Did you know that if you request a repair under warranty for an appliance you bought at Best Buy, and the repair isn’t made, then Best Buy will charge you a fee?
We guess this is a non-repair fee, which is an impressive new way to make money.
Last fall, I purchased a Hoover steam carpet cleaner for $170.71 from Best Buy in Fort Collins, CO. It worked properly the first time, but the second and third times failed to suction up water. When I took it back to Best Buy, they refused an exchange because more than 30 days had past. A steam cleaner is hardly like a TV or computer that is used every day. It would have been impossible to know within 30 days that the steam cleaner was not functioning properly. However, several levels of managers culminating in store manager Brandon Pagani refused to consider an exchange.
My only option, according to the Best Buy managers I spoke with, was to have Best Buy send the steam cleaner out for repair. Since the machine was still under warranty, the repair would be free and I have a slip from Best Buy showing an estimate of $0.00 for repair.
However, the repair people (I do not know if they were Best Buy or Hoover people) could not duplicate the problem I had experienced—twice—so they shipped the steam cleaner back to Best Buy unrepaired.
Best Buy informed me that I would have to pay an additional $34.95 to retrieve my steam cleaner since there was no repair. Best Buy’s policy says it can resell the steam cleaner if I do not pay the retrieval fee within 30 days. I have lost $170.71, plus $34.95, for a steam cleaner that only worked once.
(Thanks to Cindy!)
(Photo: Getty)
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@jezzwer56: Unless, of course, she didn’t sign it. Maybe it’s required, but you think that would stop Best Buy?
Hey, thats how Comcast does it. And the town where I live, in Indiana, the police charge you an arrest fee. Even you are found NOT guilty.
Big stores send out equipment to authorized repair/service centers. Part of the agreement is that the repair company will inspect the unit. If the repair is under manufacturing defect, then the unit is repaired of replaced for free. If there is “consumer abuse” on the item, there is no warranty repair and the $35 diagnostic fee is applied as part of the repair labor. The repair place is an authorized repair dealer and gets money from either manufacturer or consumer. If the customer refuses to have the repair done, the diagnostic fee still applies.
@Elvisisdead: Yeah, that gets you no where.
@stinkingbob: The things that Best Buy did that were wrong were twofold:
1. They charged her for a service without telling her about it (in this case, the “non-repair fee” that nobody said she would have to pay if the device did appear to be fine). If a car dealership fixed a part on your car without telling you first, and then tried to charge you for it, it would be extortion.
2. They’re holding her device hostage and threatening to sell it to somebody else. That’s larceny. She paid for it and it is officially her property, no matter how much money they might tell her she owes to them.
If the tech’s couldn’t replicate the problem, there’s not a problem. This lady just doesn’t know how to use the vaccum. Damn straight they should charge her $35. Those techs don’t work for free.
It really is crazy how many returns are due to ‘customer problems’. I see more and more big stickers inside consumer products that say along the lines of ‘IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM, DO NOT RETURN TO THE STORE, CALL XXXX’. They must be getting eaten alive by “nuisance” returns and lose out on it.
Haha, was just looking at all my posted items and noticed I said the exact same thing in another story back on 1/10… interesting.
As a former Geek Squad employee, previous posters speculation that our service centers are staffed by former fast-food employees seems completely plausible.
There’s only that can be done in the store before being sent to our service centers, especially with appliances such as vacuums that basically go un-touched in the Best Buy store.
Your appliance will then wait in the back of the store, sometimes being kicked around by frustrated Geek Squad agents until enough broken units accumulate (about a pallet-load) for the warehouse to bang together a shipment to the service center.
Most of the units going to the television and appliance service center are customer returns that are being sent by the store to be repaired as cheaply (and shoddily) as possible to be sent back to the store to be re-sold.
I can’t tell you how many items we would receive back looking like crap and not working (along with customers being called by our automated system saying that the repair is done, then coming to pick up the item to find that we had to send it back again because it still wasn’t working right). It sure takes a lot of time to process the incoming shipments back from the service center since we have to check that each item works (since the service center can’t be trusted, to send us you, know fully repaired stuff back). You’d expect after 2 months of waiting it’d be done right…
As if the computer service center (Geek Squad City) isn’t a big enough joke, with the in-store agents having to send items back sometimes twice with notes saying (NO, it’s still not fixed, check _____) the appliance and TV center is even worse.
Since most of us are trained in computer repair and computer science, Geek Squad employees are loathe to touch or test your television, vacuum, microwave, DVD player which we have no training on.
I think she should have tried it in front of them. It would have made a lot more sense if they had tried to do that instead. Best buy has done for that for several customers including my own mother who said an item wasn’t working properly. It was a rug cleaner. She tested it there and they immediately gave her credit for a new one.
People should be aware that a $35 shipping and handling fee (including diagnostics that determine nothing is wrong) is not out of line with the current US economy. Just creating a ‘refurbished’ Ipod, which has only one internally replacable part (the printed circuit has everything and is replaced), requires the work of eight people, a transportation system, replacement parts not created by magic, and so on and might cost $35 dollars without a blink. A heat-sensitive laptop, through nobodies’ fault, might require three service trips at $35 each just to find out what was wrong. A vacuum cleaner brought for service might cost the same for a $150 dollar unit, with the additional problem that the owner brings it end wearing gloves because HE knows what it picked up and doesn’t feel a need to tell anybody about it. The service process itself might be the victem, not only the poor slobs, employees and customers, involved in it.