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)

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.