Dear Bestbuy, why don’t you value me as a customer?
On my birthday, I drove from one store to another in the boston area trying to find a dell mini 9 netbook. I eventually did, the last one they had, which was an open box return, mid wipe. I purchased it @ full price, and even had to sign something saying I was OK with it not having the OS/Drivers installed.
I was fine with this, I was planning on installing ubuntu on it anyway. The problem was that w/in a few days the “p” and “o” keys had gone dead. No problem, I think, I’ll just take it back. I had left the box at my GF’s house, so I asked her to ship it to my apartment. Once I got home to california, and gotten the box, I took it back to my closest best buy in el segundo, ca. and they refused to do an exchange. An exchange. I don’t want my money back, or anything fancy – they keys don’t work, I just wanted to swap it out, no data transfer even, I wiped it for them. I cajoled, I bargained, I tried to explain what an example of bad customer service this was, but to no avail. The manager wouldn’t even come out to see me. ( !! )
In the last year I have purchased (off the top of my head):
- a laptop (alum. macbook)
- several mice
- multiple laptop cases
- two network routers
- several video adaptors
- a printer
- two 160g usb hd drives
- 1 terrabyte usb hard drive
- several video games
- ethernet cables out the wazoo
- a gigabit switch
- a non-gigabit switch
- extended power strips
I’m not going to enumerate everything I’ve purchased, but I buy a *lot* of computer equiptment. I can’t imagine why bestbuy would have a policy in place that would be so strict that it would willingly loose a customer over an *exchange* – I mean, this is exactly the type of service that drove compusa out of business. I spent a bunch of money, value me as a customer. If anyone from bestbuy reads this, this is the resolution I would like: contact the bestbuy in el segundo, and ask them to exchange my netbook. That’s it. Like for like. Otherwise, there’s a fry’s electronics a block away, and I’m sure they’d be happy to take my money.
-Nick Bernstein.
