I hate Best Buy after the way I was treated.

[GmanJoe]

On Wednesday, April 3rd, my girlfriend bought a Nokia phone from Best Buy as a birthday gift for her aunt. She wrapped it up and gave it to her that night but when her aunt opened it, there were items for the phone missing: the battery and the back plate to the brand new Nokia phone. My girlfriend promised she’d go back to Best Buy to get an exchange as soon as she had the free time to do it. Because the next day was my birthday and she spent her free time with me.

It wasn’t until Friday, April 5th that she was able to go back to Best Buy to get an exchange. She and I spoke to the manager there and she told us that there was nothing they could do! We were stunned! We bought the phone from them and it had missing pieces and they wouldn’t allow an exchange? It didn’t make sense to us.

Now, mind you, we went there on good faith that they would trust us as honest people and it never occurred to us that they thought we were there trying to get an extra battery and back plate for free. But they didn’t out right accuse us of this but they just said, “There’s nothing we can do.” So they gave her the 1800 number to their corporate office she could explain to them and hope that the upper management could straighten things out for us. While my girlfriend spoke on the phone, I went to the shelf that had the same phone as the one my girlfriend had purchased. I opened one box up and noticed there was no phone there. I thought that it wasn’t there for security reasons, since the box had no plastic or seal. I went back to my girlfriend and listened to her conversation and they too said that there was nothing they could do!

So my girlfriend was out $75 for an incomplete phone.

Frustrated, I decided to get the box from the shelf to show the employees that they should seal their boxes so this wouldn’t happen to other customers. When I picked up a different box, this one was noticeably heavier. Suspicious, I opened it up and this box had a complete set! At first, I thought they pulled the phones out to avoid theft (like how some video game stores have the jewel cases of the games but without the CD in it). But this was not the case. I opened another box and that too was complete! So I took the box with the missing phone and showed it to the employees.

Eventually, they found that there were two more boxes with missing items. We spoke to other managers at the Best Buy and they kept saying that since the corporate office said there was nothing they could do, they could not give us the missing pieces. While I was speaking with the managers, one of the employees named Ahmed told my girlfriend that if we weren’t going to buy anything, that we should leave! What an ass hole!

Anyway, to make a long frustrated story short, one of the managers decided to relent and give us a replacement for the missing back plate and battery. It wasn’t until I got home I realized that they thought we were there to try and scam them for a free battery and back plate and that’s why they did not want to help us.

I wish there was more I could do coz I feel so disrespected.

well usually they arent bad about that when i go to them

the only thing they wont take back is opened software and what not and even then they let me exchange it for another if somethings missing

sorry you had to go through al of that man

[videoholic]

There are websites out there where you can file complaints.  I forget what it\'s called now, but it gives whoe to file the complaint with.  

I could understand both sides of this one.  It\'s frustrating to be an honest person and get cought in this trap, but they probably get this scam pulled on them quite often.

They probably just make it real hard for you to where if the person was pulling a scam they would give up.  I dunno.  

Glad it turned out alright for ya though in the end.

How long were you there?

[GmanJoe]

nearly 2 hours.

My best buy has always been good to me.I can\'t believe they treated you like that even after you showed them pieces were missing from other phones.

And I would have beat the hell outta that dude Ahmed.

Are you saying that your girlfriend didn\'t have the receipt from her initial purchase? That might have helped smooth the process.

Originally posted by ben_high
And I would have beat the hell outta that dude Ahmed.

yeah... dont they say in thier commercials that "playing around is half the fun"

ive had bad experiences with best buy too. mine mostly had to do with the 17 year old retards they hire though.

[GmanJoe]

We had the receipt, of course.

Three words:

Better Buisness Buearu

It sucks that you can\'t do more than give them a bad report, but there\'s really not much else you can do. People scam like that all the time, so I don\'t blame them for being cautious... at first anyhow. After you showed them the three or so boxes that were empty then they should have done a 180 and been as helpful as they could. The only thing you can really do at this point is write a letter to the company president and maybe the stockholders.. not trying to explain why you should have gotten the refund, but about how you were treated while you were there. Give them a list of the Store # and location along with the names of any employees you delt with - pointing out the ones that were rude or unhelpful. Don\'t really complain, just let them know that they weren\'t handling the situation in a manner suiting a representitive of Best Buy.

A scammer would just shrug his shoulders and chalk it up as loss (or gain) and just dropped the matter once he got what he wanted.

You wouldn\'t believe the scams out there.. When I was going through HACCP training at Maple Leaf, I heard all kinds of stories about people who would buy a product.. take a bite.. and then stick a bolt or a bit of rat poison on the food and send it back to try and get coupons for other free products. And we\'re just some podunk low-grade poultry factory.. not a major corperation in the public eye.

Welcome to the world of:

http://www.bestbuysux.org

Where the managers are sub-human jerks who wish they had a real job.

Where teenage and college dropout employees that think they know everything about electronics run rampant.

Where the employees truly don\'t care or worry about return business.

Where you are discriminated against if you don\'t look like a white male professional.

Where ESPs (extended serivce plans) are complete money risks as BB determines if the damage was "accidental" or "incidental."

Where you get charged retail for low-end equipment.

But they have some nice prices on the software.

I had a problem with them too, though partly my fault I wasnt informed properly, they put a tv back on the floor with a crack in it and resold it for a discount price, but knowingly they sold it to me, and didnt offer to tell me that, it was an open box so it was discounted, but they never ****ing told me that it was broke, so I bought it and when we got to the truck opened it up to see how it looked, and noticed it was cracked I brought it back in and was like what the FUC* and ya\'ll knowingly did this blah blah, and they were like did you drop it and ****, I almost jumped over the counter to strangle the B*TCH. I never go in there now.

[videoholic]

Originally posted by mjps21983
I had a problem with them too, though partly my fault I wasnt informed properly, they put a tv back on the floor with a crack in it and resold it for a discount price, but knowingly they sold it to me, and didnt offer to tell me that, it was an open box so it was discounted, but they never ****ing told me that it was broke, so I bought it and when we got to the truck opened it up to see how it looked, and noticed it was cracked I brought it back in and was like what the FUC* and ya\'ll knowingly did this blah blah, and they were like did you drop it and ****, I almost jumped over the counter to strangle the B*TCH. I never go in there now.

Open Box is Open Box..

Although I bought an Ultimate TV from Circuit City open box.  It didn\'t work.  I brought it back and they gave me a brand new one for same price.  150 off of what it was marked at.

i always had good experiences with best buy, my dad bought a tv, vcr, dvd player, reciever, tape deck, speakers all on the same day, came up to $1700 with cables and everything, after a few minutes of talking with the sales guy, he put in the computer "matched competitors price" and the total dropped from $1700 to $1350, my dad was impressed and happy.

i\'m with videoholic, there are 2 sides to this, but that best buy you were at is messed up, my local bestbuy has things like cell phones locked up, you have to call someone to get it out of the case.  so in my view, its best buys fault, but like everything good, it has faults, so not everyone will have the same views, if you had a bad experience with best buy, i dont blame you for not going back.

Best Buy is awesome. Just because my dad was in the military, they gave us a free DVD.

COooooL.

[nO-One]

heh I\'m a salesman, in the phone and computer department in a similar store. We have gotten packages, especially from Nokia with stuff missing most often the manual. But if you look at it from their point of view, they don\'t touch the packages and they trust the supplier to include every item in the package. So when people come and say stuff is missing they ofcourse are pretty sceptical. Usually the best idea is to talk to the salesman or the person that delivered the phone to you since there\'s a chance they might remember you.