A few days ago Jason’s story about Best Buy’s bait-and-switch shot to internet prominence (137,166 pageviews on Consumerist and 4668 diggs), and now he’s happy, has a $200 gift card to Best Buy, and a free copy of Saw IV. Let’s recap: Jason went to Best Buy and saw a tag in-store advertising 2 DVDs for $25. He chose to buy two copies of 3:10 to Yuma. At checkout, it rang up for $19.99 a piece. When contested, the clerk pulled out a different circular that said “Buy Saw IV with any of these 3 movies for $25.” Jason and a series of store employees disagreed for a long time about whether the circular applied to the tag, and Jason left the store with a $19.99 copy of 3:10 to Yuma, and a story, which he sent to The Consumerist. Then the internets happened. How did he go from screwed to elated? Find out in the exciting conclusion to his customer service misadventure, inside…
So my Best Buy fiasco gets read by a lot of people over a 3 day period….somewhere around 130,000 times……and apparently only 10 or so people read it in it’s entirety. I would like to thank everyone for reading and for their “inventive” comments about me and my story.
The result from all of those views is a positive ending.
After posting the story on a Friday night to the Consumerist, I get a call on my cell phone Monday afternoon from the District Manager for the Southeast U.S. Best Buy Stores. His name is Mike and he is more than cordial on the phone and is quite apologetic about the whole event. The story was brought to his attention from Corporate and he apparently was tapped as the person to call and try to make things right with me. He is the first person to agree with me that the 2 for $25 deal listing in the store was contradictory to the offer in the circular. After we discuss the situation, he says it never should have escalated anywhere near where it did and he wants to make it up to me since I am such a loyal customer to have purchased something after going through the whole event. He offers me his contact information to personally use for any questions or problems in the future along with a $200 Gift Card. I gladly accept and we discuss a few other details I would like to share with everyone. (I am not sure if I am still receiving the $25 gift card in the mail as well, but at this point it’s not important.)
First of all……Brian the Manager……..is really Brian the ASSISTANT Manager. The store manager is actually named Corey. Now to be fair, Brian never introduced himself as the STORE Manager, but as “THE manager” as you might recall. Regardless, “the headset guy” still referred me to him as the highest level of management there was and I took that at face value. Also, it was made known to me that if an employee is approved to handle money, meaning a register worker, then they also have the ability to make a customer happy based on some common sense rules. This means they do have SOME authority in changing prices on a product right then and there to resolve an issue. Now, typically, this is probably not going to happen because these individuals want to keep their jobs and therefore aren’t radically changing things without management approval…..so I will give them a pass. However, it still seems that management failed that evening unfortunately.
After I part ways on the phone with Mike, the District Manager, he contacts Corey at the store to hand-deliver the $200 Gift Card to me at the store location at my convenience. I finally felt like someone at the top of Best Buy heard my story and wanted to make it right. About 15 minutes later, Corey contacts me and is also very friendly and cordial and wants to schedule a time for me to stop by the store and accept his apologies and pick up the Gift Card. We decide a convenient time and here I am writing a follow-up article after gladly receiving my card tonight.
The great ending to all of this that should get a laugh is what I received from Corey at the store tonight along with my gift card, as a show of good faith and to try to have some fun with the story.
A COMPLIMENTARY COPY of SAW IV. Now that’s a manager who knows how to make the best of a situation…..Corey and I had a few laughs about many of the comments made online about the story and we parted friends. He assured me that my story was, and will be, used as a learning experience for customer service at the store in the future. So Best Buy has made things right with this consumer and I look forward to shopping there again.
And by the way, neither Mike nor Corey asked me to write anything else about the matter or have any kind of retraction. And that’s exactly why I am writing a follow-up.
It just goes to show that with the power of the internet, the help of the Consumerist site, and a lot of interest at Digg, one customer’s story can catch the attention of an entire retail conglomerate.
Thanks to the Consumerist site for listening and posting my un-edited story.
Jason
PREVIOUSLY: Best Buy Refuses To Honor 2 for $25 DVD Sale
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@Maude Buttons: Since English is a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, language (we change the dictionaries to reflect common usage instead of having a dictionary that is supposed to be used to enforce a particular usage, like French), the most common pronunciation is automatically a correct (though not necessarily the correct) one.
@Maude Buttons: Please explain this: But everyone also never washes their hands after going to the potty.
At the risk of exposing myself to ridicule, surely some do wash their hands?
To the OP: Congrats on your win, though I opine that that the in-store sign indicating a ‘customer specialst’ must be sought for the promotional details is not contradictory to the mailer. The in-store sign is in reference to the mailer – but one would know that only after asking a ‘customer specialist,’ which you did; you simply refused to agree with the details they provided.
I believe you won because of 4,000+ diggs – but a win is a win. Again, congrats.
There is a simple solution: one may visit the kingdom of the Walton Dynasty of Exploitation and Terror, where one will nearly always find the latest releases for less than $15.
People should start going into that store, looking for Brian the Manager so they could get a Colbert-style “My POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE Friend!” picture with him.
@PracticalMagic: Well, I thanked Maude Buttons for the tip, because I honestly had no idea about the forte vs. forté distinction. Now I know. So she was helpful to me and apparently others who didn’t know either.
The second part, yes I was surprised at the hubbub which was caused by my errant accent.
But, the net result is that I am a tad more educated on accent mark usage and that’s a good thing.
@Morgan: Only if we don’t band together and fight against the indignities of poor pronunciation. But in my world of delicious, we can totally win this fight. And if we fail? We fail! But if we screw our courage to the sticking place we’ll not fail.
@xerloq: From a recent highly scientific research study conducted minutes ago in the men’s room of my office, 100% of men’s room users didn’t wash their hands. That’s a 1 followed by two very disgusting zeroes. You can’t argue with science, especially science combined with numbers.
what happened to the obnoxious “brian?”
@MaudeButtons: Maude, of course I was referring to the construction of your sentence! It seemed… awkward. Wouldn’t “Not everyone washes their hands,” been more appropriate?
And to the OP: I did read through the entire ordeal.
@MaudeButtons: Unfortunately, the fight over forte/forté is lost; I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone pronounce it as “fort” instead of “fortay,” and I’m not one to get into conversations about crescendos.
@xerloq: “Wouldn’t ‘Not everyone washes their hands,’ been more appropriate?”
I was going for a whole parallel structure thing. The sentence before began, “Yes, everyone will…” So, making a stylistic choice, I also began the second sentence with an “everyone.”
@Morgan: No! I’m not going to let you give up on forte/forté — on us.
$200 + DVD + Brian’s left nut would be good.
@NotATool: God bless you. That’s a pet peeve that’s been passed down through three generations in my family.
@MaudeButtons: Sorry, but fighting battles I know are lost is not my forté
@Maude Buttons: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d thought the musical “forte” was Italian, like 90% of the directive words you’d find in sheet music (unless Debussy or Mahler was writing). This version of forte has no accent, as Italians don’t use it.
Merrriam-Webster suggests that two “forte” words ended up in English from French and Italian, for what that’s worth.
@stinkingbob: You see, I’m not all that unreasonable after all
Tinybug had the most relevant comment in this entire thread:
“It makes me sad to see that the only way to get a problem fixed at Best Buy is to have your story posted to one of the most popular Consumer websites on the internet. Then – and only then – will you be able to talk to a district manager. The polices and attitudes that created Jason’s problem that have been part of the Best Buy culture since I quit shopping there years ago, and apparently still [are].”
dont forget to go find brian and remind him that you win…
He still should not have bought the damn DVDs from them; Best Buy would have been wise to do this to get him back as a customer.
Make sure you check the box for tiles if you buy any Hard Drives from Best Buy with that gift card…
Does Brian still have a job? If so, he still “won.”
good to know someone pays attention. internet/consumerist FTW!
This doesn’t change the fact that Best Buy are a bunch of morons for how they behaved. It’s much easier (and expensive) to lose a customer than to win them back. In this case, instead of perhaps costing Best Buy $5 or less to sell the customer two DVD’s, then go take down the signs and alert corporate the signage is wrong, it actually cost Best Buy $200+the cost of a free DVD, plus the time of a district manager and manager (and probably some other corporate people after seeing this get internet attention). It also got them 130,000+ doses of negative publicity.
The district manager should have fired Brian on the spot after learning about this. No store can afford the mess Brian caused.
I’ll add that the customer might be happy with the gift card and apologies, but Best Buy didn’t win me back. I still proudly haven’t shopped at a Best Buy since 2001 when I decided I had enough of their arrogant and consistently unsatisfactory and insulting customer service.
I remember when I was little my parents went to BBY for something, and it rang up a penny more than it should have. My Mom caught this, and thinking it was just a penny, thought that they would give it back to her. She asked, and the manager just laughed. She wrote a really nasty letter and they sent her a response that said that she could have the full price back for the trouble and gave her a gift card as well. They must like hiring managers who only rectify a situation when they are called on it by corporate.
BEST BUY SUCKETH…………
Where’s the part of the story where Brian the (assistant) manager is mauled to death by Best Buy Corporate’s rabid rottweilers? I assume that part of the story is still to come?
But seriously, if that jackass wasn’t tossed right out Best Buy’s door by his higher-ups — never to return — this story does not have a happy ending.
@MaudeButtons:
Your scientific survey is flawed. I can assure you that I, a male, wash my hands 100% of the time after using the men’s room. I cannot abide dirty hands, and since nearly every surface in the men’s room will be filthy, I wash regardless of what business I’ve managed to attend.
Dirty hads are not my fourtay.
@clankboomsteam: true dat
woot woot!
Cool ending.
Hey, that card won’t begin losing value right away if you don’t use it, will it?
More fucking PR.
Besides, gift cards don’t usually work there anyway.
Blow it out your ear, BB
This guy seriously needs to learn how to paragraph his posts.
Wall of Text FTL
@DavidS722:
No kidding. My first thought after reading the article was if Brian THE manager got his due.
@f3rg: What they failed to tell you was that it’s a Comp USA gift card!!!
bwahahahahaha! Brian the manager scores!
So how was Saw 4?
I’d say a fitting punishment would be forcing Brian the Manager to watch Saw IV. I really can’t think of any other positive use for that DVD…