Jason ordered a new dryer from Best Buy, and his experience was so frustrating that he actually threatened to buy from Sears instead. How bad does a shopping experience have to be to drive a man to such madness?

Several weeks ago our dryer decided to stop drying. After a quick call around it seemed like getting an old dryer worked on wasn’t worth the trouble so I just hit the Best Buy website, found a basic dryer that included free shipping and ordered it. Their deliver system lets you pick a day and states that they will call you the day before to give you a two hour window. This was great, as my wife is at home with our toddler during the day and could meet them.

The day before comes and they call, give us the window and everything is set. Then the day comes (a week ago now) and when they are supposed to be delivering the dryer they call and state that there was a mistake and either the wrong item was loaded on the delivery truck or didn’t get loaded, but either way they can’t deliver it that day. They did not offer to get it out later and simply stated that the next available day was Saturday (a day we were going to be out of town). They stated that Monday would be an option as well. I said as long as it was in the afternoon, as I would not be back in town until mid-morning. Even though they had screwed up they could not guarantee that time, and that I would get a call on Saturday for my time slot.

Well, Saturday comes around and I get a call stating that they would be coming between 7-9am. I was now getting a bit frustrated with Best Buy. After stating that they had messed up the original delivery, the woman just said I could talk to her supervisor. Rather than connecting me to a person, I go a supervisor’s voicemail and left a long, detailed and calm voicemail expecting a callback. No callback on Saturday and then on Monday morning at 7am several unknown calls start coming in to my phone and my wife’s phone, waking us up as well as our toddler (staying at the in-laws with the baby in the room). The calls were from the delivery truck that was at our house. At this point, I’m more than annoyed.

The delivery dispatcher tells me that if we can’t be there right now then there would be no delivery today and that the next day wasn’t available either. I called into the main Best Buy 800 number and requested an explanation as to why I was 1) getting the continued run around and 2) could not just get a time scheduled since they had screwed up the original delivery date.

The first person that I talked to stated that there was nothing that could be done unless I went back to Best Buy and paid more to get a set time or get Geek Squad to come out and hook up the dryer. The 2nd person that I talked to said that the first person should have just scheduled a time for their screw up but that the main dispatching department that schedules time slots wasn’t open yet and that I’d need to call back in 30 minutes. The third person that I talked to said that the 2nd person was incorrect and that there was nothing that they could do other than give us a day but no definite time.

At this point I asked to speak to a supervisor. He had me rehash all of this fiasco (and waste more of my time) and then called the delivery company. When I got a call back (the supervisor didn’t even call me back) they said there was nothing that they could do. Flabbergasted I just told them to cancel the order and I’d go to Sears. The kicker was that the woman couldn’t even cancel the order. Because the dryer was on the truck it was in transit and she said I’d have to call back AGAIN just to cancel. In fact, I got an email later in the evening stating that my delivery date had been changed (to four days from now) and that I’d be getting a call the day before. So I’m now two and a half weeks from when I originally ordered the dryer, haven’t even been able to cancel the order and getting ready to go to the laundromat.

I wasn’t very inclined to go to Best Buy before this incident, but short of them reaching out to make this all right, I’ll be lobbying actively to anyone and everyone I know to go somewhere else with their money. Best Buy obviously could have either assigned Geek Squad or waived the additional fee for a set time for the delivery but decided not to. This is all a huge pain and I’m not one to forgive easily.

We checked back in with Jason a couple of days later before posting the story, and he had this update:

They called to try and deliver the dryer on a day that I told
them I was unavailable. I told them that again and that if they
couldn’t do any better that the order needed to be canceled and that
I’d take my money elsewhere. They canceled it. I also emailed their
customer support and haven’t heard a thin. Very disappointing.

Well, at least that’s some kind of progress. We hope that we don’t end up hearing from him again when Sears screws things up even more.

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