I've decided I no longer like Best Buy. A month or so back, I visited a Best Buy store with a page printed from their website showing an item and its price. The in-store price was several dollars higher than the online price. The clerk told me they couldn't honor the online price because their website is considered a separate entity from their brick & stone stores. It didn't occur to me at the time that if www.bestbuy.com is a different entity from Best Buy then I should have asked them to price match like they would a competitor.
This morning I placed an order online for two memory cards. Annoyed that I was going to pay twice the S&H for two exact same items (how much harder is it to grab two of one item from a bin and stuff them in a box than just grab one? Not twice as hard, that's for sure) I decided to pick up the cards at my local store, just a few miles away. So I placed the order and put it on my Bestbuy credit card. Several hours later I received an email confirmation that my items were definitely in-store and ready to be picked up. I went to bestbuy.com and verified my order, and discovered I'd been charged twice the sales tax (i.e., 16.5%) for one of the memory cards. I also got charged 8.25% for the other, so it wasn't like the sales tax was combined.
Not a problem, right? I called Bestbuy's Customer Service Dept. where a gentleman by the name of Raj with a heavy indian (asian/middle eastern) accent took my call. Now not only was Raj's accent rather heavy, but his syntax and grammar were way off. Hey, as long as Raj knows his stuff and adjusts the sales tax, I'm ok with that.
Raj had no clue.
Raj has no idea what sales tax is. He doesn't comprehend that two items on the same order at the same price should incur the same sales tax. After amusing me with his bizarre version of english and putting me on hold, it was not so amusing when Raj informed me that he would send my "request" to the "research" department, and that they'd get back in touch with me in 24 to 48 hours.
Excuse me? My "request"? Raj, buddy, this is not a request. Your company charged me the wrong sales tax amount. This should be a simple correction. Just go into the system and change the sales tax so that both items are charged the same amount. Raj cannot do that. Ok, Raj, let me speak to a supervisor, coz this is going nowhere. I'm sorry, Hal, I can't do that. Now Raj sounds like a nice guy, but there's something in the way he's denying my request to speak to a supervisor that says my call begins and ends at Raj. So I hang up on him.
And I call the local Best Buy store.
The one where I plan to pick up the memory cards after work. The one in California which will understand about Sales Tax.
A girl answers, I explain the situation, I need a refund because I've been charged the wrong sales tax. She transfers me to another girl. I explain the situation to her. She transfers me to a guy. He works in the Home Theater section, so he transfers me to Customer Service. The second girl answers the phone. She's still working on my problem, she says. Why I ended up at Home Theater I don't know, although I've been sent there while visiting their brick & stone store as well. It's as if Home Theater is the place to send a customer when you don't want to deal with them.
After talking to someone else there, 2nd girl comes back and tells me I'll need to speak to a manager when I come into the store.
I plan to do just that.
I've also written a nice letter to Best Buy corporate detailing how unhappy I am with their so called Customer Service. I'll be giving the manager at my local Best Buy a copy of the letter when I go there this afternoon.
I used to love Best Buy. I'm not so happy with them anymore.
This morning I placed an order online for two memory cards. Annoyed that I was going to pay twice the S&H for two exact same items (how much harder is it to grab two of one item from a bin and stuff them in a box than just grab one? Not twice as hard, that's for sure) I decided to pick up the cards at my local store, just a few miles away. So I placed the order and put it on my Bestbuy credit card. Several hours later I received an email confirmation that my items were definitely in-store and ready to be picked up. I went to bestbuy.com and verified my order, and discovered I'd been charged twice the sales tax (i.e., 16.5%) for one of the memory cards. I also got charged 8.25% for the other, so it wasn't like the sales tax was combined.
Not a problem, right? I called Bestbuy's Customer Service Dept. where a gentleman by the name of Raj with a heavy indian (asian/middle eastern) accent took my call. Now not only was Raj's accent rather heavy, but his syntax and grammar were way off. Hey, as long as Raj knows his stuff and adjusts the sales tax, I'm ok with that.
Raj had no clue.
Raj has no idea what sales tax is. He doesn't comprehend that two items on the same order at the same price should incur the same sales tax. After amusing me with his bizarre version of english and putting me on hold, it was not so amusing when Raj informed me that he would send my "request" to the "research" department, and that they'd get back in touch with me in 24 to 48 hours.
Excuse me? My "request"? Raj, buddy, this is not a request. Your company charged me the wrong sales tax amount. This should be a simple correction. Just go into the system and change the sales tax so that both items are charged the same amount. Raj cannot do that. Ok, Raj, let me speak to a supervisor, coz this is going nowhere. I'm sorry, Hal, I can't do that. Now Raj sounds like a nice guy, but there's something in the way he's denying my request to speak to a supervisor that says my call begins and ends at Raj. So I hang up on him.
And I call the local Best Buy store.
The one where I plan to pick up the memory cards after work. The one in California which will understand about Sales Tax.
A girl answers, I explain the situation, I need a refund because I've been charged the wrong sales tax. She transfers me to another girl. I explain the situation to her. She transfers me to a guy. He works in the Home Theater section, so he transfers me to Customer Service. The second girl answers the phone. She's still working on my problem, she says. Why I ended up at Home Theater I don't know, although I've been sent there while visiting their brick & stone store as well. It's as if Home Theater is the place to send a customer when you don't want to deal with them.
After talking to someone else there, 2nd girl comes back and tells me I'll need to speak to a manager when I come into the store.
I plan to do just that.
I've also written a nice letter to Best Buy corporate detailing how unhappy I am with their so called Customer Service. I'll be giving the manager at my local Best Buy a copy of the letter when I go there this afternoon.
I used to love Best Buy. I'm not so happy with them anymore.
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3 comments:
See, if you were more cynical upfront you would have been less dissapointed.
Support/Customer Care is not a profit centre, so we dont spend much on it. Sales is, so for every 1 customer care call centre person, there are 1000 sales guys. Most people dont complain, so when the odd person does its easy enough to ply them with platitudes and a free LED keyring.
Doesn't make sense to us, a damm funny way to run a business, but to the bean counters, it must be working...
I went in to the store tonight really pissed, and even raised my voice at the CSR girls behind the counter, something I never do. They could do nothing about the online order, so, they ended up selling me the memory sticks at the same price (which they were anyway) but they gave me $5 off, which was the price of the sales tax. Because they screwed up and I complained, I got a 10% discount...I wasn't really happy because they did nothing about the problem, but I get to cancel the order online and at that point I should be given further opportunity to complain about their so-called Customer Service.
Just to clarify, I have no problem with outsourcing (coz it's not my job on the line) but any company outsourcing has a responsibility to ensure their new staff can do the job for which they're being hired.
Ugh. What a mess! My husband usually orders all his computer parts online through other retailers. He uses newegg.com, usually.
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