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Small victories, or How I learned to shop at companies that hire people, not robots

A brief update to my last post: I went in to Best Buy again today (in person) to speak to the manager. Over the phone they'd offered me a floor model version of the television we had bought, for pretty much the same price as what we had paid for the new model—nice! So I headed in in person, and after talking with the manager for about a minute, realized that this was a futile exercise, and so I just returned the television that we'd never received in the first place. [1]

Contrast that with Costco, which is where we bought our original television more than a year ago. I've spared my tens of readers the drama that brought us to buying a new television in the first place—seriously, it would make an entertaining set of posts—but suffice to say that over the past three months, we've had our television for about two weeks. The rest of its time was spent at a completely ineffectual "authorized" repair shop & in discussions with Sharp (the maker of said television).

So finally, Mena & I happened to mention to Barak that we'd bought the television at Costco, and he said, just bring it back there and return it. I was quite skeptical, but here's the thing: I brought the television in to Costco today and spoke with two people (a rep handling returns and his manager), both extremely competent, and who gave me a full refund for the amount at which I'd originally bought the television (and this one year later!). All while juggling about five customers at once.

Which is really the point of it all: Costco—or at least, the warehouse I've been going to—has made a point of hiring people who can think, who are empowered to take action & make decisions, and who actually care (or, at least, do a great job at pretending) about customers. Best Buy, on the other hand, has hired—or perhaps trained—a set of mindless drones who could very well be robots for the amount of critical thinking that they possess and/or are allowed to perform.

So, with that, I refuse to shop at Best Buy ever again. And yes, I'm realistic enough to realize that they don't care—but then again, isn't that the problem in the first place?

[1] Of course, they couldn't resist fucking with me one last time: when I went over to get a refund for the television, the service representative handling returns told me that he couldn't refund me the money for the delivery, since that was a separate company. But I got my way, & my refund.

Best Buy hates you & wants you to die.

So I've just got off a 20-minute long phone call with Best Buy, and I feel as if I just have to write this down, because otherwise, it'd seem too unreal.

We bought a new television from Best Buy on Saturday [1], & we scheduled delivery of that television for Tuesday. Monday morning, the delivery people called & set up a delivery between 10:30 and 12:30 on Tuesday. Fine. Monday night, they called & said that they'd never received the television they were supposed to deliver from the store, so they'd not be able to make the delivery.

They urged me to call the store itself so as to discuss the matter.

Which I did, and wherein I spoke with an earnest fellow—the same one who'd sold me the television, even!—who said that he'd packed the television into the truck himself, and who couldn't understand why it wouldn't be at the delivery warehouse, & thus at my house, on Tuesday morning, as promised. But he said he'd look into it, and would call me back Tuesday.

Tuesday: no call.

Wednesday morning, I received a call from the delivery service, stating that they'd be delivering the television Thursday morning. “So you've received it from the store, then, have you?” I asked. “Well, not yet, so it'd be best if you check in with them,” was their answer. Promising!

So I called about ten times Wednesday, each time going through the phone tree to Home Theatre, and waiting as the phone call eventually timed out without answer. And tonight, at around 7:30pm, the delivery service called to say that “uh, we haven't received your television from the store, so we won't be delivering it tomorrow.” Shocking!

& which started a series of phone calls from myself to the store in question, most of which ended up with my waiting for someone to answer, or being transferred between 10 different on-floor representatives, none of whom who had the information I'd given to the previous one, or being put on hold for 15 minutes wherein I decided to try a different department just for the hell of it, and eventually got transferred back to Home Theatre. &c. [2]

One of the exchanges was really quite classic. I'd been on hold for about 10 minutes, listening to some awfully stressful music, and all of a sudden, I once again hear a ringtone, as I'd been taken off hold, and after about 6 rings, someone picks up:

Him: “Hello?”
Me: “Um, hi?”
Him: “Yeah, it's out of stock.”
Me: “What?”
Him: “We're out of stock on that item.”
Me: “What?”
Him: “Yeah, it's out of stock.”
Me: “But I already bought it!”
Him: “What?”
Me: “I bought it last Saturday.”
Him: “What?”
Me: “I already bought it, and you were supposed to deliver it on Tuesday, and you didn't, and then I received a call today that you'd be delivering it tomorrow, and then another call tonight that said it had never been received on the truck.” [3]
Him: “It was supposed to be delivered to you?”
Me: “Yes, I was supposed to receive the tv on Tuesday!”
Him: “Wait, a television?”
Me: “Um, what?”
Him: “Are you talking about a television?”
Me: “Yes...”
Him: “Oh, I thought you were asking about a walkie talkie. Uh, wrong line.”

At which point I began to silently die inside.

[1] This despite knowing from the internets that Best Buy, undoubtedly, Sucks.

[2] By the way, so this television: the previous weekend—before I bought the tv—I'd been in to a different Best Buy, where I inquired about this television. It's the new model of a television they already had in stock, and I asked—quite logically, I felt—“when will you be receiving the new model?”

To which the response: “oh, I don't think we're going to carry that model.” And the hapless fucker actually acted like he checked the computer—and who knows, maybe he even did—and then came back and said, “yeah, uh, doesn't look like we're ever going to carry that model.”

The punchline of which is: next week, when I went into a different Best Buy? Yes, they had that new model.

[3] This was, seriously, the 15th time I had described the situation, so I had refined my description to its essence in order to get it out in 5 seconds or less.