A commenter to our Worst Company in America nominations picked Best Buy, his employer of six years, to win it all. His reasons, including the credit card fraud, phony bundling scams, and other schemes they made him do to keep his job he heard rumors about happening at other Best Buys, inside. UPDATE: The original commenter has contacted us to say that these things did not actually happen to him and he was not trained to do them by Best Buy. Rather, he heard about them happening at other Best Buys or read about them in other Consumerist articles, and, in a pique of anger, wrote a long comment that remixed all this information together and framed it as if it happened to him. Consumerist regrets the error, and the commenter has been banned.
1. Watch out for extra charges
“They forcefully signed up ignorant customers for internet contracts and magazine subscriptions without the customers knowledge,” writes our insider. “I was trained in the way of how to act like the credit card wasn’t recognized the first time through since we needed to scan it once for the contract and later for the purchase, and also to do a little X on the screen for them when they had to sign the contract.”
2. They don’t like warranty repairs
“If we found one single scratch on the phone, we would tell the customer it was sign of abuse and refuse their warranty . . . I think I saw 1 out of 20 phones handled under the service plan because of that.” Eventually Best Buy corporate took over because of the complaints.
3. Tart it up if you’re gonna ask for a favor
“You better be attractive if you want the easy road through a policy or friends with somebody. If you don’t have much on your side, you won’t qualify for a ‘case by case’ policy procedure.”
4. Best Buy loves unnecessary charges and services as much as the next big box store
Remember the story about Staples charging $390 for a basic computer repair? Best Buy can beat that: “I remember when Best Buy first started selling VPR Matrix Computers. The machines came with virtually nothing on them but the operating system, yet we still heavily pushed a system optimization to eliminate background programs and make it work so much better. I think all we did on this particular PC was turn on automatic updates, and install the latest patches… There were no unnecessary programs on boot.
5. Bundles are a ripoff
“You want the 299 advertised core system? We have plenty in stock!!! But it’s only available in the package with 10 extra controllers, all 32 games, 15 memory cards, 2 extra hard drive kits, and the Replacement plan! Oh and 10 years of xbox live subscription!”
Our insider didn’t offer any advice for escaping these pitfalls, but one obvious solution would be to stop shopping at Best Buy.
(Photo: greggoconnell)
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@Pro-Pain: Six years. Phildawg is the repentant, unwitting OP. If you read his earlier comments here, there’s some truth and some embellishment. This story is a wash: no smoking gun yet but Best Buy might still be guilty of the crime. See you next time.
Oh and yes, people are still shopping at Best Buy. Stop blaming the victim.
People with postive experiences with best buy-
Just remember that the true measure of customer service comes when things don’t go right. It’s easy to be nice when thing don’t go well, but alot harder when they might have to eat some charge because an issue.
What’s funny about Consumerist’s “regret the error” here is that it shows what’s generally wrong with these type of blogs. The assumption is that everyone writing in – using anonymous names – is telling the truth and only if someone proves something wrong (or in this case e-mails his error) then there is a retraction. The reality is that one should assume everything people write on a blog is a steaming pile of s*** and only trust something that can be proven. Including what I’ve just written.
@Phildawg: Why would you lie and say all this stuff happened to you?
@stanfrombrooklyn: Agreed, but at least they started off the story by saying a commenter wrote in, so you can take that for what its worth. I tend to give more weight to the stories that cite actual papers or news outlets instead of anonymous commenters. Things like this though, definitely don’t help the consumerist, thats for sure. Of course, if we don’t like it, we can always demand our money back.
When you buy more, you save more, so you can buy more, to save more, so you can buy more.
About 3-4 years ago, I used to work at Best Buy and we used to do this trick to get people to signup for stuff they didn’t want.
So, let’s say you bought a new PC and it “came with” a free version of AOL. 99% of the time, they turned it down. But, what we were “trained” to do is sign them up anyway, and when the machine asked for a credit card, we’d take a Best Buy gift card (which is just an AmEx card) and swipe it through.
It would be read as a normal card, and they signed up, and we got the $68, and it boosted our “package” numbers.
Now, I’m not proud of this, but this is what we did. Oh the stories I could tell about how Best Buy screws its customers. Becoming buddy buddy with management gave me a whole new insight on how that company was ran.
@olivia2.0: Patronize a smaller game shop. They’d love to have you.
If you don’t have any small game shops in your area, Amazon. Definitely Amazon.
When you buy an extended/additional/protection insurance/warranty plan on a product you are buying coverage from a 3rd party company that has nothing to do with that retailer.
It may only appear that way since some retailers are authorized service centers for repairs of some products.
If you have a problem with a product of which the retailer has an open Return Merchandize Authorization with it’s manufacturer or vendor… then you may find it extremely simple to get a “replacement” under an extended warranty… versus having it sent out to a repair facility (which is paid for by the insurance company that underwrites all of these extended warranties).
Take for example. HP products. Most retailers are allowed to return good or damaged HP printers back to HP for a full refund for up to 3 years. While only one year for HP laptops and desktops.
These open RMA schemes are how many retailers profit off of service plans.
Your $99 hp photosmart printer wont pickup paper anymore? Okay, here’s a new one for you… now give us another $15 to insure your new printer.
The retailer can send your broken printer back to HP… and it’s now HP’s problem. $15 profit for the retailer.
This has been going on for years… and it’s slowly starting to piss off manufacturers. This is why manufactures sell warranties for much less than retailers now. It’s also why in a few more years some of the big electronics manufacturers are not going to allow such easy product returns.
Companies like Costco, Best Buy, or Staples are going to lose significant revenue when these changes come to pass.
@ikimashokie: ok that’s just silly. You can always get a DVD, extra CD, headphones, something. You can give away the card but I bet a ton of us on here would happily take it.
@graffiksguru: Yes, but as we have learned so many times here on the consumerist, it’s not about the money, it’s about the principal. How many stories this week have been about people either A) being lied to by a company, or B) having their time wasted by someone at a store? If I had wasted the same 20 minutes it took me to read this article and the posts at a local McDonalds waiting for french fries that turned out were out of stock that would have been enough to make a consumerist post (at least on a Sunday.)
For eveyone thinking (How does Mc Donalds run out of fries, that what they do… right and reporting acurate stories about companies doing the wrong thing is what the consumerist “does” too.
Stuff the like the profitable warranties and services are well known.So is butt sucking.And most sales are bait for warranties and service or upgrading to spend more money.
The swipe your card twice for something else is possible I had it happen at a bank.Just finished giving information for a new account and the rep asked almost the same information again-said it was for the banks records-NOT.she filled out a credit application which she did NOT admit to but I saw the screen.There are unscrupulous employees and attitudes out there.
One thing with Best Buy I noticed is I get better service during a weekday than at night or weekends-no pressure or endless questions.I think the rewards program was the only one.
This article is another example of why what you read on The Consumerist needs to be taken with a grain of salt unless you know it to be true from personal experience. The other example of this was the one where The Consumerist railed against the police for arresting a guy who claimed he did not steal the case of soda, although security camera evidence showed the guy actually DID steal the case of soda.
But I thought it was a nice touch that The Consumerist, although saying that the claims in the original article are bogus, posted the content of the original article again, just for good measure.
Maybe Snopes should audit The Consumerist to verify the veracity of the claims posted?
@RMcR: Of course we have to check flat panels when they are returned. What if it’s returned broken? The forum screams bloody murder when OPs end up buying an open box product that was put back on the floor without being tested, but you don’t want us to test something that costs thousands of dollars?! How does that make sense?
We open TVs on the way out to make sure you don’t drive all the way home only to find a cracked LCD panel, and we test them when they are returned for the same reason. How would it affect your customer experience if you purchased something, took it home, and it was broken.
People try to return stuff they broke every day, and frankly, because we can’t trust everyone, we can’t trust anyone. Sadly, that means honest people get lumped into that.
2 weeks ago I bought an iPod for my girlfriend from bestbuy.com.
I used a CJ (Commission Junction) affiliate link on my site to place the order, so I got 1% commission, as well as the $12.50 special savings that they were giving, and I opted to pick up the order from the store.
All well and good, until 4 days later when the iPod goes faulty and I try to return it…
At the store where I picked it up, they insisted that they had to credit me for the original purchase and that I would have to pick up a new unit from the floor.
Well it’s not on sale in the store – only online!
They insisted that bestbuy.com is a different entity, so they can’t exchange the item or give the same price in the store.
And so, since my girlfriend was travelling back to the UK that evening, I had to pay full price for a replacement iPod, which I was very reluctant to do. I even spoke to a senior manager at the store and he would not give me the same price. All I wanted to do was to return a faulty iPod and to get an identical one that worked.
So, not only am I down by $12.50 plus 6% Sales Tax, my CJ sale got reversed, and my credit card company refused to accept the payment (see below) so I had to use a different card, costing me an extra 1.5%.
I have good credit, however the previous evening I had tried to book a flight on British Airways for my girlfriend to return in July, and the site would not accept my card. Even when I was on the phone to Capital One the site still refused and the agent could not get it to go through. So in the end I had to use a different card for that purchase as well.
Within 10 mins of leaving Best Buy the bank called me to check on fraudalent purchases, so now the card is ok, but thanks to Best Buy I’m rather peeved… and out of pocket… well rather peeved is an understatement…
In a nutshell, regardless of whether I purchased the iPod in the store or on their web site, I should have the option of having it replaced without being penalised.