So, it's a long and sordid story. Okay, not that long, but believe me, it's just as terrible an experience as you might imagine with a fly-by-night, underhanded, slimy organization dedicated to driving away formerly loyal customers.
That's right, I'm referring to Best Buy.
So I checked on-line to see if they had stock of a particular item, and the online robot confirmed it was in stock. I called the store in question, and asked if they had it in stock, and a human confirmed it again.
Silly me; I believed them. I asked if I could purchase it while I was talking to them on the phone, so I didn't drive 20+ miles to find it mysteriously 'gone'. They said *laughed* -- "...that *never* happens, and I purchased it... or so I was told. You can already tell where this is going, right?
24 miles and 35 minutes later, I went in to the store, and checked with the cheety clerk at the counter. I gave him the purchase #, he punched it in. His expression became guarded, and he got really quiet, and his eyes started darting around as if he was looking for a way to escape.
"Um, that's not coming up," he said. "You're checking the purchases?" another associate whispered, looking over his shoulder. I was polite. I was reasonable. I asked him to please check again. Nope. So I asked if it could be confirmed by a manager. Same result, but now a sad looking little manager got involved, with the initial "J".
He didn't care. He didn't pretend to care. The story he now told me was that they didn't have that item and that they hadn't had it for weeks. He said that they couldn't find my order, and that I must've just 'thought' I'd purchased it. I showed him the screenshots, and the transaction as indicated on my online bank, and showed them the purchase showing up on my Best Buy account. 'Oh, those things don't really have anything to do with the things we have in the store,' he said.
Oh, really? The manager then 'had to make a phone call', and went off, got make a call, glaring at me. On the phone call, he spoke loudly enough that I and everyone waiting at the registers could hear. 'Oh, everything's fine here -- just some dumb customer insisting they'd bought something, and that we should have it here.' That's a quote. If I wasn't so appalled by the manager's behavior, the looks on the other customer's faces would've been entertaining. The looks ranged from surprise to just plain shock. One twenty-something said, 'If that's the way they're going to treat people...', and he and his partner got out of line, leaving their yet-to-be- purchased items in a cart.
The manager glared at me (as if I'd sent them away), and came back to me and asked sulkily if 'there was anything else he could help me with'. No, he'd done enough. I left and found it somewhere else. read more