Reader Dustin is upset with Circuit City because they tried to tell him that their 24 minute guarantee meant he had to be waiting at the store for more than 24 minutes. After Dustin explained that the 24 minute guarantee was supposed to mean that the item would be pulled from the back within 24 minutes of his confirmation email, the supervisor said that Dustin ” would have had to come in within 24 minutes to qualify.” We’re pretty sure that’s not how it works, because Circuit City’s policy specifically says that’s not how the guarantee works.
Here’s the guarantee:
We guarantee your order of $25 or more will be ready for pickup at your selected store within 24 minutes of the timestamp on your confirmation email. If it’s not, we’ll give you a $24 Circuit City gift card.
Dustin writes (to Circuit City):
Executive Customer Service,
Today I decided to purchase a printer for my girlfriend and decided to shop with Circuit City and use the in-store pickup. I have used the in-store pickup before and I’ve never had a problem. One of the reasons I used you guys was because of your 24 minute guarantee.
I placed the order at 11:00am and went to the store around 12:30pm. After waiting in line for a while I gave the person behind the counter my printed receipt and drivers license and credit card. I had all of this stuff because I read your policy online.
She checked and the printer had not been pulled yet. Then she attempted to look for the printer. After these attempts were unsuccessful she call on her walkie-talkie and had someone pull the order. Realizing that my order was not ready in 24 minutes I asked for my gift card.
She turned to the supervisor (Rob) who looked at me and asked, “Have you been waiting for 24 minutes?”. To which I said, “No”. He then began to explain that because I hadn’t waited 24 minutes that the policy didn’t apply. Then he told me that I placed the order 1 1/2 hours before and that I would have had to come in within 24 minutes to qualify. Essentially implying that I didn’t need the order in 24 minutes.
I won’t bother and argue why this goes completely against what your policy states, because I’m sure you understand that at this point. If an order isn’t pulled in 24 minutes, then it isn’t ready in 24 minutes.
I would like my $24 gift card that I am entitled to. I guess I’m just really upset because I feel like I was cheated. And I feel like if I didn’t know about websites like The Consumerist (http://consumerist.com/) I wouldn’t know how to fight this.
I am also forwarding this email to The Consumerist because I feel like it is information the readers should have.
This Complaint Has Been Resolved
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This exact experience happened to me several months ago but I didn’t escalate like Dustin. Good job, Dustin…
My experience with this was similar — I was at the store 20 minutes after placing the order (based on the TIMESTAMP on my email) and waited 5 minutes (perusing the aisles) to give them fair time to get my order — Then when I went to the counter to pick it up, they had to first pull it from the shelves – took another ten minutes, but the manager pulled the “24 minutes from when you give your confirmation & creditcard/id to the cashier” bullshit.
One call to CC customer service, and they mailed me a shiny $24 gift card. I hope they also educated the manager.
Another time, I ordered a “Guitar Hero II” wireless guitar (standalone) — The order was, in fact, pulled and ready for me within the 24 minute time frame. However, they pulled a USED guitar (VERY clearly was a customer return – the box was rattling, and the guitar was just sitting in the box, cord unraveled, no plastic insulation or packaging of any kind) and I refused to take it — I told them I wanted what I paid for — A NEW GUITAR. They had to re-pull, and I wound up spending 45 minutes in the store. They didn’t want to give me a $24 gift card, but after talking to the manager, they finally did.
And it worked in their benefit — I returned to the store a few weeks later and bought more items, using the $24 toward my purchase (and a whole lot more!)
Sometimes they really need to pay attention to the “big picture”
Wow! And I almost ordered something at Circuit City recently when I saw this offer (ended up buying a different product from Amazon). Anyway, now I’ll be certain to NEVER use this service myself.
everybody always says not to shop at best buy or circuit city, but my question is, where am i supposed to go? i live in WI, and i can’t think of anywhere else, other than the internet, to purchase electronics. seriously though, there isn’t much else than walmart.
anyone know where else to go?
When Wii Fit came out, I didn’t go looking for it until about 1:00 P.M. Target was sold out, but my gf really wanted a copy so I went back home and checked stocks online. All Best Buys were sold out. Two Circuit City stores showed that it was in stock, but unavailable for the in-store pickup thing.
I went on out there (Store #840 in Raleigh, NC), about a 20 minute drive, to find that they had no copies. I mentioned that their web site had said they had some in stock 20 minutes prior, and he (very unsurely) said that they must have just sold the very last copy. Yeah, right.
I get home, decide to check the site again, and not only does it still say it’s in stock, but is available for 24 minute pickup at that and three other stores in town. I was pretty pissed off, what with the 40-minute round trip drive with gas at $3.85 a gallon, so I called up the store and voiced my complaints.
The person I talked to told me that, contrary to what I had been told in store, that not only had Wii Fit sold out within an hour of the store’s opening, but that it was sold out in every single Circuit City store in the surrounding area. I asked about being able to buy it online for in store pickup, and she said that it simply wasn’t available anywhere nearby.
SWEET! Free $24 gift certs for me! I placed an online order right then, not for the original store but for one much closer (which had earlier shown out of stock but now allowed me to purchase online for pick-up). I drove over there, going in at exactly the 24 minute mark, ready to get my free gift card…
And there was my Wii Fit waiting for me at Customer Service. I still have no idea what the hell happened that day, but I can tell you for sure that I enjoy watching my girlfriend do the hula hoop game so I don’t really care.
well i’ll be damned. CC employees havent been on commission since 2003. I didnt think it had been that long since i was in one, but apparently so!
@fjordtjie: Online?
I don’t know, sometimes the crappy service and horrible prices maybe the best in town.
But usually only if there’s no one else.
@freejazz38: Take it from someone who has worked in retail: That is the fastest way to tick someone off, especially if you’re a stocker working for a discount or grocery store.
Ask where something is. Go ahead, you have a right to good help. But when it is proven that none is available on the sale floor, go ahead and take the associate at his word. If you really want to be lied to, ask him or her to “check in the back”, i.e. the stock room. Most of the time there’s a good reason there’s none on the floor yet, and you’ve just invited said associate to take a 5-minute break on your time.
@BlazerUnit: Just about a month ago I asked somebody to check for Mario Kart in the back and they got one, so it’s not always because they’re sold out.
@BlazerUnit: Huh? What are you talking about. A. Am I REALLY worried about ticking off A Circuit Shitty moron? B. I’m sorry if I offended the minimum wage peabrains of the world, that they have to interrupt their conversation with the other peabrains about how they illegally downloaded music last night to do their JOBS
For a measly $24 they could have kept a customer and kept this story off Consumerist. :p
@FreeJazz38
I worked retail and I’d hear smart asses like you all the time thinking they know more than me. Just because it shows up in a computer doesn’t mean its in the store. There are a lot of reasons why they might not have an item that shows up in the system. Returns are the main reason. Some of it is employee theft. Some are defective. They aren’t lieing to you, they are just giving you an answer you don’t want to hear.
And what someone said before is right, when I was in retail sales, if you asked me to check the back and make sure, I went to the back and had a cig.
From Circuity City website:
What happens if my order is not ready in 24 minutes?
We guarantee your order of $25 or more will be ready for pickup at your selected store within 24 minutes of the timestamp on your confirmation email. If it’s not, we’ll give you a $24 Circuit City gift card.
Does the time I spend waiting in line count toward the 24 minutes?
No. We guarantee your purchase will be ready for you to pick up in 24 minutes, but the guarantee excludes time spent waiting in line.
What if I can’t get to the store in 24 minutes?
Don’t worry-we’re ready when you are. While we guarantee that your order will be ready in 24 minutes, we will hold your item securely for 14 days. After that time, it will be returned to inventory and your money will be refunded.
I didn’t have a problem getting my $25 card. I placed an order in the morning, went to pick up that evening, only to find they didn’t have any in stock (that probably took CC a good 20 minutes to figure out). Talked to the manager and he rang me up with the $25 card.
The way I do it is, if you come to my register and your item is not pulled in 24 minutes of your time stamp (which actually gives about 10-12 minutes for the store to pull your item) you get the $24 dollar gift card. By pulled, I mean behind customer service on the shelves with your ticket on it. I do not count though, big TVs, home theater systems, and a few other things, because we specifically keep those in the warehouse until you come in the store. The reason being that they don’t fit behind customer service, and putting them by the door (the only other place we have room) is just asking someone to pull up to the front, grab your 2000 dollar TV, and drive off with it. Yes, it has happened.
Now if your item actually is out of stock, we have 10-12 minutes to find your item, and if we don’t find it, we refund the purchase and call to let you know. And no, you don’t get a gift card in that situation.
And I’m glad to be one of those stores that doesn’t have anything “in the back” except for TVs, PCs, and signage.
So, yeah you should have gotten a gift card, and I would have had no problem giving you one.
And about the Wii Fit situation, my store showed “in stock” online for THREE days after it came out, when we had sold out in an hour and a half. And I called Corporate, the web site, and our Service desk and no one knew how to fix it. Soooo frustrating.
I’ve been dicked around by the offer too. I came to pick up a computer I bought. Waited for 45 minutes and the reason they told me I couldn’t have the gift card. “sorry, the order number was read wrong so the person was looking for the wrong item in the back” soo that isn’t my problem. W/e I didn’t have time to argue of 20 something bucks but just cut my loses and won’t buy anymore big ticket items through them.
I thought Circuit City was on death’s doorstep?
OP – Please let us know the specific location and we’ll call up or email and give them hell. I’ll post their contact info for the rest of the readers here, along with operations manager and district manager contacts.
But good for you for doing the executive route.
District managers are fun. They are usually very responsive to consumers and like going down to stores and rattling everyone’s retail cages on your behalf. He he.
I had the same problem when this promotion was unveiled. Despite having the policy in writing, the manager refused to honor it and I had to call corporate to get the gift card. Circuit City has either done nothing to educate their employees on the promotion, or more likely, have incentives in place that “punish” them for giving too many of these out.
Therefore, they promise a promotion which they know consumers are going to have a hard time getting. Stupid.
I don’t understand all the “reading comprehension” comments here. Who really thinks that these kinds of cases are due in majority to lack of comprehension of store policies? These are retail managers overseeing a lot of merchandise. Even if they are illiterate they still know the ropes. They are managers *because* they have been able to pull the store’s numbers up in the short term, by shortchanging customers and playing stupid tricks like this. Don’t think Corporate isn’t keeping track of which stores are costing them more in gift cards for screw-ups. I’m sure this is all a CYA thing, not a “I can’t read” thing.
@DashTheHand: LMAO!
Seriously, I hope Circuit City does not go out of business because I wouldn’t shop at Best Buy if you paid me. CC may not be perfect but Best Buy is evil. I still don’t get how they manage to have so much more business when they treat their customers like shit.
Haven’t been back to CC yet, but a couple of years ago we went to pick up an item. We were directed to wait around back, because it was a larger item. So we were outside in the cold, gave up waited in the car. Saw other impatient, wretched souls waiting. I rang the bell again and was told by an arrogant young jackass I needed to wait. Still nothing, 15 minutes later–other people had been waiting longer. Arrogant jackass returns and tells me I need to “be seated in my car.” I ask jackass if he is perhaps a cop giving me an order? He slams door. I go in main part with long-suffering spouse and, quite loudly, demand to see the manager. Jackass drifts in, sensing trouble. Other cashiers are smiling–after all if he’s such a jackass to customers, you can imagine how he treats lowly coworkers. He says no manager is available, I demand he call one. Another employee does this for me. Yeah, they gave me the purchase with a $50 refund on a $350 item but I’ll never get that time back. A friend told me jackass departed –or was departed–shortly thereafter.
In January I went to CC to pick up an item I had ordered online. I got there right at the 23.5 minute mark and walked up to the desk where they put the picked orders and, much to my dismay, my order was sitting there, ready to be handed over to me.
When I expressed my disappointment that I would not be getting a gift card to the girl behind the counter she confided that management takes a very dim view on any employee who works the pick up desk and has to give out a gift card. She said that if you give away too many cards it is a fireable offense.
That would seem to explain the B.S. that many on here have run into when trying to claim their gift cards — the employees are bending the rules to save their jobs.
“Seriously, I hope Circuit City does not go out of business because I wouldn’t shop at Best Buy if you paid me. CC may not be perfect but Best Buy is evil.”
“I didn’t have time to argue of 20 something bucks but just cut my loses and won’t buy anymore big ticket items through them.”
“This exact experience happened to me several months ago but I didn’t escalate like Dustin”
“I asked for the manager and he also gave me the “well it is not 24 minutes because I said so” type of response. I was not in the mood to fight, so I left with my items.“
“CC has boned me several times on this garbage. I just stopped going to my local one for pick ups and now go to one that’s just a little farther away where the service is MUCH better.”
It is sheeple like this that will cause CC to not only stay in business, but also to continue to provide this horribly low level of customer service.
On the do-you-have-any-in-the-back note, back when I worked at Home Depot, a customer motioned to a small out of stock item and asked me if we had any more in the back.
Cust: Do you have any more of these in the back?
Me: Um, we don’t have a “back.”
Cust: What do you mean? Where do you keep all your stuff?
Me: On the shelves.
Cust: Well, where do you keep your extra stuff?
Me: On the higher shelves.
Cust: [Looks dumbfounded] Oh…
Yeah, it says “Home Improvement Warehouse” on the front of the building for a reason. The salesfloor IS the warehouse. That’s where we keep our stuff.
And the C-level executives wonder why their company is in the toilet?
@goodkitty:
exactly. These managers know the policy down to the last syllable. It’s all about metrics. The manager who hands out gift cards willy nilly to any old joe sixpack off the street will soon find themselves transferred to CC in siberia. If the manager can get even 20% of the customers eligible for the giftcard to doubt what they think the policy is, they probably meet their metrics, and get to keep their job.
They do the same thing at sears with their 5 minute or $5 guarantee. Back when I actually shopped there, they never met the 5 minute pickup guarantee, yet somehow I magically never got my $5 gift card. The last time I was actually going to get it, but I told them to forget about it because I wasn’t going to set foot in a Sears ever again.
I wonder…since it’s a guarantee, can they be sued, say, in small claims court if they don’t follow through? Might be fun, to go to a store where you KNOW they will fail to meet the deadline and WILL try to refuse you a gift card, to already have the small claims court papers filed…and when they refuse, serve them. Can you just imagine the look on the manager’s face?
@Difdi:
Unless there’s some sneaky fine print somewhere, you likely could legitimately sue in small claims court. The $24 gift card promise is essentially a liquidated damages contract provision.
I ordered some portable iPod speakers online for pickup at a nearby CC because (1) I could use the 15% online coupon, making them a great deal, and (2) I wanted to use the speakers the next day and didn’t want to wait for them to be shipped from an online retailer (at a cheaper price).
After I arrived at CC, I waited in line at the register for less than 5 minutes, then waited in the pickup area for about 20 minutes, after which I was told that they didn’t have the speakers. The person helping me said that the computer said they had one set in stock, but that they couldn’t find it. They did have the speakers at 2 stores farther away. I said okay, because I wanted the speakers to help make cleaning out my closet over the weekend a little less painful.
I asked for the $24 gift card because my order wasn’t ready in 24 minutes. The manager reserved the speakers for me at a different store, gave my the $24 gift card, and thanked me for being so nice. I was pissed because the speakers weren’t there, but pitching a fit wouldn’t have made them materialize and would have just put me and the manager in a bad mood. I don’t know whether I’ll purchase something online for in-store pickup again, but I will go back to spend the gift card.