We bought a neat “toy” for my laptop … for the studio. It’s a mini tablet. It was an open box buy at Best Buy, but the sticker indicated all pieces were there, so we figured, it was probably just a bit damaged or something. Nothing major. Floor model or something. We’ve purchased several things like that from stores … including Best Buy … where we bought the Bamboo Fun.
I brought it to the studio a couple days ago and had my assistant work to set it up. Uh … no USB cable. Um … hello! It won’t work without the cable. One call into Best Buy … sorry, bring it back. I asked on the phone if I could exchange it and he said “yes.” So I asked if I was going to be charged the difference and he thought so, but didn’t know. I just have to bring it back.
So Ron finds a cable that will work and we decide to just leave it be and use that cable – not waste the 20 minute trip to Best Buy just for a cable. But, lo and behold, it’s also missing the $100 piece of software that it comes with. Are you kidding me? Did someone return it without the valuable stuff? Or maybe it was a floor model… but still, the box wasn’t marked that it was missing anything.
Tonight, the kiddos and I made the trip out to Best Buy and boy did that store irk me. I walked in and as I headed to customer service, everyone walked away. So I stood there for a solid 5 minutes before anyone came back. Am I the plague perhaps?
When Santos finally came back, I explained the problem. He started to exchange the product and said “there is a $10 difference, we can charge … ” to which I stopped him IMMEDIATELY and said “What a minute. I bought this expecting that all parts would be there and you’re telling me that because you guys screwed up, I have to pay more? If that’s the case, credit my card and I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
He called his manager (I listened in). Then turned to me and said, “My Manager says I can offer you 5% off” (or less than $5 off the full price) to which I stopped him again and said “you can credit my card and I’ll take my business elsewhere. And I want to speak to your manager.”
Now this part was funny to me. He got back on the phone and *quietly* said … “uh … she wants to speak to you.” to his manager. Like I couldn’t hear? 🙂
So Amy, the manager of the Cary Best Buy came over and introduced herself. I explained again that the box was NOT marked with any missing parts and that in good faith, we made the purchase. All we were asking was to have the product that we purchased, in its entirety. That I had already made a phone call and now taken a trip out and that it was incredibly poor customer service to charge me more for something that I had already purchased and expected was complete based on the information presented to me at the time of purchase.
She took the box and said she’d “go check it out” whatever that meant.
When she returned, she credited me the full $10 and I got a new box for the price of the opened box. She then tried to “explain” why they wouldn’t normally do the credit, to which I responded as follows …
“It is in very poor taste for a company to punish the customer when the company is in the wrong. I own a business. When I screw up, it is my duty to fix it. I have spent way too much money with Best Buy to be treated like this. If I treated my customers like this, placing the “blame” [for lack of a better word] for my own screwups on them, I’d lose all my customers and find myself with a terrible reputation.”
I believe I shocked her with my rant. All over $10. But it was the principle and boy were they WRONG on this one. It doesn’t matter how much money it is, you NEVER EVER EVER even REMOTELY screw the customer when you (the biz) are in the wrong. Period. End of story. Fini! Argh!