So I’ve been relatively pleased by Best Buy in years of late, enough so that I was willing to shop there for my new computer. And, it turned out, the model I wanted was at a local store — the Centennial (Southglenn) store, not too far from Katherine’s school. (We’d done shopping yesterday at the Park Meadows store, so I knew they didn’t have the model I wanted there.)
Found it right off, looked it over, seemed fine. Snagged a sales associate who was hovering nearby (Andrew), and told him I’d buy it. He seemed slightly taken aback at someone walking in, looking over a laptop, and buying it without questions, but …
He passed on to me the various brochures of services plans involving the Geek Squad, their in-house support company, as well as a laundry list of setup/support things they could do for my computer. All of them seemed overpriced for my comfort level of expertise, so I didn’t plan on any.
Andrew came out a few minutes later with my ASUS G71 in a disgustingly slim box. Ah, there was a catch. They had but one in back, and it had already been “Optimized” by the Geek Squad — doing the initial “Optimization” startup/setup and removal of unnecessary junkware. That’s ordinarily a $39 service that was going to … cost me $39. That was the last model they had.
Mistake #1: I ought to have said, “Well, that’s what I wanted, so if that’s all you have, I’m either going to another store or else order it online and have it delivered here like all the signs around say I can do.” But I didn’t. Not happy, but willing to acquiesce, as they saved me, potentially, some time.
The unit had not been terribly well packed back in its box, but well enough. I paid my money and left. Mistake #2: I should have opened it up right there and examined it.
We did some shopping, and then returned home. Margie and Katherine went off for haircuts. I opened the box.
The unit appeared intact and beautiful and all. I plugged it in, fired it up, and started looking around.
I noted a few things:
- There were no manuals or CDs in the box. There was an ASUS flier about a Recovery CD. There was a flier for ASUS tech support. There was a flier about upgrading to Win7 for free. But that was it, and those were all kind of munched down at the bottom of the box.
- There was an odd icon on the status tray. Ah — no battery. I felt around underneath. Yup, no battery.
*sigh*
I called Best Buy. After talking to an associate, I was forwarded over to computer, thence to “Jarrod” in the Geek Squad. I explained about the battery — he asked me to stand by while he looked for one. He came back in a few minutes, unsuccessful in finding one lying about, but asking for my number so he could call me back.
I told him as well that I wasn’t sure if anything else was missing, since there was nothing in the box in the way of setup info or anything else, so no list of contents. E.g., the whole Recovery CD thing. I told him I wanted a list of what should be in the box. He said he’d get it.
I’m going to let him deal with the “we don’t have any others in stock” issue.
I also plan, when he calls back, to tell him I want my $39 refunded, since clearly the “optimization” effort by the Geek Squad (“Pretty” appears to be the name on the label) didn’t end up saving me any time.
I just got a call back from Jarrod. They have discs for me, and a battery, from the floor model (the floor model didn’t have its battery in it, I noted while there). I’ll be asking for my refund and/or a manager when I get there.
Drove down to the Best Buy, rehearsing my lines. Walked in, and made a bee line for the Geek Squad desk. Imust have been expected, because someone — “Joe” — walked out from behind the counter with a couple of things and said, “Here you go — a battery and three disks.” And turned to leave.
I’ll confess I was a bit flummoxed. I mean, I was expecting — well, I don’t know. “Sorry.” “Our apologies for making you drive all the way down here again for our own goofy error.” “How can we make this right?” “Is there anything we can do for you?”
Instead, it was hand off the parts and get out of Dodge. So I said, “And now I’d like to talk about refunding the ‘Optimization’ service that caused these parts to go missing in the first place.”
Joe emotionally brushed this off, though obviously he was expecting it. Expecting it, not offering it, you’ll notice. “They don’t let us refund services already performed,” he said, “but we can take it off the price of the computer.” Then he turned me over to a cashier there and never … made eye contact … again.
She politely rang up a discount on the computer, refunded me $40 (one whole penny over the $39.99 I’d paid) and gave me the receipt.
I considered asking for a manager, but I think Joe was one. At least, his Geek Squad name tag read, “Director of Counter Intelligence,” which sounded like an assistant manager type of role.
Though I am a bit confused, because if I were Joe (perish the thought), I’d want to know more about what had happened, or at least asked if I knew the name on the side of the box as to who’d done the “Optimization” (“Pretty,” it seems) so that it wouldn’t happen again. Nope, not good ol’ Joe. He couldn’t be bothered.
So now I have my battery, and my three discs (a Recovery DVD, a drivers disc, and some disc-burning software). Yay. Still ticked off. My observations:
- I was wrong here insofar as I didn’t act as suspiciously and as pushily as I could have. It’s a shame that being nice is the wrong tactic for that Best Buy.
- Best Buy (as policy and through salesguy “Andrew”) ought not force someone to purchase the “Optimize” package (or anything else) if that’s the only unit they have in stock (and, in retrospect, why was it in stock that way? Did someone cancel the purchase?). “Force” here means play “take it or leave it.” (I ought to have left it, but see #1.)
- Best Buy (and “Pretty”) goofed up. They simply didn’t get back into the box everything that should have been in it when it was “Optimized.”
- Unless they had another way of tracking who did it (assuming they are interested), they missed an opportunity to get that info from me. They further missed an opportunity to make me feel like they gave a rat’s ass.
- If you goof, fess up to it. Don’t treat it purely as a problem to be solved (we found stuff for you, come and get it), but recognize the human factor, the impact on the customer, and how the customer is going to see all of this. Best Buy didn’t, as witnessed by “Joe” and his willingness to do what was right (when it was asked of him), but his unwillingness to at all acknowledge any fault or inconvenience to me as a customer.
As Margie noted, in this age of internet buying, all Best Buy has to offer is personalized service. If they can’t do that, there’s not much there there, is there? As it stands, I may go to that Best Buy again for something small, but not for another major purchase (as opposed to the Park Meadows BB, which has done a much better job of making feel as if they actually care about customers being satisfied.
On the other hand I have:
- A working computer with all parts.
- A feedback survey on my original receipt.
- A web browser to look at Best Buy’s site for further places to complain.
- A blog to bitch on.
So life is, if not good, quite tolerable.
From movie Fargo, close as I can remember…
“Gee, I dunno. The Tru-Coat sealant, you need that, you know, or you’ll get oxidation problems. And it’s already applied. The boss says I can let you have it for $400, and that’s $100 off the list price – you know, a heck of a deal there.”
I work for a Best Buy store in MN. I’m not talking on behalf of Best Buy, but I’ll do my best to answer your questions you posed here. =) Also, me apologizing for the mistakes of another store don’t really mean much, but I am sorry for the troubles you had to endure.
1. You weren’t wrong at all. I’m a vary nice and easy going guy. Some say I’m a push over, but I feel that being nice and not being rude will get you further in the long run.
2. In my store (when I worked in computers), we would “Pre-setup” about 30%-40% of all laptops with the Optimization and Recovery Disc creation (if the computer didn’t come with recovery discs). I was told, that by state law, we couldn’t pre-setup any more then that. (Though I was never shown the law for something like that, nor did I ever ask to see it wither.) If a customer wanted a laptop and all we had were pre-setup ones, we were supposed inform the customer about the benefits of it, and why it saves them time. If they still don’t want it, we can’t force them to buy it. Doing an optimization and recovery discs from scratch takes over 3 hours, and most people don’t want to wait that long. So we set them up and do the work before hand so customers and just “grab and go” get the work done to the computer and not have to wait.
3. Yea, sometimes things like that happen. I just ordered a TiVo and it got shipped to me with no remote control! (o.0) Good thing I had a spare while I wait a week for a replacement to be shipped to me. =/ The odds of something like that happening are pretty slim and you were the unlucky customer to get it to happen to them.
4. Yes! The “Joe” you spoke of would be a “DCI”, which is like the manager of the Geek Squad Precinct. Sadly, he did miss the opportunity to find out who did that and talk with that associate about not making that mistake again.
5. Again, Joe should have actually cared, but from the sounds of it, he just wanted to quickly make you happy, and solve the problem as fast as possible. Joe might have had many issues going on at that time, but he still should have addressed you as a person and made sure you didn’t have any other questions/concerns before leaving.
If you don’t mind me asking, which G71 did you go with? The Core 2 Duo or the Quad core model? Also, I’m apart of Best Buy’s “twitter help force” aka @twelpforce! I found this blog by searching for “best buy” on twitter to help people having issues or questions with Best Buy. I hope I did help you out. If you have any questions, feel free to email me, or @reply me (@dustinbby) or @twelpforce and we will be there to help you!
– Dustin
Yeah. The more I consider it, the more I feel like someone taken advantage of.
I did fill out the customer survey, and made my displeasure on various items very clear. I expect to be contacted about it.
Dustin, thanks much for responding. I won’t address all your comments, but a few I want to:
I suspect the issue is that if you’re advertising PCs for $1300, but the only ones available are the ones that cost $1350, then there are consumer protection laws that come into play.
In my case, the recovery disc was supposed to come with the machine from ASUS (and, in fact, was missing). I suspect that takes the majority of the time of your 3 hrs. So all they did in the Optimization (as the sales guy explained it to me) was remove a bunch of bloatware, and get the initial user set up done.
Hey, I ran an IT tech support group in my company, so I know Things Happen. In this case, it wasn’t a manufacturer problem, of course; clearly it happened during the course of the Optimization in how the system was (not completely) put back together. Unless someone raided it for parts for another machine that was missing those bits.
The biggest challenges we face are not how we achieve perfection, but how we deal with cases where we screw up. That’s where I had the most issue with this BB store.
It certainly seems that way. Of course, he might have gone back and researched it and dealt with it already. But then he should have said something to that effect.
Agreed. And by “quickly make me happy” read “get my issues dealt with and out of the store ASAP.”
G71GX-RX05 – dual core. Very nice machine on spec, and, so far, looking quite good.
Cool. I’m glad BB is one of the companies starting to use Twitter as a way of providing another avenue for Customer Service. Well done — actions like your reply here make me feel better about BB as a company (if not that particular store).
I also did the customer survey. We’ll see if I get contacted by the company the way I asked to be in the survey.
Thanks again.
I got a letter from Steven, the manager at the BB store.
I’m pointing him here, plus adding some summary comments.
I am curious as to how he thinks he can make this right (beyond the refund I’ve already received) in light of (as I put it in my reply) “the goof by ‘Pretty,’ the (mild) bait-and-switch by Andrew, and the serious lack of customer satisfaction interest I saw from Joe.”
Interesting, his sig line includes:
Let’s see how the Solve works.
Been reading for a long time, but seldom responded. Right now, though, I feel compelled to ask a philosophical question:
How much more would you have been willing to pay if it meant you wouldn’t have had that customer service experience?
I have a lot of geek/techie friends who like to tease (gently or otherwise) for my preference for Apple hardware; a common refrain is that I must enjoy being taken advantage of, since I pay more for my hardware than my friends do. And although I’ll admit that Apple isn’t 100% perfect (as any casual trawl of The Consumerist will attest), I personally haven’t had any customer service issues of the kind you’ve just experienced (and I might point out, each of my PC-using friends has a similar horror story).
My experience purchasing my current laptop, a late-2008 model 15″ MacBook Pro, was at the start just like yours — I walked into the Apple store having already done my homework and told the guy with the badge that I wanted to buy this computer. He went into the back and got me a boxed machine, ran my card on the spot, and had me out of the store in ten minutes — no fuss, no muss, and no missing parts.
Admittedly, avoiding that experience probably isn’t worth $1000 to you (which is the difference between the specific ASUS you got and the current default 17″ MacBook Pro from the online Apple Store), but I have to imagine it’d be worth some amount. Again, simply from a philosophical perspective, how much is the customer experience worth in financial terms?
A good question. My thought is that, for the price I’m paying, I shouldn’t have to worry about the customer service experience in this fashion. And I’ve had multiple transactions at Best Buy over the years where something like this did not happen — including open box computer purchases where what I got was, in fact, complete.
This wasn’t a problem with ASUS or the Wintel platform; this was a problem with that Best Buy store and the folks I encountered there.
(Of course, most BBYs have an Apple Store in them; I wonder how that interaction would have worked out. 🙂 )
Your overall point on the value of customer service is a good one, and I’d be willing to pay a bit of a premium for it ($1K is probably too much). But part of what I feel I’m buying by going to BBY instead of ordering the machine online from ASUS (or, heck, ordering it online from BBY) is that customer service. If they can’t give that to me, why I am I shopping there again?
Oh, and welcome. I’ve seen a couple of comments from you, and I’m pleased to see an added voice chiming in here. Thanks!
From Gizmodo a few weeks back, so Dave, can you spot the perp?
Didn’t interact long enough with any of them to say, sorry.
And I’ll note that, after the flurry of Twitter and Email activity, BBY has suddenly gone silent. Are they simply investigating? Or have they checked off the form at “Contact customer to solicit any gripes” and gone on to other, bigger/better things?
Yes, most of that 3 hour time frame is making of recovery discs. The “new user setup” process takes about 30 minutes and the optimization takes about the same.
I do agree that Joe should have done more for you. ask for your concerns or something while you were there or at least started that he was going to look into it AND actually look into it to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
I’m glad that Steven has contacted you about this and I hope that he can make this right. I wish there was more that I can do, but since I’m no where near that store, there is not really much I can do other then contact them and explain the situation. I love helping customers and when they have issues with things, I want to make them right. But, obviously, I can only do so much. =/
I’ll make sure that I contact that manager and make sure they follow up with you. I apologize for it taking me this long to reply, I have been working at my two jobs and still trying to have some type of social life. =P If there is anything else you have questions on, feel free to ask myself or anyone else on the @twelpforce! =)
– Dustin
Thanks, Dustin, I appreciate your time.
Finally got a letter back from Steven the Manager:
So there it is. I’ll almost certainly be in that BBY again some day because of its proximity to Katherine’s school. If, for some reason, it makes sense to do a significant purchase there, I’ll consider it. But, yes, I might very well ask for Steven when I do. I am somewhat mollified, still somewhat disgruntled, and I *still* don’t see any sign that someone’s talked to “Pretty” about what happened with the missing pieces (assuming that’s what happened here).