I would like to voice my extreme disappointment in the astonishingly misleading and overall bad level of service I have received in connection with a Pacific Kitchen & Home / Best Buy appliance purchase. Particularly, I want to highlight the deceptive tactics by which the so called "Premier Protection Plan" is sold.
In late June, I purchased a dishwasher ($900), refrigerator ($2800), and freezer ($800) from Pacific Kitchen & Home at Best Buy. The dishwasher came highly recommended in respect to reliability by the Pacific sales rep. Furthermore, the sales rep very aggressively pushed the so called "Premier Protection Plan", which is essentially an expensive extended warranty plan. The plan was sold as a "no hassle" service that would kick in the "unlikely event" that one of my high-end appliances should break. Less than 6 months later, this claim was put to the test when my "highly reliable" dishwasher completely broke.
We called Pacific sales and after a long long wait time we were told that there would be no service available for 10 days! When indicated that this was unacceptable, a representative who identified herself as "Nicole" put me on hold for over 30 minutes and then dumped the call. I called back and spoke with a representative named "JR" who seemed completely unconcerned by my hold/hangup treatment. JR also asserted that my "premier protection plan" does not "really" protect me for the first 2 years! And that I would need to contact the manufacturer. At least "Nicole" did not deny that I was protected, but now the story was changing. When I asked to speak with the manager to resolve the conflicting positions being asserted by the representatives, I was put on hold for over 25 minutes. "JR" came back to tell me the "Adam", the manager, was "in a meeting". Having lost a large part of my workday to this hassle, I agreed to a call-back "very soon". No call ever came from "Adam". I then called three additional times trying to get in touch with a manager, any manager, each time they were "in a meeting", "with a client", or otherwise "indisposed" (whatever that means). Each time a call back was promised and each time no call ever materialized.
In conclusion, there are two major problems here:
(1) The Pacific/Best Buy sales rep misrepresented the terms of the so called "Premier Protection Plan".
(2) Pacific sales/warranty service is absolutely awful. It is difficult to believe that Best Buy, which is an otherwise decent company with which I have successfully conducted business for many years, tolerates this toxic and very short sited approach to customer service.
I feel very much deceived here and taken advantage of by the misleading tactics of Pacific Kitchen & Home / Best Buy. read more