU reboot. Then again the only time I was making purchases at BB was when I had gift card/trade in credit to blow through. Now that BB has out Gamestopped Gamestop in the trade value and lack of promotions department(not to mention the horrid disc only pre-owned games and lackluster selection at that) I've even stopped trading stuff into them. I may come back if they have the $50 minimum tablet promo again and I can find another $5-6 2 inch tablet at Sears or elsewhere but definitely not before. Even now the sales these past couple weeks to a month have been horrible. Meanwhile for the last month Target has had several clearances to blow out older stock. First having a full on BOGO on select old merchandise for two weeks and for these past two weeks they've had a BOGO 50% off on ALL games. Where is the Best Buy of old with their old stock blowout sales where stuff was $2-5? I want that sort of pricing back.

[#8]

@cheapest look at it this way BB just reduced the GCU price to $30 vs the $120 but had they just listened to alot of the Ideax that gained tons of kudos they program would be so much better with tons of deals. At that point they`d actually sell them at full price vs 1/4 of the price. I`m not sure how many GCU customers exist and who paid what but lets just say 5 million ppl only paid $30 then BB potentially lost $90 x 5 million ppl which certainly would help fund many things GCU and beyond.

[#9]

As I said on the thread asking for the GCU stats, I would NOT be a buyer of GCU unless the $2-5 games after coupons came back. Even then they'd have to be fairly new stuff for me to spend $60 a year for those two years. But without the coupons of old(digital or physical) stacking with sale prices AND the 20% I would NEVER pay more than $30 for two years.

[#10]

What's the status on this? I almost made a new thread for this because I was on the phone for over an hour last night and despite that couldn't get the help I needed. It's been half a year since this thread was made, and Best Buy Customer Service (normal and elite hotline) don't know how GCU works. I would even settle for a specialized email service at this point.

What I hotline to know:

-How GCU works

-How price adjusting with GCU works

-How price adjusting works (Best Buy does price adjust their own deal of the day)

More information:

TLDR version: Customers shouldn't be wasting their time trying to educate Best Buy customer support on their own policies (GCU & Price Adjustment).

Rant version:

Yesterday, I was on the phone for over an hour trying to get a price adjustment on Destiny: The Taken King Legendary Edition, which was on sale at Best Buy because of the Deal of the Day. I bought the game at $47.99 because the price was $59.99 at Best Buy. During the Deal of the Day, it was $49.99, so I tried to get my price down to $39.99.

First call: I called Best Buy to get a price adjustment. I went to the steps giving out my name, email, and order #. She didn't know what GCU was and call terminated somehow.

Second call: I called Best Buy, asked for Gaming Department, and I asked for a price adjustment. Call terminated for some reason after he said hi.

Third call: I called Best Buy, asked for Gaming Department, and I asked for a price adjustment. I went to the steps giving my name, email, and order #. She didn't know what GCU was. I told her that it gives me 20% off on new video game prices at Best Buy. She wanted to talk to someone so she put me on hold. I waited for over ten minutes and hanged up. (I wouldn't have hanged up if she put me off hold just to say wait a little longer every now and then, or if she didn't do everything so slow like "turning on her computer")

Fourth call: At this point I was ticked. But I remembered I had the Best Buy Elite Plus hotline, so I called them. I didn't want to play any games, so I asked if she knew what GCU was. She didn't. So I hanged up.

Fifth call: I called Best Buy Elite Plus hotline again. Asked if she knew what was GCU. Said she did. I went through the steps. She said I was trying to raise the price of my game from $47.99 to $49.99. I said no, the game is $49.99 at Best Buy, but with GCU it would be $39.99. I explained it to her three times. She then said Best Buy doesn't price match their own deal of the day. It's in their price match guarantee and that I should look at the website. Since she said it so snarky, I did. I told her I didn't see it. She said it's in their exclusions as "deal of the day". I told her I still don't see it. I said I did CTRL-F for "deal" and "day" since it was her terminology, and I didn't see it on their page at all. It's like she was asking me to look at the website and she wasn't looking at it, just giving me BS. She said she was sending an email to the price adjustment program and in it she was going to say: "The customer is trying to price adjust this game. He paid $47.99. But he wants to adjust to $49.99 and use Gamer's Club Unlocked. This is the deal of the day. Customer does not see deal of the day in exclusions". I said fine, send it, because CS obviously still doesn't know what GCU was.

I ended up sending the Best Buy online support an email after that because I don't trust any of the phone reps to actually help me out at this point. In my email I quoted:

"Our Price Match Guarantee does not cover:

• The online prices of retailers not listed.
• Contract mobile phones sold by any online retailer.
• Products shipped from or sold by third-party sellers (Marketplace sellers) on websites.
• Best Buy For Business transactions and BestBuy.com Marketplace items.
• Competitors' service prices, special daily or hourly sales.
• Any financing offers, bundle offers, free items, pricing errors, mail-in offers, coupon offers, items that are advertised as limited quantity, out of stock items, clearance items, open-box items, refurbished items, pre-owned items, credit card offers, gift card offers, rent/lease to own items, and items for sale Thanksgiving Day through the Monday after Thanksgiving, whether offered by Best Buy or a competitor."

And I said Deal of the Day is not in the exclusions. Only daily exclusions are competitors daily sales.

I also quoted this:

"How does the Price Match Guarantee apply to My Best Buy® Gamers Club Unlocked purchases?

...If Best Buy lowers our price during the return and exchange period on a My Best Buy Gamers Club Unlocked purchase, we will, upon request, apply the 20% discount on the new lower price. For example, If a [GCU] member paid $47.99 for a new game priced at $59.99 and Best Buy lowers the price to $49.99 during the return and exchange period, we will, upon request, price match the new price with the 20% discount and sell the My Best Buy [GCU] member the game for $39.99."

[#11]

I have forwarded this idea onto the business team for review.