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Best Buy Customer Gets Box Full of Bathroom Tiles Instead of Hard Drive
The Consumerist is reporting that a Best Buy customer recently purchased a hard drive only to discover that the box contained six ceramic bathroom tiles instead of the Western Digital drive he had expected. The rub of it is Best Buy is refusing to grant a refund or exchange for the non-existent drive. "The employee and assistant manager were more than willing to help, saying that it happens. So they set up the return and I repurchased the drive and while I was checking the contents to ensure it was a hard drive this time, the store manager came up, took the box from me and said to take it up with the manufacturer. Now to my surprise, I argued with the guy saying that they have already accepted the return and I have now purchased the new one. He said I was shit out of luck. I followed up with the manufacturer today and they said they would get the complaint to the Best Buy Purchasing department. Best Buy corporate said that they stand by their manager's decision."
This reminds me so much of the story of someone I know who back in the mid-90s had a shrink wrapping machine. He bought a CD-ROM drive from some department store, took it home, took the CD-ROM drive out. Then he took a brick and placed it back in the CD-ROM box, srinkwrapped the box and then returned it to the store like it was unopened.
Now can you imagine what the next person who bought that had to go through?
So thisb fhf could just be a case of someone trying to trick Best Buy and trying to use a grass roots campaign scam Best Buy.
This is absurd. From reading TFA it sounds like the best buy manager took his new hard drive away from him. This is absolutely criminal. I hope best buy learns from this after they get posted all over the internet. Oh wait, they just did! If you don't want to give your customers service then you really shouldn't be accepting customers. Also, shouldn't this be "Your rights Offline?"
-- David
Sounds like Best Buy. With all the great press they get on/., why do people still go there?
Keep the tiles; they're more reliable.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The bad publicity will cost them hundredfold of what they gained from not giving the customer what he should have gotten.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
If you purchased with a credit card, can't you issue a chargeback?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargeback
Granted it is only wikipedia, but it does list 'failure to issue a refund' as a reason for a chargeback.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
After PR nightmare, this person gets their hard drive and Best Buy apologizes profusely saying it will communicate the proper expectations with respect to returns to its management.
that didn't get checked upon return? If not, then I'd have to be as doubtful about that return as the manager was.
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act!" -- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
The person this happened to should file a complaint with the state Attorney General. By giving him a box of tiles instead of a hard drive, Best Buy is committing fraud.
Getting bathroom tiles in the box rather than a hard drive "happens?" I'll stick to what I can get from Newegg and Wal-mart from now on, thanks.
I'm waiting for a "-1 somepeoplejustshouldn'tgetmodprivileges" meta-moderation.
...they'll somehow find child pornography on the tiles.
Oh arse
I guess the one positive thing we could say is that at least the Best Buy employees don't drool on themselves within customer eyesight like RadioShack ones. :P
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Why do companies do shit like this?
Any possible praise (ha ha) a manager would get from corporate higher-ups for following this policy is going to be more then offset by all the bad press and lost sales because of any customers who are turned away by hearing of this story. It takes a lot of effort to get new loyal customers, much less effort to retain loyal customers, but it's exceptionally easy to piss them off to the point where they won't come back.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I would contact the Attorney General of your state. This is clearly something they would like to be informed about as it sounds like fraud. I would also tell the store that you plan on taking said action.
In this situation, just take it up with your credit card company if you bought using your credit card. Otherwise, you're in trouble, no?
Incidentally, that's why I buy everything I can (except for low-cost stuff) with my credit card. If I'm unhappy, I can complain. More importantly, I can threaten to void purchases. The threat of voiding purchases via your credit card, in my experience, is more useful than actually voiding purchases. The only time I've actually had to follow through on the threat was when hotels.com charged my card but didn't reserve a room for me. Hotels.com refused to cancel the payment because I hadn't given them enough warning. (Ha!) I couldn't get the CSR droid to give up, so I just reserved a new room at the same hotel (for a lower price) and then voided the hotels.com purchase.
Most of the time, though, your credit card company will be on your side, especially if you are a high-value account that buys lots of stuff and have a high credit limit.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
But seriously, how does one prove that BEST BUY was the one at fault? Goodwill towards customers only extends so far when battling fraud.
There Can Be Only One...
This isn't the first time this has happened at Best Buy, it is (at least as far as I know) the first time tiles where used as a filler! lol.
This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!
I'm sorry, but I have to side with Best Buy on this one. Here's why: Best Buy has gotten tons of bad press here on /. and other places for years now for crap like this. So as far as I'm concerned, anyone shopping there deserves whatever happens to them. It should be no surprise when you get screwed over while shopping at Best Buy, so it's your own fault if you go there and get screwed.
As they say, "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
...what I call a solid state disk. Thick as a brick, so to say.
yeah, but not unusual. There's a reason I call the bastards "Worst Buy"
If I buy something and it doesn't work, I take it back to the store and they replace it or repair it. They can then take it up with the manufacturer, or not: I don't care. Repair is a high-stakes game, because if trading standards believe that they're doing it to delay, or that the failure was unreasonable, they vendor has a problem. SoGA protection is a movable feast, but applies for at least a year.
People still shop at this crappy place? You can get better buy at your local white box store or new egg.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
I agree that Best Buy should do something for this guy (i.e. replacement or refund) and talk with the manager in question, but really the ultimate culprit may be unknowable. Unless you can check the entire transport chain of the item, you can't really be sure how many different people handled the project, or might have something to gain from performing a switch.
That, or now some guy in Malaysia has a 1-TB tile on his bathroom floor.
Receiving those tiles must have driven him up the wall.
Customer X buys 1 TB drive, repacks drive with ceramic tiles and then attempts to return to best buy, 2 drives for price of one
This story has been published in the Consumerist and now on Slashdot without either publication checking facts and looking for at least talking points from Best Buy itself. As far as I'm concerned, this story may yet be true, but all I can safely assume is that someone took some pictures of bathroom tiles wrapped in newspaper next to his HDD box in the hopes of scamming Best Buy out of a second drive for free or perhaps just defaming them as revenge for something unrelated. I agree with the columnist in the Consumerist that if this fellow does want to take the issue seriously he should file a complaint for theft and/or a consumer complaint with the Attorney General's office. Up to now, all we're doing by disseminating this story is continuing to feed the anonymous-libel monster.
Somewhere, a contractor is trying to fit this weird new shiney metal tile into place on someones new bathroom floor...
Think of this from the store's point of view for a moment. Should they just go on good faith? What's to stop tens of thousands of people from buying anything they want and coming back with am empty box demanding their money back? Once word of Best Buy's honor system policy gets out they would be bankrupted by scams.
This isn't any different than the iPod boxes full of gravel that Target just recently got to play with. Assuming the box was brand new and not previously owned and repacked, there is probably a warehouse worker some place with a nice shiny hdd
I was a customer service manager for a Best Buy in Houston, TX for a little over a year. Best Buy Store #291 - "The PowerHouse" Galleria. This store did incredible revenue. My specialty was dealing with overtly horrible Best Buy politics on a daily basis. I sat in on numerous Geek Squad and Home Installation meetings where Management would tell the service sales people to increase their service revenue "by any means necessary." I kid you not, I saw employees express concern about the prices and methods of invoking cash from vulnerable customers, and the management would repeat itself by saying, "by any means necessary." I saw an employee charge a customer $59 to "diagnose" her computer when a CD was stuck in her CD-rom drive, when all he did was pop it out with a paper clip. I saw more horrible Best Buy policies than you could imagine, and I made a good living for a year of my life, trying to negotiate comprimises between customers who had been ripped off bluntly, and Best Buy's corporate ladder, to try and salvage any sliver of dignity that company could possibly salvage, and this speciality of mine only lasted until I'd expressed my concern to the corporate level enough that they realized it would be easier to push me out of their store than it would be to address the concerns that I brought to their attention with regard to their return, exchange, and serviec policies. Being on the inside of that place blew my mind. As for their "service plans," they use the rock-bottom dollar lowest-bidder service centers that broke as many things as they repaired, if not more. Seeing this bit on /. reminded me of the days I spent with customers who were literally crying infront of me because of how this company had wronged them. I'm not saying don't shop there - frankly I could care less and I still buy the occasional item from Best Buy out of sheer convenience, but stories like this one never surprise me, in the sense that Best Buy's business model is to make money by any means necessary.
Sounds like the small number of bricks and crap is growing. We should all start video taping opening stuff to use in small claims court as evidence that we aren't trying to screw the store.
Well, maybe at first, however, in TFA, I got the idea, that BB had already accepted the return, and the customer had bought and paid for a NEW harddrive and had that in hand.
The manager then took the drive from his hand, etc. Now, if the customer had a drive and receipt...I would think what the BB manager did to him was plain and simple theft. I'd contact the Atty General about that.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This is why I use Amex exclusively and do not shop at stores that do not accept Amex. I have, unfortunately, had to use the Amex privilege several times to get merchants to cooperate. Amex has always been grand -- on one horrible purchase that a merchant refused to refund, Amex credited the charge but didn't void the transaction, so the merchant got paid. The merchant subseuquently refunded my purchase, and even after I alerted Amex that they had given me a few hundred bucks for free, the service rep told me it was all taken care of and it was my lucky day. That's pretty damn sweet considering most credit card companies are the root of all evil.
All I can say is this makes me even more happy that Fry's built a store in my area offering an alternative to BB(S)!
My mom made the mistake of buying a service plan for her Toshiba Satellite.
She asked me to pick it up for her at the Carbondale, IL store (dead HD, laptop still under warranty) and after they'd left me to cool my heels for 20 minutes, had me sign paperwork, etc. they handed me the, paperwork, old HD (in case she chose to send it to Toshiba for data recovery) and then stated that they "weren't sure" if the OS installation fee was covered by the service plan and wouldn't let me leave with the computer unless I paid $130(!) for OS installation (Toshiba recovery CD) and that if (IF!) they found that it was covered, I would be refunded.
I called her (I had places to be right then) and she called the store manager, corporate, etc. and after 1.5 hours decided they could waive the fee if I was willing to wait for them to REPLACE THE DRIVE, a wait of 1-2 HOURS. Well, no, I wasn't willing to wait, so I left. Shortly afterward she received a call that the recently installed drive was WIPED and the computer was ready to be picked up.
I'm going today to pick up the computer. My bet is that either 1.) they'll conveniently "forget" that they were waiving the fee, or that 2.) they've lost either the old HD or the entire computer. Bets, anyone?
No frickin' way would I buy a computer from Best Buy. DVDs and CDs, sure, and maybe hardware with decent factory warranties, but not computers, and if I were dumb enough to, I certainly wouldn't take it to the store for warranty work! I've heard too many horror stories from other people who've ended up spending the same amount of money they'd spent on their hardware, only to have to wait for half a month for a computer just as bricked as it was when it went in.
Best Buy and Geek Squad is about as crooked as the crookedest used-car dealership.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
That's why I open the box & check the model number *before* I leave the store to verify my purchase (and not just for electronics - once at an auto parts store I found out someone had switched a cheaper oil filter for the more expensive one I had paid for). Doesn't everyone do this?
Then, I discovered bestbuy.com in-store pickup, and things got better.
Then, last week I ordered an SD card, via in-store pickup. When I went to pick it up, they told me that it takes 48-72 hours to prepare the order. (As I recall, it only took 15 minutes to pull my $1000 laptop).
I'm done shopping there. Most of my purchases can be made at the locally owned PC shops, Gamestop or Target. I'll have to leave town next time I want a new HDTV, though.
I purchased a sound card a few years ago, got it home, opened it up and there was an old Jazz drive and 3.5-to-5.25 bracket inside. Lucky for me, I had some leverage when returning it and did get my exchange. When the CS rep started giving me trouble about it I threatened to return the $3,000 in merchandise I had purchased in the prior 30 days.
When I got the new box, I noticed the shrink wrap was different. I always check the shrink now and often will open it after I purchase it while still at the register. I also NEVER buy the first item on the shelf, but go to one farther back.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Who's the guilty party? I don't know. I never accept anything that has a damaged box. And once, I insisted the clerk get me a new item when she dropped it on the concrete floor in front of me. And I made sure she got me a new one - watched her fro the door.
I'm sure there's folks out there who damage or steal and run back to the store saying, "Hey, I got screwed!" But it's my opinion that that's the cost of doing business and if you treat ALL of your customers as crooks, soon, you'll have none.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I love how slashdot helps the little guy. 80,000+ hits on this story will be bad advertising for corporates decision. I wonder if they think that decision was cost effective now..
If he had just waited two more years, the tiles would be twice as small and the box would hold twice as many.
I hate playing devil's advocate, but there's no way of knowing if the purchaser put the paper-wrapped tiles in the box, kept the hard drive itself at his place, then returned the box and raised a stink, or whether he was legitimately scammed. I'll agree that what the manager did was definitely criminal, regardless of anything else that happened, as the money was put forth for the transaction and already charged to his AMEX card. But there's no way of proving whether the tiles were in the box before he took the first HDD home. I certainly hope that this guy's in the right, though.
One of my friends purchased a video card from Best Buy once and after opening the box found an old sound card in its place. He was able to get the store to substitute the purchase for a new video card after raising a fair amount of hell over the problem. Recently I had to return a coffee bean grinder to the store after I found out it was defective. They asked for my name when I returned it, but I'm not sure if they'd do this if the package was unopened.
I'm assuming it's not terribly hard to pull something like this off. Simply buy something from the store, take it out of the package and substitute it for something else. Return it a few days later and tell them that you accidentally purchased the wrong item and ask for your money back or some store credit. If you put new shrink wrap around the box so that it looks completely unopened they probably won't check inside the package or think much of it. Paying in cash also eliminates a paper trail and depending on how long it takes them to restock the product and for someone else to buy it, they may not even have any surveilance footage of the person who did it. It's probably not something that's heavily repeatable, but if the store is fairly careless about returns, it's going to happen.
Anyone work at a store like Best Buy that knows how often stuff like this happens?
First of all, how do you prove that you didn't just stuff the box full of crap and try to exchange it so you could wind up with two drives for the price of one? It may be legitimate and the blame may be at some point in the supply chain at or before Best Buy, but how does one prove it? And how do you - as a retailer - not end up with a bunch of morons returning boxes that they've stuffed crap into, as well?
It would seem the only reasonable thing to do from this point on is to open a box and make sure your item is in there before leaving the store. That's what I intend to do after hearing enough of these stories. If you haven't left the store, then they can't put the blame on you and you can return it right there.
I bought a wireless mouse/keyboard combo (LogiTech brand) that was a returned product (i didn't even notice it was a returned product until customer service was inspecting it). I opened it up and it had the wrong brand keyboard/mouse in there. some third party i had never heard of. at first they were refusing to replace it. they kept saying they can't accept the return because its the incorrect product inside. i said, thats all well and good, but i'm not leaving til i either get the same product or a refund. they were unwilling to help and i kept complaining saying i'm not going to lose approx. $50 because one of their employees was too lazy to check their returns. the customer should never pay for an employee's mistake. this is one of those cases where people forget that the CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT. why are they always right? because a majority of the time, they are. You *always* give the customer benefit of the doubt. If you don't, most of the time you're turning away honest customers who will no longer shop with you and you therefore lose a lot more money as opposed to the cost of that one product. sometimes you'll scammers, but the only reason they thrive is due to lazy employees who don't check to ensure the contents are correct. it shouldn't matter if it looks unopened or not. they should always check (unless its blister packaging... thats *much* more difficult to fake). eventually they gave me a replacement product because it was way too complex of a scenario to just get a keyboard and mouse. plus there were a bunch of people on the customer service line and it was completely obvious that everyone can hear me complain that they were essentially charging me $50 because they hire lazy employees.
{ - Generic Guy - }
While I was shopping at an Office Max about a year ago, a man returned a "router" that, as he explained, was in fact a box filled with rocks. They exchanged it for him on the spot.
-Dave
Best Buy has no way of knowing whether the guy is telling the truth. But it doesn't matter.
Unless they want to have their sales slowed down by every customer insisting that a salesperson open the box before the customer leaves the store... and plugging in it... and testing it... and initialling the sales receipt... which would add about half an hour to an hour's work time to every sale... they've got to believe the customer.
At least the first time.
If they've got records that show that this customer has been repeatedly returning items, each time claiming that the factory-sealed box had worthless contents, that's another matter... but one that should be handled by legal process.
There is no set of circumstances under which what Best Buy allegedly did was appropriate.
P. S.
When she was in college, my daughter once bought an item from L. L. Bean. UPS delivered it, not to my daughter, but to the front desk of the dormitory, and got an signature that wasn't my daughter's signature and that couldn't be identified. My daughter called UPS. UPS insisted there was nothing they could/would do, they'd delivered the package and got a signature. She called L. L. Bean. They said, "Oh, that's too bad, we're sorry, we'll send another one out right away." L. L. Bean made several customers for life that day.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
1. The guy here is trying to pull a scam at Best Buy's expense, not too bright to be doing this when he could be caught rather publicly.
2. An Employee at Best Buy is helping themselves to some hardware for free and using Home Depot and a shrink wrapping machine to cover their tracks.
3. A previous customer is helping themselves to a free hard drive and they own a shrink wrap machine. (This is actually very possible and could be happeneing in this case) Even if they don't own a shrink wrap machine maybe they bought the hard drive, took it home, replaced the item with tiles, took it back and the Best Buy employee doing the return was a button pressing monkey and didn't look inside the obviously opened box.
4. Somone at the Factory is having a laugh at someone else's expense and pain.
Now if this was a previously returned Item it should have been sent back to the manufactuer, and should have been examined when returned, "Sorry sir you cannot return a box full of tiles, try Home Depot instead you dumbass!" If it was returned it shouldn't have been returned back to the floor without inspecting it, EVEN IF IT CAME BACK STILL SHRINKWRAPPED!!!!!!!!
This is why I shop for computer stuff at microcenter, No problems with Microcenter and they are pretty darn cool there as well.
They even sell hard drives that are OEM, so you can acturally see the hard drives, COOL!!!
Maybe Hard Drive Manufactuers should sell their Hard Drives with cut away boxes with plastic windows like all the other Hardware makers, even video cards come with the "Window to your product" in the box.
If it was a previous customer screwing them they had better look up all the previous RMA Hard Drive receipts and they should really scan in the serial numbers cause if this was the case they could catch the bastard that screwed over a customer and Best Buy if it is the case.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I was at Home Depot and bought a box of tiles. To my surprise, it had a hard drive in it.
Similar thing happened to me with hotels.com. Washington DC. Hotel desk claims that the reservation does not show up in the computer. But they had identical room available. 10$ cheaper to boot!. Took the room, figured the hotel is scamming hotels.com out of the commission it had to pay. The hotel charged me twice for the same room. Once through the hotels.com reservation and once again through the "new" walk-in booking. Had one charge annulled. I have a hunch they do it regularly hoping the double charge will be overlooked by busy business travelers. Made a mental note never to stay in that hotel again if I go to DC.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yeah, I remember the time I purchased a laptop only to get home and find that the box really contained a faucet...
Joking aside, I'd understand if it had been the wrong size or speed of drive in the box, or something along those lines. THAT "happens", but bathroom tiles? I mean...come on!
It still happens, even without access to a shrink-wrap machine. Blame lazy or unmotivated employees for not checking the content of returned boxes. I'd actually advocate opening all boxes in these stores on-site so that this can be addressed on the spot.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Forget the Attorney General. Contact your local District Attorney. The Manager committed robbery, possibly [guessing at this point] coerced via store security. The customer returned the item. Best Buy accepted it. The customer purchased a new hard drive, and the Best Buy Manager _Stole_ the harddrive, then cursed at the customer. I'd love to be there when this Manager is escorted out in handcuffs.
IANAL, but if Best Buy fully supports this Manager's theft of private property, does that make the corporation criminally liable?
It won't cost them a single dime in bad PR. Why? Best Buy sucks. Always has. Most big box stores are equally sucky. Everybody knows this. The people who still shop at those places are looking for what every other red-blooded American wants: CHEAP! Those people don't care about service, quality, reputation, where their money is going, etc. If they can get it cheap, they're going to continue to buy as cheap as they can, damn the consequences.
I don't respond to AC's.
This guy must be working at Best Buy now.
Why are all you sheeple insistent that this guy isn't just a scammer exploiting the system? This would be an easy exploit based on past publicized complaints, and your sympathy is apparently easily-milked.
After reading all the comments in this story, looks like one could make a killing in the stock market by shorting BB.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I have had problems with Best Buy too... When you count the vote count mine against Best Buy.
TFA states that the guy waited 15 minutes to pick up the merchandise after he already ordered it online using the "pick up in the store" option. Employees(and possibly the manager) would have had ample opportunity to switch out some components and reseal the package. Having worked similar types of jobs, neither the manager nor the employees pulling this would surprise me....
Monstar L
My mom bought a refrigerator and purchased the extended warranty. It doesn't work well - it won't balance the freezer and the fridge. So either you have liquid ice cream OR your all the stuff in your fridge is frozen solid.
They literally refused to honor their warranty. The company sent a repair person who said it was on spec. Actually, what he basically said is this was a poor design that doesn't work well. And this is not uncommon for this model. So since it's not uncommon for this model they wouldn't fix it.
Go figure...that's like saying since it's not uncommon for the breaks to fail on this model car. So we're not going to fix it under warranty because this is pretty much a standard occurrence with this car.
***
All of this being BS as my mother's upstairs tenants have the same fridge and it doesn't have any problems.
How do we know this guy isn't some nut job or scammer? He wants the attention and returned a box of tiles. Alternately he's hoping it blows up into something bigger and he gets more than just a hard drive out of it.
I find being offended by me offensive.
My experience with this process with the credit card companies is that it's far from an automatic "consumer wins" by a long stretch.
I've done this 3 times (visa and/or mc - no amex). One time I won by default (the vendor never replied apparently), the second time I lost (vendor disagreed) but I got my money back anyway as a courtesy from the credit card company (it was a small transaction, less than $50 I think), and the third time I lost and did not get my money back (vendor disagreed, case closed). Each time I had to document my claim to the best of ability, it took months to come to a conclusion. From what I can tell the vendor has the upper hand in those investigations, NOT the consumer.
The credit card companies say that claim resolution is handled by Visa and/or Mastercard so they don't control the outcome (but they are profusely sorry) so threatening to cancel your account has no effect either.
Bottom line, it's not a very good situation to be in.
Years ago, I bought an N64 game from some store (Kmart or something - not Best Buy), and when I got home I found one of the Jell-O jellatin mix tins in place of the cartridge. (They are remarkably similar in dimensions.)
Thankfully the store let me exchange it.
I can see why a store might refuse it. After all, what's to say that I wasn't the one trying to rip off the store by exchanging a tin of jelltin mix for a $65 game?
Because it is good business practice that you operate with the belief that the customer is always right. Treating customers with respect and not like they are criminal keeps them as the customer. The $100 or so for the hard drive would have been better spent making the customer happy than the thousands it will take to correct their image.
I frequently do this already. Hard for them to argue when you open it up in front of them, in front of *their* cameras.
I don't read AC A human right
My last experience buying anything from Best Buy was four or five years ago and involved their manufacturer rebates. It was a Phillips CDROM drive. Filled out the paperwork carefully, sent in the rebate forms and it was denied because they claimed they couldn't scan the UPC code...totally bogus. Wrote to Best Buy, they agreed I was due a refund and they'd contact Phillips. No check. Another letter, this time a phone call and letter, they'd get right on it. Again, no check. A third letter, just because it was becoming a contest of wills. Another agreement that I was due $30.00, another apology, and still no check.
Between that and door Nazi stories, that was the last time I set foot in a Best Buy. And it sounds like they've done nothing but swirl even further down the customer service toilet since that time.
And it was a crap drive anyway.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That looked like some pretty sweet tile, to me.
- just lost.
I eventually got 5 new drives, and a pat on the head. No data. Ten years of email, account information, business info and plans, source code, everything in my digital life. Gone. Lessons learned :- Offsite backup isn't just for big business anymore. Upload shit to your gmail account if you have to, although that doesn't sound too secure.
I know this isn't directly related to the original poster's situation, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to rant about my experience with Best Buy. They are evil. Seriously.So, I want a new hard drive, but don't want to pay for it. I go to Best Buy, get the hard drive, throw some tiles into the box and claim it came that way. Yeah, Western Digital must be a tile and hard drive company or something. I'm not trying to rip Best Buy off. Oh, and I do an exchange so it appears like I'm not stealing. Then I get two drives for the price of one! -OR- I'm pissed at Best Buy for reason X. Everyone laughed at me and called me a troll in the forums when I complained about X. So, I can create a story with no documentation. Yeah, Best Buy sold me tiles and wouldn't take them back. Those corporate goons are trying to steal from me! No one should shop there! LOL, let's see if they call me a troll this time! ----- The fact is that there is no evidence that this person isn't a crook. There is no evidence that they are a crook. Why is it likely that Best Buy is the bad party in this situation? More importantly, what happens when it gets out that you can get free hard drives from Best Buy for a few bathroom tiles? What we really need is creativity - a way to figure out accuracy and truthfulness in this situation. Yelling that Best Buy is evil (in this case) doesn't help. There is no evidence that the complainant is being truthful. If someone could establish a way of ascertaining truth in a situation like this - which currently hinges on one person's word that his hard drive was bathroom tiles when he got it - it would be really helpful for society.
I repurchased the drive and while I was checking the contents to ensure it was a hard drive this time, the store manager came up, took the box from me and said to take it up with the manufacturer.
As several commenters pointed out on consumerist.com, he's paid for it. He's the legal owner. Best Buy's manager stole his hard drive.
I stopped shopping at Best Buy like 3 years ago. The combination of high prices, crappy service, long waits to check out and online horror stories was enough for me.
I found that for almost anything BB sells you can get it online w/ overnight shipping cheaper. Only the very cheapest DVD's being a possible exception.
I don't get why this company is still in business. Do people like dealing with this kind of nightmare?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Best Buy is starting to have the same moral and ethical fabric as Circuit City. Circuit City is notorious for lies, deceit, and generally screwing over its customers.
I have not walked into a Circuit City in nearly 10+ years and since they fired everyone and hired them back at reduced pay did not do much for me to shop there either.
I am kinda curious as to why people are getting various items like ceramic tiles and empty boxes when expecting equipment from the mail-order side of Best Buy. Me thinks there is a theft and resale operation going on that Best Buy might be trying to keep under raps. I have no evidence of this but it is curious as to why this keeps happening.
After building a computer for the first time I had a power supply failure. Despite my inexperience I had come to that conclusion after some extensive testing. However, when I replaced the power supply the computer failed to boot. When my power supply had fried it took the motherboard with it. Again, this was another inexperienced conclusion, but in the end it panned out.
However, due to my lack of experience I decided to phone back Best Buy, from whom I had bought the replacement power supply. After navigating the labyrinthine phone system I finally reached the wrong support group, who forwarded me to whoever was supposed to be knowledgeable on the subject. The tech support person proceeded to ask me to do a number of things I'd done already. Finally, they reached a diagnosis.
This person, and I kid you not, explained it to me as follows.
Tech Support: "The problem is that your BIOS isn't detecting the new power supply."
Me: "Excuse me?"
Tech Support: "You'll need to reset your BIOS so that it can acknowledge the new power supply and get your computer booted."
Me: "That doesn't make any sense."
Tech Support: "I'm afraid I can't help you if you don't proceed with this next step."
Me: "Right... thanks for your help."
Tech Support: "No problem."
I proceeded to RMA the motherboard back to the supplier, installed the replacement, and everything worked fine after that. I still remain confused to this day.
Thunderclone: ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE! ONE MAN ENTERS! TWO MEN LEAVE!
Same thing happened to me back in the nineties. Tried to purchase Mario RPG from a K-Mart and when I opened it in the car it was just a block of wood and some cardboard. Had no trouble getting a refund back then though. Sadly there were no other Mario RPGS in the store.
Because only corporations and Republicans are evil. The average guy on the street is honest and law abiding.
Are you new around here or something?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Take a look at the breadth and depth of complaints at http://www.bestbuysux.org/ . If you liked 'A Clockwork Orange' you will love this site, in a 'at least this didn't happen to me' way.
I haven't had this happen to me personally, but I have a buddy who worked for Best Buy loss prevention who told me about a similar incident. Basically, someone bought a new high-end video card, took the new card out of the box, replaced with with an old crappy video card, and returned it. The customer service girl couldn't tell the different between one video card and another, so she accepted the return. My buddy told me that things like that happened all the time, and they actually had a bunch of security camera pictures on the wall of some of the people who did this. They were supposed to call the police if any of the people came back in the store.
The point is, this is something that Best Buy should know about. What is the hard drive manufacturer supposed to do about it anyway? It's a LOT more likely that someone switched out the hard drive at Best Buy than the factory.
This reminds me of when I bought a VHS player from best buy from their "clearance" table top (circa 1993). Got it home, and it contained a home-made pornographic VHS tape. Considering I was a senior in high school, and my mom was watching me hook it up in the living room, she was irate. The manager was not a happy person after my mom got through with him.
The guy missed the memo. When you want to buy something and need to see how it works in person first, such as a digital camera or other complex device, you go to Best Buy and try it out thoroughly in the store. Then once you've decided on what model you want, you go home and shop for the best price on the internet, carefully checking the reviews of the sellers you would buy from (often, after a little shopping you find there are several reliable sellers with the best price/review combinations, such as Newegg or Tiger Direct. Then, if you get a brick in the mail, you return it and/or use credit card chargeback, just as you would have to do at Best Buy.
Noone I know actually *buys* stuff at Best Buy, their customer service policies are worse than the typical internet store, and you can't really tell if anything is priced at a good deal unless you've done an incredible amount of research first (and if you have, you will likely find that Best Buy's price isn't the best deal). Also, a lot of stuff is open box "this is the last one" etc., where you may not be getting the device complete and in good condition.
Now while it's true that one of the reasons Best Buy's customer service is so crappy is that cutting corners there is their way of compensating for the fact that they have become the showroom for the internet for many people and are barely affording the brick & mortar plus staffing and can't inflate the prices any more, but they need to get with the program. A better choice would be to set up their stores with demos of everything, actually *bill* themselves as the "showroom for the internet" and charge admission to get to see products that you can't see in person online. IMHO they'd have a better chance of staying afloat. As it is, I don't expect them to be around very long...
While the PC's you damage may be repairable after your little 'prank', don't think for a moment that there would be no crime involved. IANAL, but under most jurisdictions that could qualify as either vandalism or malicious mischief.
A future employer may simply ignore an MM on your record when you were younger, but a vandalism rap (especially if you are an adult) is going to bite you big time. You had a disagreement with Best Buy (hell, they screwed you over), so your matter of dealing with it is to go start reformatting the hard drives on their display models.
To a potential employer that speaks volumes. You will be seen as a "likely future disgruntled employee".
I had a similar experience buying a DVD box set from them. The box was shrink wrapped but when I opened it up there wasn't a single disc inside. When I took it back the service rep said something similar, like, "it happens all the time". I got my replacement and all was well. I guess it's less likely for a person to want to steal a spare copy of a TV show than a second hard drive, but unless this person is in the habit of returning to the store trying to return boxes of tiles, then how can they get away with telling that person it happens sometimes, but we're not going to do anything about it, please shop with us again.
It's newsworthy stupidity just to buy a hard drive from Best Buy even when there is an actual hard drive in the box; their markup is insane.
Friends don't let Friends Buy @ Best Buy...;-)
Sig?! Sig?! We don't need no stinking sig!!
At this point, it really doesn't matter if the guy was scamming them or not. The cost of the bad press, fraudulent though it may be, far exceeds the cost of just replacing the drive. Imagine that they had taken a number of scenarios, and the cost to them at each point:
1. they hand the guy a new drive, sign off the receipt and say buh-bye. cost: ~$50 for new drive.
2. they give the guy some store credit, etc. after a bit more negotiation. cost: ~$100 for extra employee time, etc.
3. they tell him to screw off and incur a one-time cumulative loss equivalent to a day's worth of sales at just one store. This is probably in the neighborhood of a $10,000-$50,000 loss, depending on what day it happens (i.e. normal/slow day vs. a holiday).
Is it really worth even a $10000 loss to tell some guy who claims to have received floor tiles that he's "shit out of luck"?
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Is it that much more expensive to do some sort of clear packaging? Ugly from a recycling standpoint, perhaps, but if the package had a clear window to the objects inside, it would be a lot harder to disguise crap as quality.
And perhaps vendors should also weigh the returns. Shrink-wrapped items should all weigh within about 1% of the standard, other items within a few percent.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
And you took a computer without backing up to best buy, why?
You realize that even with a raid, the computer could be dropped or stolen and they are only liable for the cost of material devices, not data.
There are other lessons to learn from this that are independent of Best Buy.
This is very similar to the Rocky Ipod issue from Target store.
The issue with this would be to see who changed the real product with the rocks or tiles, was it a customer who returned the fake products or a member of staff?
Got to love those stores... that's why video-mobile phones are good for, take video while opening the product IN the store in front of someone working there.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
It doesn't matter. Even if the guy is a lying thief, the situation is still 100% Best Buy's fault. If the problem almost never comes up, then they should automatically replace his hard drive as he asks - it's the cost of doing business. If there is a suspiciously high volume of these requests, then it is up to Best Buy to make it possible for a customer to verify that he's getting what he paid for.
It is worth mentioning, as others have done, that it is unlikely a fraudster would ask a for a replacement; a refund would be much more valuable. This seems likely to be a simple ripoff by Best Buy.
"The good reader is a rarer swan than the good writer."
More and more places in the US accept Amex, though not nearly as many as Visa, sadly. Their merchant terms are harsh on smaller businesses, apparently. I still like to use mine when I can, and use cash or check card when they don't take Amex.
The good new for him (as pointed in out in several of the comments in the original article) is that he used his Amex to pay for it. Both my wife and I have had occasion in the past to dispute charges made on our Amex cards, and in all cases Amex resolved it to our satisfaction.
By contrast, I tried the same thing with a Discover card and their attitude was "too bad".
That's why I try to use my Amex if there's any chance I might want to return something.
I worked at a CompUSA while goin to school. We had a guy buy an expensive camera and come back later saying there was a pair of 6 volt batteries in it (the big brickish ones with the coil contacts).
Our front end supe exchanged it. I dunno how, but the operations manager found out and somehow found the guy selling the same camera on eBay (I think he filled out the credit card app and his e-mail addy matched his eBay userID, not sure though). When she called the cops, it turns out they'd had already been lookin' at him for doin' the same thing at Circuit City and Best Buy across town.
I remember the ops manager saying she had follow up calls from the police to get her statement for evidence, so I'm assuming he got busted.
No sig for you!!
did this happen in, get the name of the city on here and get your local newspaper/ tv station a link to this article. A focused attack on a single store (and it's manager) could have a bigger effect on the corporate decision making. Think of it this way, 1000 customers lost from 1000 stores = not a big deal. 1000 customers lost from 1 store = that store could lose some money, causing corporate to take notice. Of course I have no idea how Best Buy's decision making machinery works, but if one of my stores was losing a large amount of customers, vs. all of my stores losing a couple, I would take note and find the problem. Just one small businessman's opinion
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
Somebody think of the poor tile installer, who almost finished the bathroom only to find hard drives where his tiles should be.
Before switching careers mid life I worked for several retail establishments, including doing loss prevention major metropolitan district.
Bricks/Tiles do get placed into packages for return, I've seen a router box repacked with a ziplock bag of dirt, I've seen a Macintosh computer
returned with cinder blocks in it.
That being said someone mess up here, I've returned items to Best Buy, given that most of what I buy there amounts to storage and peripherals for my various toys I've
noticed that they at least give a momentary glimpse as to the contents of the box, serial number and/or model numbers are matched etc.
Recently I noticed that Best Buy also tags returned items with a 'license plate' (their name) tag that presumably tracks the life of that item from return to restock and subsequent resale.
Expensive small stock on shelves at Best Buy typically have those annoying wire alarm devices to prevent opening/repackaging instore.
So given the above scenario:
1. The drive was in the box when purchased and a fast one is being pulled on Best Buy, I applaud them for standing up to this as its a rare day indeed when it happens with the support of Corp.
2. The drive wasn't in the box when purchased and this customer is getting the shaft, this leads to three other possibilities.
a. The drive was swapped in store by an employee (this is more often the case than you would believe).
b. The drive was swapped in store by a customer.
c. The Box of tiles was swapped by a previous customer and returned.
OK, so given the 3 options A and C are most likely, B would be a why bother, not suggesting a thief is smart but the more time spent manipulating a package the better chance you have to get caught, replacing tiles in a box would have been done in comfort somewhere I imagine, a back stock room, a bath room, a house.
If it was secured by an alarm and swapped in store thats an employee,
If it was returned by a customer with tiles in box thats the fault of the customer, the customer service rep as they were unable to follow a very simple procedure
to insure this kind of thing doesn't happen. (license plate, model/serial check).
I have seen managers deal with this kind of problem in much the same way, tell the customer tough and reinforce the rules to avoid this again, why?
Managers are quite often held accountable for shrink (nice term, unaccounted for stock losses, assumed to be theft but sometimes just crappy accounting)
either for continued employ and/or bonuses, its these bonuses that lead to funny accounting, during a slow quarter a hard drive could make the difference during a busy one it amounts to almost nothing.
after saying this I have a couple of questions for the original poster:
1. Was it a previous return at discount?
2. Was it in a locked/cable wrap?
did you report this to the Police in your area? technically its fraud either way, either you misrepresented your return or the store misrepresented an item they sold you, if I put a Porsche emblem on a Honda and sell it as a Porsche, well, you get the picture.
Best of luck to you on this, if the local managers and Corp were willing to do this they believe (right or wrong) that they have a defensible position and that you will just 'go away'
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
On Slashdot, unemployed European trolls insult YOU-ess-a.
For those of you Americans seeking relief from the incessant barrage, watch this "Euro Guy" skit: http://www.nbc.com/Late_Night_with_Conan_O'Brien/video/index.shtml#mea=170820.
I'm certain all major retailers have beefed up their security systems in light of the TJ Maxx debacle. Nevertheless, I don't actually care about their security failures. I only give them enough information for someone to use my credit card, not to steal my identity. Because I also check my credit card statements like a hawk (yay for online banking!!!), and because my credit card company will eat the loss, I am not that concerned if Best Buy lost my credit card info.
I am really concerned about stores that have your personal information such as your home address and the like. I never part with that information unless I have to do so (doctor, etc.)
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
To hell with contacting the AG. I'd consider that strong arm robbery, and take it upon myself to protect my property. Best Buy & the manager would both be facing lawsuits as well.
Well actually, there's no burden of proof, whoever has more power wins. That's the corporate priviledge.
I personally find it hard to believe that a Best Buy manager would say anyone was "sh** out of luck." It makes me doubt the objectivity of the article and the opinions in it.
Anyone with some creativity, a shrink-wrapping machine and an axe to grind could PR-bomb Best Buy or any other vendor they don't like. This is particularly true with technology products, since they often cost a lot and take up a small amount of space (cell phones, games, movies, the list goes on and on).
I'm not saying someone didn't get duped or treated unfairly, but as a Manager I know when someone loses their temper I have a harder time believing their story and/or wanting to help them (all other things being equal, that is).
From my experience and observation on both sides of the counter, civility and politeness are appropriate 99.5% of the time. This does not mean one has to be a carpet and get walked on. It does mean we can be assertive, articulate, persistent and *still* be polite; it very often yields better results. At the very least it allows one to maintain a degree of personal and professional integrity that almost always pays off in the long run.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
I RTFA'd, and saw no mention of the physical condiditon of the box when he picked it up. If it was a bad box, or torn shrink wrap I'd ask the employee to hang on and open it in front of the employee to confirm its contents.
Not to be cynical, but I'm betting he got a return that had been hastily rewrapped instore, and restocked by an employee who helped a buddy out by returning the "harddrive", so said buddy could get the HD and still make rent or buy a game.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Most likey the purchaser of the box full of tiles is a legitimate customer, who is suffering from the actions of a previous scam artist. After working in retail security for several years I have seen DVD burners returned with wooden logs inside, and iPod boxes returned with bars of soap in them. The scammer will purchase an item, remove it, place anything inside to match the weight, and seal it up as cleanly as possible. The scammer returns the box, gets their money back, and the product goes right back onto the salesfloor (without being opened and checked). It sits on the salesfloor until some unfortunate HONEST customer purchases it, and watches as their 12 year old daughter unwraps her brand new Apple iPod which turns out to be a bar of Dial soap. This honest customer then gets to deal with the headache of returning it and trying to explain what happened. In my experience, the store was always obligated to refund these mystery boxes when they get brought back because the store has zero proof of who initially swapped the merchandise out in the first place. Rather then hassle this customer (assuming he doesn't have a long suspicious history of returns like this), Best Buy should be telling their return department to be more diligent about checking items that are returned "as new". This type of scamming activity is leading many retail stores to begin requiring photo ID when returning items, and limiting how many returns can be processed per ID per year.
It is theft and scam. I hope Best Buy tracks down the assholes that are doing this and pass the "costs" down on them + a nice visit to police station in cuffs + nice fine and restitution.
This is actually a case *for* unique ids like RFID to be implemented everywhere. At least that way you would be able to track down the asshole that stole from Best Buy and the guy in question. Now it is still possible, but will take time. I'm sick and tired that Best Buy should "eat it". The thief should be the one that eats the damn tiles.
As for the guy that ended up with garbage (if BestBuy didn't do the right thing, as they didn't seem to),
1. file a police report
2. chargeback credit card
3. contact drive manufacturer and report that the drive in question was stolen -- this at least voids warranty on the drive
4. if new drive is not handed over by Best Buy (show them police report), add to the police report that they stole your new drive
5. if Best Buy continue to not hand over the drive, sue them for selling you a brick (small claims) + taking money for it + ALL your time you lost + court filing fees. Just do not exaggerate your time - judges don't like that.
Unfortunately, theft like this hits us all in the pocketbooks all the way from customers up to Best Buy shareholders.
As to parent, I don't know what "people" you hang around with that "do this all the time". Sounds like a bunch of assholes to me.
Always ALWAYS ALWAYS check the contents of any boxed item BEFORE you leave the store, no matter whether Best Buy, Circuit City, Micro Center, CompUSA or wherever. Do it right in front of the door goons so they can see it too.
I have been making a practice of this ever since I once bought an expensive Adaptec SCSI card at a CompUSA when I thought the box felt kinda funny. The store manager happened to be up front with the door goon and I opened up the perfectly shrink-wrapped box in front of him to find a cheap ISA bus serial card in place of the SCSI card. The manager apparently had been suspicious of one of his employees stealing stuff from the store and using the store's shrinkwrap machine to repack the boxes with rubbish, and he called the cops to have his suspect employee arrested and I got my money immediately refunded with a profuse apology, but I never went back to that particular store again.
Decent Job. Huge employee discount. I generally enjoyed the people I met and worked with, plenty of them on the lower employee level were your run-of-the-mill technophile, although I still feel the core of the business is hindered by the mountains of procedural and bureaucratic garbage that is claimed to be beneficial to increased profits. I mean, is it really necessary to have an acronym for every phrase ever thought up, much worse, to have each employee be forced to memorize all of said acronyms. On the inside, they will come up with blatantly retarded schemes, forcing us to read countless step by step instructions on how to persuade somebody to buy a product they don't really need. I watched a fellow employee sell a $3500 Dual Core, 2gb DDR2, TV Tuner Card, RAID 1+0 PC to a little old lady who only needed email and internet.
The sad thing is these business practices happen in all levels of retail. It is just particularly bad with big box tech retailers because they end up burying themselves in pointless 'optimization', 'streamlining', and 'capitalizing' procedures that end up creating more loopholes for the employees to go through.
This story is quite believable. All the CSA's working returns rarely ever checked the boxes out of sheer laziness. They were either too preoccupied with in-house drama or their next break. Businesses like this need to take the time to hire qualified employees, pay them better, and fire them if they lie, scam, oversell, suggest pointless items, and scheme customers. I know we live in a capitalistic dog-eat-dog economy, but wouldn't you think a business that supported quality customer service would be much more profitable????? I know I would shop there.
If only NewEgg sold out of brick 'n' mortar stores...
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
First, it is completely irrelevant how the drive disappeared, so long as that happened before you buy the item. This is Best Buy's problem -- not the manufacturer's, or anyone else's. Second, you shouldn't have to prove anything -- as long as you are willing to sign a police report or an affadavit of some sort. In court, sworn testimony is considered the best kind of evidence.
In this situation, I would call the police department. This is simple theft by deception (on Best Buy's part). I would also dispute the transaction with the credit card company. While someone certainly scammed Best Buy, that does not give them the right to scam you. Opening up the package and inspecting it is not the answer. Even if you remove the drive from the antistatic packaging and compare serial numbers, a scammer could potentially take an older drive, remove the labels, and print counterfeit new ones. It is not that difficult to find a thermal label printer.
This is also why it's a much better idea to buy these items online. Online retailers generally have much stricter return policies, and you are much less likely to get someone's broken drive. In fact, I see no justification whatsoever for having a return policy for non-defective items, especially delicate electronic components. This is also Best Buy and Western Digital's fault for not having appropriate tamper-proof packaging for their products. The older plastic bubble packs they used were annoying to open, but would have prevented this situation.
It is quite possible that the packaging line for Western Digital Hard Drives is very close to the packaging line for Western Digital Kitched Tiles, so they just swapped the boxes by accident...
The whole world does translate around me, however.
Prevent retail stores from re-selling returned products as new. This happens all the time. I am sure that at least a number of items I've bought from Circuit City and/or Best Buy were returns. I've kept them 1/2 the time as they worked, and were at good prices. But I've begun to suspect that many of these 60% priced items are undeclared return sales items.
I almost believe that there might need to be a national registry of returned items for any goods over $100. You could go look up your serial number and see if it was registered as a return. Failure to register a return would result in a criminal act. And if the item is resold would incur even stiffer penalties. In fact, reselling an return undeclared would be considered theft. If the product was over $1,000 could result in Grand Larceny charges.
When I was working at Compusa as a lead cashier I had something very similar happen. Guy comes in with a hard drive box, and claimed that inside was an older drive instead of the new drive he had purchased. However, instead of telling the guy he was out of luck, it took all of sixty seconds of research to find that the supposed WD hard drive had already been purchased and returned 'unopened'. Then we talked to the other lead who had done the first return, and he mentioned that while the box had been shrink wrapped, he could tell it was opened and resealed (stores do this when an item has the outer seals removed but the inner contents are still unopened, so it registered as being unusual but not completely uncommon to the lead). After that the general manager gave the customer the benefit of the doubt and gave him the drive he was supposed to have purchased.
The best part, however, is that it didn't end there. The general manager continued looking into the case as I went back to work doing returns etc. Around five minutes later, he walks out and tells me that some kid would be coming in to hand in the stolen hard drive. Turns out the retard had used fake info on the return slip, but had gotten an extended warranty on another item purchased at the same time as the hard drive, and THAT had his real info. So the GM called him up and told him to have the drive back in the store within the hour or his next visitors would be the boys in blue. Maybe 20 minutes later, a teenager walks in and hands me the drive, looking like he was expecting the cops to drop down off the ceiling on his ass. Instead he got a "Don't ever let us catch you in the store again."
The moral of the story? A little bit of detective work can leave everyone that should be happy, happy, and save your store from negative publicity that will hurt far more than the loss of a single hard drive.
A few years back, I bought a couple of shrink wrapped USB webcams from CompUSA. One box was just fine. The other box contained a piece of pipe and a roll of toilet paper (OK, vultures ... a straight line. Queue the wisecracks).
... period. If they don't like the delay, they can either supply me with a signed letter saying they'll take it back no questions or they can sod off. Caveat emptor.
I stressed about the fact that there was absolutely NO proof regarding my version of the story. Fortunately, the CS rep just took it back with no grief.
As a result, however, I now open every shrink wrap in BB, Circuit City, whatever
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
Bought a shrinkwrapped All-In-Wonder video card at one of those big-box stores, opened it up, and found an ancient ATI card from years ago inside. Either they re-wrapped a returned card and sold it as new (not legal), or there was an inside job by an employee.
Fortunately for me, the manager let me return it (I had never returned anything I bought from them before, so maybe that helped). Nowadays, whenever I go shopping for computer parts (or small-and-pricey things in general), if the box doesn't have a transparent window or some sort of manufacturer's seal (beyond shrinkwrap, which is too easy to re-do), then as soon as I pass the checkout counter, I tell the cashier that I'm going to take a peek inside. I step back a little so I don't block the next customer, and I open the box right there before exiting the store.
I don't see why you'd need RFIDs to track down the person returning rubbish. Most stores I've been to take your address when you return something, so if someone is scamming, it should be easy for the store to track down the person by looking up the serial number on the box.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
I purchased some items from Monarch Computer before they went tits-up. Some of it arrived, but the PSU wasn't anywhere to be seen other than 'Back Order' I called again and found the number wasn't working. I went to the site and it looked in dis-repair. "Uh oh" They had charged my card immediately upon order, not upon shipping as is usual practice. I checked a few forums and the concensus was they wear shut down. I contacted American Express, they granted a refund on my account immediately and then took it up with Monarch. They got their money back from Monarch and notified me in about 6 weeks. If I'd paid with a MO or PayPal transfer I'd have been S.O.L.
New, unopened shrink-wrapped box from Costco. I get home and there's no game inside. Just the manual.
When I went to return it, they had to get the manager and conferred in the manager's office for a few minutes before coming out to give me a refund. I'm pretty sure spending over $10,000 in the past year had something to do with getting my refund. (Yes, I have the 2% cash back executive card. And yes, it was all from personal purchases.)
Camping on quad since 1996.
This is why I don't feel bad about shoplifting.
No, just call the police. Demand the return of your property and that you still want to press charges. Theft isn't a no harm no foul crime. Then call the local tv stations consumer reports line.
This was back during the days when Apple actually gave you accessories with your purchase of an iPod. I opened the box in the parking lot and there was a bottle of baby talcum powder, a pack of playing cards, and a little rubber pig piggy bank. The store recognized the shrink wrapping as being counterfeit and used the contents as an example at the returns counter so employees would look a little more closely at returns.
Die First, Then Quit
For the next year, or so, go to Best Buy, tell someone you're considering buying something, and then relate what happened to you, and say you'll only buy on the condition that they'll allow you to open the packaging to verify that the contents are complete and accurate.
Then, once the box is open, and they can no longer sell it to someone else as new, tell them you've "changed your mind" or "have to think about it". Then go to Circuit City, Fry's, or whatever, and buy it there instead if you really want it.
Do that at least once a week, or as often as you buy stuff.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
How's UPS doing?
You won two out of three of the transactions, and that's without even knowing about the merits of your case. Sounds alright to me.
I currently use a personal American Express card that is tied to my corporate account. I rack up huge job-related expenses on a regular basis (about $3,000 a month) so in addition to racking up lots of cashback credit, American Express also treats me pretty well when I have a complaint. But to tell the truth, I never had a problem with MasterCard at all when I used it. The thing is that I would never abuse the system at all. My cases are always pretty straightforward--either I was double-charged, or the waiter gave himself a $50 tip on a $25 meal, or I have an e-mail from the CSR saying my account would be credited and it wasn't.
But overall, you're far better using a credit card than paying in cash for any transaction over $50. At this point, I use my credit card for anything over $20. It also helps me set my budget. With online banking, I can see exactly how much I've been spending so I can ease off for a while. With cash, it's hard to keep track of exactly where all your money went.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
My first guess would be that it was a return that was unchecked, or one that was re-shrink-wrapped and then returned (so they couldn't check).
In either case, I'm hoping the poster bought it was Visa (one word: chargeback). But what I'm wondering at the moment is if there is a way to tell if the item was a return?
Open-boxes are easy, but how about a (supposedly) unopened-box return, or one that has been re-shrink-wrapped? Is the store obligated to put an indicator that his item was a return, and/or do they have it somewhere in the computer?
Personally, I think there should be a requirement for them to track returns and at the least have a sticker or something that lets the customer know the item was previously purchased, supposedly "unopened" or not!
First, the scam works the other way. You buy in cash and then do a return/exchange later (after which, you have two or more products). If you end up making a fuss in the store (as happened here), you'd end up like this, or at worst, arrested.
Anyhow, my guess would actually be a store employee having done this, especially if the dates on the drive are true. After all, they should have a shrink wrap machine, there'd be no return at all to trace back to them, and you leave some other customer hosed. The only good thing is that being too greedy (and petty crooks like this are ALWAYS too greedy...) should get him or her caught by the store and quietly prosecuted. The victims won't likely get much help, though. They're SOL except that they can issue chargebacks.
That said, if there was a return, it'd have been the guy before this. It's just the way the scam works. You don't make a fuss like this unless you're innocent, because drawing attention to yourself is exactly the sort of thing that'd get you caught. Yes, crooks are that dumb, but they're dumb in different ways. They'll avoid attention but get too greedy in pulling the scam too many times. Smart stores will start checking returns a lot better. And life will go on.
A while back, Small Dog Electronics shipped one of their customers an iPod box with only a bar of Irish Spring soap inside. Here's how their Customer Service department handled it:
http://consumerist.com/consumer/customer-service/no-ipod-soap-210348.php
That is similar to what my father does: he has them open the package if it's one of those that requires a utility knife and some heavy cutting. He also leaves the packaging at the store, so they can deal with it. It sends the message: less packaging, easier to open. It'd also guard against this problem.
I bought a hard drive from Best Buy. It was remarkably cheap, and there was only one box on the shelf. This box was open, but eager to get a bargain, I grabbed it, and peeked inside to make sure there was a drive in it.
There was so I checked out.
When I got home I opened the box and found a old used 6GB drive instead of the 80GB that the box label said.
Those motherfuckers would not refund or even listen to me.
I took it to small claims, won, partly because the process server messed up and they were a no show in court.
The collection process was a bitch and I was busy with work so I let it slide, just like a rebate.
Some pimply punk store employee must have made the swap and put the box on the shelf. Although, it might have been a manager, because of the suspiciously low price.
Bottom line:
Fuck Best Buy
stop being an idiot and go troll somewhere else
I knew a guy once who bought a new VCR (this was quite a while back, yes) from wal-mart, took it home, carefully removed the packing tape on the underside of the box, took out the new VCR and replaced it with his old broken one, resealed the tape, and took it back to the store. He got a refund. They never opened it to check - and why would they? It looked unopened. So yes, there are a$$hats out there who do this sort of thing. What sucks about it is that they don't realize (or perhaps don't care) that while on the surface it looks like you're sticking it to the man, in reality you're sticking it to your fellow man. Quite different, and not very good for your karma. :-) The only way to really stick it to these stores is not to shop there.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
And that is why the business should believe the customer, lacking any specific reason not to. Most customers are honest. A business can either cater to this majority, or put policies in place that prevents a minority from scamming them, but that also turn honest customers away or make them less respectful of your business and more likely to short change you. I wouldn't be surprised if customer-trusting policies even turned away dishonest customers (to places like Best Buy that almost ask to be ripped off).
Last year I tried to purchase a laptop at a Best-Buy (tm) store, advertised as on-sale. Since it was no longer a "display" model, the only way for me to test-pilot the laptop would be to open the box.
So naturally, I asked the sales droid to open the box, whereupon I was told that the box could not be opened unless the item was purchased first -- and if I didn't like it there would be a 10% restocking fee in order to return my "purchased" laptop.
I was at my local Best Buy (Only big tech store around) and decided to buy Guild Wars and so I took it home opened it up, I already had the client downloaded so I made a new account although it said that my serial number had already been used! So I contacted Guild Wars support and they told me to take it back to Best Buy, thankfully after reading the e-mail Best Buy gave me a new game without the serial number being used, however I suspect that the box would just be re-shrinkwrapped and given to someone else who would have the same problem.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
When a company gets it right the first time, I'm relieved. When they get it wrong and make a yeoman's effort to fix it to my satisfaction, I'm amazed.
Also, with the data mining that a store like Best Buy has available to it, tracking cheats should be a no-brainer. Most people pay by credit or check, we know they're already tracking us by that sort of thing, just run the numbers when a customer has a return and see if there's been any fishy activity. One or two returns in the past five years, let it slide, five or ten, you might be on to something here.
This is just more typical "the customer is always a thief" bullshit. Wanna check my receipt at the door? It's for my security and protection, naturally.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Back when the Circuit city opened near me, you would purchase your equipment and they would send it down a conveyor to the sales floor. I purchased an Olympus 720UZ. As a consumer perhaps I take it for granted in assuming that everything will be in the box so I accept some responsibility. When I was walking out the door of circuit city I tripped dropping the box. When I got out to the car I opened the box to make sure that nothing was broken only to find out there was no camera in the box. I had to call Circuit City almost daily before they would replace it. Inside theft is a larger problem that corporate offices often dismiss. If I had not of tripped or dropped the box and left the store property, I'm betting that I would not have been so fortunate in getting my money back, and some employee would have the camera I paid for, and the store would still have my money. It does happen, and if your unlucky enough to have it happen to you, it does suck.
I went to the Holyoke, MA Best Buy to buy a Canon Powershot camera. As I handed over my credit card the salesman started the high-pressure extended warranty pitch. I can generally stop such, but this guy was amazing.
Him: Do you want the extended warranty?
Me: No, I never buy those. Let's just finish the transaction.
Him: Buy why don't you want it?
Me: I don't care to discuss my reasons. Can we go on?
Him: Do you think it's too much money? Maybe we can do a deal.
Me: No, I positively do not want it. Please stop discussing it and finish the transaction.
Him: But why wouldn't you want it?
Me: I never buy them. Listen, I want to talk with your manager. I don't want to be harassed with this sales pitch any longer.
Him: Man, it's not a pitch! I always buy the warranty. What a lot of hassle it has saved me!
Me: (Loudly): Is there a manager in the store? A manager?
Him: You are making a disturbance. What is the matter with you?
Me: What is the matter with me is that I am tired of you. I want to talk with your boss.
(Manager arrives)
Manager: What is the problem here?
Me: I have repeatedly told this salesman to stop pushing the extended warranty on me, but he will not shut up about it.
Manager: We sell all of these cameras with extended warranties.
Me: But I am not buying it. Now can we finish the transaction?
Manager: Let me tell you why you ought to have the extended warranty and then you will understand.
Me: That's a lost sale, pal. (Walked out of store.)
I'll bet there are a LOT more like this.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
I have been reading consumerist (and have read enough of the best buy sucks' archives) long enough over the years to realize that I should avoid "Best" Buy with all extreme prejudice. It amazes me that people continue to do business there. Don't spend your hard earned dollars there. Seriously. Really.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
I recently bought a SATA hard drive from Best Buy. It was shrink-wrapped and everything, but I got home and inside was a nice old, used, IDE drive. I took it back and they let me exchange it, fortunately. They really need to do better about checking their returns... I'd go somewhere else, but the town where I live doesn't have a lot of alternatives.
"As to parent, I don't know what "people" you hang around with that "do this all the time". Sounds like a bunch of assholes to me."
Well it was a bunch of 13 year old kids on BBSs in the 80s. So yea they where a bunch of assholes or teenagers take your pick.
It all seemed dishonest to me and frankly not worth the risk if you got caught. When my drive finally did fail I just bought a new one for like $80.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This is also one reason why you can often haggle better if you're paying cash - if a card company takes 5% (totally hypothetical figure), then you could pay 5% less in cash and the store wouldn't lose out at all compared to if you'd used a card.
Remember the Spaghetti Sauce in place of the Sony HD video camera from last fall. I just happen to be related to them. All we could do was laugh. How could a $1500 camera be replaced by a jar of sauce? I wasn't present at the time but my brother and his wife took the 'package' back to the store. They spent over two hours arguing with management and all they said was 'Sorry there is nothing we can do for you.'
Personally, I believe it was Best Buy inside job. There was a Best Buy "15% restocking fee" sticker conveniently placed over the Sony factory sticker. Of course you were unable to tell if it was tampered with prior to Best Buy recieving it from Sony. HMMM... Management said it doesn't appear to be tampered with. You can only argue with idiots for so long before it gets to frustrating. I would call them ignorant but it doesn't look like they have learned from it.
Someone at Sony got wind of it and contacted my bro. They sent him a new Camera *Factory Sealed* within a week. All they wanted in return was the jar of sauce (which made national news by this point.)
As for disputing it with the credit company. I think it was on Best Buy's credit card. They wanted to get the money back and then send Sony a check directly. Of course the dispute was denied.
All the local channels were covering it. My friend heard it on CBS national radio. The video story on CNN.com even beat out Paris Hilton's video for a day! By this point Best Buy wanted to make it right and decided to send them some 'Gift Cards'. Of course my brother refused them. All they wanted was there money back so they could send it to Sony.
I imagine the tiles weighed almost exactly the same as the HDD and the other contents. The jar of sauce and electrical outlet cover and phone cord where within a few ounces of the Camera weight. Somebody knows what they are doing and has the time and access.
Either way. 'The customer is always right.' 99% of customers are honest. It only takes that 1% to screw it up for everybody. My brother and his wife are the most honest people on the planet. I know there are plenty of skeptics out there. So what can you do? oh well it's done.
~berg76
I've had the exact opposite experience. I ordered some DVDs and CDs online from betamonline.com through Google Checkout (I had never heard of them before, but found them through Google Checkout and they had the lowest price for the combination of stuff I wanted to buy). Anyway, they shipped it through USPS and it arrived at my apartment around 4pm, but by the time I got home around 6 or 7 it was gone. I contacted betamonline, google, the post office, and my credit card company; but no one would help me out. The post office claimed that the mailman made a judgment call that the porch was a safe place to leave a package, therefore they had no liability. My credit card has theft insurance on goods purchased with the card, but they claim because it was left outside the apartment ("out of arm's reach" I think was the phrase in the contract) it wasn't covered. The retailer claimed that since the package was successfully delivered they would have nothing more to do with it. And with Google it was pretty much impossible to get someone to talk with me.
So according the the post office, the porch was a safe place to leave the package so they weren't responsible; while according to my credit card company, the porch wasn't a safe place to leave the package so they also weren't responsible. If you take the cold black/white point of view of the situation's chain of responsibility then you could claim that none of the companies were responsible, but that's horrible customer service. If just one of the companies had stood up and taken the initiative to correct the problem they would have gained a customer for life (I guess the post office has me for life anyway, which explains their horrible service).
It's really more their loss than mine; I decided to repurchase the goods from a different retailer, without Google Checkout, with a different credit card, and with UPS instead of USPS; and will now avoid them as much as possible in the future.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
I have been in situations like this and I did open the packages right there at the register. It takes them extra time before the register is free, but we are all clear that I'm getting the advertised product.
I've most often done this with video cards which look re-wrapped to make sure all the parts are in the box.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Brick, mortar, tiles, whatever is heavy and cheap to put in there.
I have been avoiding Best Buy for a while now. Too bad, because they
just put one in my area.
Open everything you buy before you even pay for it. I do.
01/20/09
My story is indirectly relevant. Back in undergrad, I was writing a research paper and had checked out a stack of books from the main library - probably about half a dozen. When I was done with them, I returned them. A few weeks later, I got a letter stating that I had never returned one of them, and that they were going to charge me a standard fee of $205. Now I knew that I had returned this book; I distinctly remembered doing it, and all the other ones had been returned, but since I had just dropped them all in the return bin and didn't have a receipt, I had no way to prove anything. I talked to a circulation person, and they conducted a "search," which took a few more weeks; eventually they told me they were going to not charge me the fee as a one-time act of mercy, even though they hadn't found the book. (Incidentally, I later found the book on the shelf where I had checked it out. I guess someone just didn't properly check it in).
Ever since that time, I always got return receipts for books - except once. It was a Sunday, and I was leaving town and had to turn in a book. So, I filmed myself returning the book - clearly caught the book cover, title, author, etc., and myself, and the book going into the return chute. Also had a friend state the date and time, etc. Sure, it might not have held up in a court, but it would've given the circulation people something to think about if they claimed that I hadn't returned it.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
He can just resell the brick tiles on eBay as modified iPhones...
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
The easy solution is to rip open every returned product and check it before processing the refund. Costs time and money to Best Buy, further driving brick and mortar prices up.
When a man lies he murders a part of the world.
They without question will ship you a new product if you say you didn't get the one you ordered. I just hope people don't abuse that. The only thing I buy from Best Buy is DVDs and I try to avoid that if possible.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
I'll go to Staples or NewEgg before I go to Best Buy. How else would the tiles get there? It's clearly Best Buy's mistakes and that is known as price gouging, for the customer paid the money and didn't get what he paid for. They started to fix the problem, but before it got done, they pulled a bait and switch in the customer's face? No, you do NOT tell a customer that you'll fix the problem, then get 99% through the procedure only to abort. BAD Best Buy, BAD!!! Screw that, Best Buy is on my boycott list.
I'm sure the guy has a receipt that states he paid for a hard drive. Best Buy delivered a box full of tiles. At worst, this is fraud.
It shouldn't be the client's responsibility to make sure he really gets the product he has paid for. That responsibility belongs to the store.
Not being American, I was wondering what is the store's policy on accepting returns. I mean if this guy really has got some tiles from his box, it means someone must have returned a box full of tiles to the store without any problems. I live in Finland and I do not know of any store that would accept returns without looking trough the contents of the box first and checking that all the necessary parts are there. I know that some people can be lazy, but c'mon atleast have enough respect for the clients that you open the box and take a look inside, lasts only 10-15 seconds pretty much prevents these kind of cases from happening.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
You can track down all the people that _may_ have involved in this, but how can you be sure it was the last guy who returned it that did it? Could it have been someone working at BestBuy? So you still wouldn't have any hard evidence without actually inspecting the content of the box at the right time. And if BestBuy had a proper inspection process in place and had trained all the staff to follow it, this wouldn't have happened, and we wouldn't need RFIDs to begin with.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
he probably has queued his employer in a lawsuit filing ?
Read radical news here
Makes a good point in favor of RFID chips in equipment don't it, that would protect both parties in situations like this.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In many states you can order the credit card company to reverse payment for "non-delivery" of service. The credit card company will likely do it without a grunt, since they just take the money back from the merchant. If they refuse, you can just point to the contract/state law that you are allowed to do this.
Tell the manager: "Fine I will be calling my credit card company and denying authorization for that charge"
It is now the stores problem.
And mastercard can throw its weight around
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
That was the most retarded shit I have ever read. Just because some people don't pay on time and have a large amount of debt doesn't meant a credit card is a viable option for me. Please, don't ever quote this crap again.
Long ago I worked in retail computer sales, and I had someone come in and ask to see a particular piece of software. There was only one copy on the shelf, which they asked me to open and show them, so I opened it for them, installed the software, and spent a half hour or so showing them around the software. This was back in the day when most customers didn't know anything about computers, so I ended up teaching people fairly often, so I didn't mind that part. Then, when I asked whether they wanted it, they said that they didn't want the copy that I'd opened for them, because it was a present for someone. When I pointed out that they'd asked me to open the box for them, they stuck to their guns and refused to buy the copy that they'd asked me to open, because it was open.
Yes, I'm not proud to admit it, but in the face of that "Catch 22" I told them that I'd check the inventory in the back, carried the box out to the shrink wrapping machine, re-wrapped it, came back and sold it to them. Luckily they didn't ask where the other box was.
On that front, I had many customers come in, get my recommendations for software, have me give demo's, even have me train them on the basics of the software, then not buy. That's all fine. But then they would come back in, clearly having bought the software mail order, and have the nerve to ask me more questions. I like helping people, but that's just insulting!
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Exhibit A
...on the newcomers.
buying from best buy is like accidentally going to 'random anal violation night' at the S&M club.
The only ones enjoying themselves are the staff (at the suffering of the clientel), you leave regretting your decision to come, in great pain, and with significantly less money in your wallet than when you came.
Well, no; what they really like are customers who don't know how to pay off their bill every month. Frequency of use and credit limit are only useful indicators insofar as they lead to partially or unpaid bills and actual interest; there are some who use a lot with a high limit who do pay off in full all the time - credit companies hate them because there's no money to be made. For most cases, it probably just costs less to side with the consumer.
(Didn't click the more comments link repeatedly, maybe somebody else already wrote this; but whatever.)
Everyone is so quick to jump on the hate-BBY bandwagon, without thinking about what they would do in the situation. I have been in the situation, and plain and simple, it's a call on whether THAT manager believes or doesn't believe THAT customer. 90% of the customers that claim the wrong item in the box are flat-out lying, and when we said we didn't believe them they walk out, usually quickly. You can usually tell when someone is lying or not, so I definetly won't jump the gun and blame Best Buy.
The best way to prevent this is to stress that your CSR's are checking any package thoroughly. This isn't a Best Buy thing, it's a judging someone's claim thing. I guarantee you they would have looked up that customer's purchases and if he was a consistent customer they would take it back, no questions asked. If they had no history on him and he looked shady to begin with, they might do what they did here.
As to the Geek Squad charging $59 dollars to even touch someone's computer, it's called liability. They used to look at anyone's machine and then tell you what prices would be, but when you are a billion-dollar bullseye for scammers, you need to realize that whenever you come into possession of someone else's property, you have a potential lawsuit for anything that customer says. I've heard all types of garbage from people trying to get free stuff.
"Hi, Ms. xxx, it looks like you have a bad hard drive." "My hard drive was fine before I'm not paying for that." "Ok then, you can come pick it up." "No, you are replacing it because it wasn't bad before..."
In the case of a CD-ROM that was stuck, I doubt anyone I used to work with would charge a diag fee for that, but that's the policy. When you get burned by alot of people wanting free work all the time, that's how it is. A few scammers mess it up for everyone just like this guy got screwed because scammers continually try to pull this. You stick a paper clip in someone's drive to get out a busted cd-rom, they love you. Next week, cd-rom stopped working again and they blame you for sticking a paper clip in it.
Since I no longer live back home on the west coast, I don't have access to a Frye's or any other real computer store. There aren't even mom and pop computer stores out here in the Denver area. So, I've shopped at Best Buy a few times. They've been great about returns. One time I bought the $400 Robosapien as a gift for someone. Within hours, I realized what a stupid piece of crap it was and returned it the next day for a full refund. I bought a set of speaker stands and found out they weren't the right ones. Returned them (even though the package was not resealable) for a full refund with no hassle.
:)
The thing is, if this guy left the store at any point and then returned the box later, then he could very well be scamming them. People do amazing things to scam retailers. Especially on returns and exchanges. If I were the manager there and some guy came in and claimed that I sold him a box of tiles instead of a hard drive, I would be very skeptical.
As for how it happened? I doubt it was another customer returning them. It's possible, but I doubt it. I suspect it is more likely that someone working at the store stole the drive and filled it with crap so nobody would notice. Or perhaps someone along the supply chain did this.
Either way, it's really a difficult situation on both sides. You don't want to open yourself to letting every con-artist do this to your company, but you don't want to risk screwing an honest customer over, either.
So as mentioned before -- just open a box and at least check that the main item is in it before leaving. If it slows up the line or pisses people off -- too bad for them.
In addition get the manager fired. Print there name here so we can all see. Make an example of them.
Most of the time, though, your credit card company will be on your side, especially if you are a high-value account that buys lots of stuff and have a high credit limit. Not my credit card company. I use MasterCard, and the one time I tried to cancel a wrong credit card payment, they refused until I went up a couple of levels of supervisors and argued it out with them. One of the flunkeys threatened to cancel my card. (My client had sent me to a hotel, which they paid for at a group rate, but the hotel insisted on a credit card number before I checked in. The hotel mistakenly charged my personal card, which they admitted when I called them.)
MasterCard told me that as long as I gave someone my card number, I was responsible for the charges -- even if it was an authorized overcharge. Finally I told a supervisor (while typing her every word in the background), "Are you saying that I'm responsible for all charges made to my card, even if I didn't authorize them?" It was so patently ridiculous that she backed down.
In the course of my hypotheticals, they also told me that if I ordered something by mail, and it didn't work, they wouldn't reverse the charge, because that's something between me and the vendor, and they can't get involved in determining whether something works the way it should. And yes, even if I order a hard drive and get a brick, they still wouldn't reverse the charges.
See for yourself. Call your own credit card company, on their 800 number, and ask them if you could get a credit for the charges if you ordered a hard drive and it didn't work. Or if you ordered a hard drive and got a brick. You may have a better credit card company than I do. Or you may not.
We don't have enough information to determine who put the tiles in the box, and the customer might have done it himself. Okay, sure. But look at the actual words in the article concerning the replacement:If a person returns an item and the store takes that physical item away from them and replaces it with another physical item in return, the second that the transaction is complete, the customer OWNS the replacement item and any person -- store employee or not -- who tries to take it from them is STEALING.
If an employee believes that the customer tampered with the first item, then they should call the police and report the customer for fraud or for falsifying returns, or (so simple it's mindboggling) refuse to accept the return! However, once an employee accepts the return and gets to the point of putting the physical replacement in the customer's hands, I feel as though a judge is going to be sympathetic to the customer and say that he has a right to retain that physical item.
Not even did the manager take back the hardware, the manager physically removed the box from the customer's hands... a good lawyer might even be able to bring the manger up on assault charges.
coding is life
How long have you been shopping for yourself?
>> News flash: sometimes when you buy something it's not what you paid for and you take it back. World is in chaos, story at 11.
This is how it's been for as long as I can remember and once in a while you do run into some asshole like this (these?) and muster what public ill-will you can and it winds up costing the business.
There's nothing noble about selling a product and not honoring the sale. If, as a business, you want to do this you'd better crack each one of those boxes yourself. Verify it works and contains the product(s) as listed on the box while the customer is there. That's reasonable, but it will cut into your revenue and inconvenience the customer.
Quack, quack.
It wasn't too long ago that there was widespread outrage about stores that force people making returns to provide a driver's license, address, phone number, etc. This is exactly the reason...generally the stores will give their customers the benefit of the doubt no matter what wild-ass story they come up with for a return. But if they do that they're also vulnerable, so they keep detailed records and I'm sure their loss prevention specialists are watching for suspicious return patterns.
I notice I haven't seen many complaints lately about these practices. I guess people have given up since it is a standard practice almost everywhere. Honestly, I would prefer not to provide the information but I also enjoy the no-questions-asked attitude most stores have and I realize that the people that are at fault for the ID nonsense are the criminals and not the stores.
A similar story ran earlier in the month: http://www.star-telegram.com/news/columnists/dave_lieber//story/260075.html
Basically, a girl bought an iPod from Target which turned out to be a box of rocks. They then got another iPod from a different Target location, opened it in front of employees, and found it to be also full of rocks.
That's what I was thinking, too. But then what would prevent someone in the supply and distribution chain from stealing an item, taking the tag off and then sticking the RFID tag onto a stack of tiles? Unless they plan on embedding the RFID tag into the internal components of products, in which case I won't be interested in buying them to begin with.
I stopped shopping at Best Buy about a year ago. I had been shopping for a new shelf system stereo, and found the model at a Best Buy near my home. It was on clearance, but that particular store only had a shelf model that was cracked. The employee who helped me found that the store near my work still had 4 in stock, and called to have one pulled. After driving across town, I arrived at the second store and found that they wanted $55 more for the same stereo that that they had pulled. When I asked the assistant manager why it was more expensive at her store I was told that it was because "when you shop in West St. Louis County, you should expect to pay more". After the manager and district manager both blew off my complaints (they said that store managers set clearance pricing and that they are under no obligation to honor another stores price, even when they verbally agree to do so over the phone), I stopped shopping there. I was never a huge spender at the store, maybe $200-300 a year, but between the stereo, and a few more items purchased since we moved this summer, I figure they lost $1000 worth of sales this year.
How do YOU prove that you aren't actually posting this from within the box! You in fact could be the box? How can we trust you! How can we know?
Quack, quack.
You're engaging in a contract. Your side is to hand over money, their side is to prove that they are indeed providing the product as described on the box.
If they were unwilling to prove that (especially in the light of the many incidents of pre-packaging factory theft they have) it's easy - there shall be no sale.
Restocking charges are only applicable if the product in the box is exactly what is on the box and you then don't want it. If the product inside the box is NOT as described on the box you're dealing with what could be called fraud and you could offer Best Buy at that point the option of aborting the sale (free of charge) or you call the police as they were about to defraud you.
If it IS the product, well, the reason you're standing at the cash register is to buy it so recharging charges are moot.
You have no obligation to go along with attampted fraud, and the more police visits they get for fraud the more they would have an incentive to fix the problem instead of passing the problem onto customers.
Alternatively - Best NOT Buy HERE. Easy..
Insert
I used to do inventory for a number of major chains back in the 80's and 90's, and we ran into this a few times when inventorying stockrooms. Basically, employees will conspire to swipe an item, then replace it with some inert object(s) of roughly equal weight and reseal the box. It's a pretty well-known internal scam, so I'd be surprised if any reputable major chain wouldn't make good for the customer who inadvertantly gets sent a boxed item full of bricks or such. But then, the key word there is "reputable" -- we are talking about Best Buy, after all...
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Even if the system can be abused, doesn't mean that all of your customers are going to do so. REI is a co-op, however they also have an incredible return policy.
I have heard of people going to thrift stores, picking up REI branded gear, and going back to the store to exchange for new version of the item simply because "they didn't like it".
This is a complete abuse of the relationship, and those folks were demoted to "complete fucking assholes" in my mind, yet REI is still in business and going strong. People like me have no issues shopping there, as I know I will always be taken care of if I have a problem.
Once I bought memory at Best Buy. When I got home, the box contained a chips with 1/16th the amount it should. I tried to return it and the store treated me like a liar. It wasn't until I showed them the shrink wrap it was in (which I had brought with me) and they saw evidence that it had been rewrapped, were they willing to give me a return. It was a horrible, horrible experience and I didn't go back to Best Buy for several years.
Are you stupid? Do you look through everything you buy to make sure it's exactly what it's labeled as? I sure as hell don't open my cereal boxes in the store just make sure I'm really getting cereal.
That happens to me ALL the time! I bought this video camcorder one time that some guys had just stolen some from down at the dock. You know the prices on the docks are really great! Tons of stuff coming through them too! Anyway, so I paid like $80. Which was fricking great! Super-cheap. But I was busy working and stuff so I just slipped it out of sight until I could set it up later. I lifted it up to feel the weight to make sure it was real. The guy was a little weird but the wrapping and price was tops! I never figured out how to use it and the return policy really sucked (I think he threatened me) but I did admire his wrapping job! Easily the best brick I have ever bought!
Quack, quack.
Couldn't it also easily be solved by store employees doing at least a minimal inspection upon item returns.
Instead of hard drive, package contained bobcat. Would not buy again.
http://xkcd.com/325/
If it were 6 tiles...why did he not hear them rattle? =o
I'd never accuse Amex of being awesome or benevolent or anything... but every single credit card incident I've ever heard of that didn't end in tears turned out to involve Amex. I've even heard a few customers rave about how well American Express treated them compared to the other companies they had dealt with.
I ordered a new camera lens from B&H yesterday. For orders of over $1500 to the UK and Australia, they will not accept Visa or Mastercard - only Amex or Diners. Sure makes a change from here, where Amex is the less accepted card.
My experience with dealing with Amex has been far better than any of the Visa or MC dealings. Amex pretend to care about me, the banks don't even pretend.
I worked in retail for a number of years (no longer thank God/Allah/Yaweh/etc) and saw this type of thing happen a lot.
While Sega was selling the Genesis, guys would buy a complete system, take it home, remove the motherboard from the machine, reassemble it, and return it for a full refund. I would imagine that having to buy a pair of cheapo controllers, power supply, and a used copy of Sonic all for $30 beats buying the whole system for $119+ tax.
Sega, SNES, and Gameboy game carts were easily opened with tools you could buy from Parts Express. I worked at a second hand game store and we found a number of carts that had been returned had their innards pulled and replaced with "undesirable" roms like various Barbie and Jesus games.
While working at a Best Buy, we were finding that a series of open box hard drives were being returned because the capacity didn't match what was bought. 4.3GB hard drives were reporting 850MB or less, though their labels said otherwise.
72 pin and SDRAM were also being hijacked in a similar fashion. People were returning RAM saying that they had bought a 32MB stick but it was reporting only 4 or 8MB.
Then there was stuff like the aforementioned scam. We got all kinds of returns only to find bricks, tiles, rocks, and anything else you can imagine in place of radios, VCR's, speakers, etc (one CSR got stung by a guy who returned a set of "White Van" speakers in place of the Infinity's he bought). Most of my stores instituted a policy where items had to be inspected before they were accepted for returned, but they were really slow to do so with PC parts.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
How about a simple unique serial number/bar code printed on the outside of the box, matching the drive/object serial number, which is scanned when it is purchased, then scanned if it is returned? Oh, so and so was the original purchaser of this box, let's see what's inside, shall we?
Anyway, I hope this customer keeps on them. If you're creative enough and noisy enough you can get results.
Heck, the Blendtec guy seemed to receive a warmer welcome when he attempted to return the videocam he blended. http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZLe0T1rUeDA
Visa Inc. is one company.
Chase, Citibank, Bank of America (etc) are different companies.
You get your visa card from Chase, not from Visa Inc directly.
American Express however issues most American Express cards. Just recently did other financial institution start issuing Amex cards (I just got a solicitation from B of A recently)
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't this happen before I was reading this on /. ? If my memory is correct that someone bought online a hard drive and got shrink-wrapped box of newspapers from BestBuy. I think this person who got this was from the Sacramento, CA area but I forgot the details since this happened a few years back so if someone has the time to look for the story they can search for it.
I'm not crazy about BestBuy online business or some of their retail stores but they do carry stuff that other retail stores don't carry which is the only reason I go there.
I know the merits of my 3 cases. I was screwed by the merchant in all 3 cases, and I was expected to be made whole by the credit card. But I wasn't 33% of the time.
And I am a great customer too - I charge every single of my day to day transactions - small or big - because I have a reward card. Of course, I've never paid them a cent of interest (I always pay in full) but they still make plenty of money on merchant fees.
Sadly big corporations don't always realize this and think that since it's just an individual they can push them around but thanks to the internet the little guy can stand up for himself sometimes. Look at what Maddox did to Orbitz over $94 dollars http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=orbitz_blows I know the next time a tech business gives me shit though I'm going to threaten /. you know best buy is regretting their decision now!
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
I am not sure about Best Buy, but other retailers such as Fry's and PC Club scan the serial number of hard drives and other valuable serialized merchandise, and insert/include this data on the receipt. Did anyone ask Best Buy to search previous sales/returns for that serial number? -K-
V for Vendetta: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
The fact is most American families are drowning in Debt. Mortgages that they can't afford are a big part of the problem, the rest of the problem is credit card debt.
You think those Credit Card Companies have those big buildings because they are just making money off of the skim of the purchases? The high fees, the games with interest, the low easy payments are all part of the game. They are very good at their game, and if you play their game, you will eventually lose.
When a man lies he murders a part of the world.
I'm not sure what you are talking about 'breach of contract'. Breach of contract would have been if they agreed to take returns in the contract, and then refused to honor that contract. If the description is to be believed, this was simple robbery. It is no different than if some guy standing outside grabbed the hard disk you just bought. The proper course of action would be to take out your cell phone, and call the police. Have the individual that robbed you arrested, and the security tapes secured. Once the transaction is over, the hard drive is your property, and the store has no rights concerning the property.
I have the exact same experience with Discover. I absolutely hate using the bank issued credit cards I have in comparison.
That's exactly what I meant, if I was a manufacturer launching a new product with lot's of R&D expense involve you bet I'd want to know whether 2 units were returned 5 times each because some big box manager was skimming or 10 items returned once. Would you want the forums filled with your stuff was junk because some store manager was selling returns as new?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
In the last year
Frys: Completely disinterested sales guy tells me he's not "Walking all the way over there to demo a $500 camera."
Frys: Sales guy tells me they "have been completely out of this model of Bluetooth head phones" while standing in front of a 5 foot display full of them.
Best Buy: "We don't sell this TV without extended warranty."
Local PC store: "Those RAMs don't work in MacBooks, you have to buy special Apple memory."
Circuit City: "We don't take items under warranty back unless you have bought extended warranty. I don't have the phone number of the manufacturer, but you can probably find it on the web."
The Good Guys: "Well, there seems to a a short in the wiring. We can give you a tool to take out the radio and check yourself." Radio was bouthg from them 3 months earlier.
May they all die a horrible corporate death. They don't offer a price advantage, can't provide product information that's not written on the box, and are usually rude as hell. I know retail is a tough business to be in, why do I get great service at REI, Nordstrom, Trader Joes, my local bike store, IKEA, and the many ethnic stores here while every single electronics place screws up six ways from Sunday every time?
I think the idea is that the Best Buy people should check it when it is being returned, not that you should check it when you are purchasing it.
Amex is the root of all evil... to (small) businesses anyway. at a computer store I used to work at, we wouldn't accept amex even though we technicly could, because the transaction fee is insane, something like 4-5% of the purchase (where visa/discover were only like 1.5%). This is how amex can offer purchase protection and all the other member rewards/benefits.
So and so paid cash and wasn't required to give any ID. Sorry, try again.
RFIDs won't help at all. I also believe there's tech out there to change RFIDs in a store to pull a scam at the cash register.
Even if you had the "real" address of a person who had the drive before, you have no proof that they did anything.
Police: Did you buy this drive? It had tiles in the box instead of a drive.
Alleged Crook: Yes, but I returned it unopened. Best Buy accepted it as unopened. The tiles must have been put in there before I bought the drive or after I returned it.
Aside from a contract (I pay $X to WorstBuy, WorsBuy gives me Y widget), there is also an implied warranty of merchantability, e.g., if you buy a hard drive, it should function as a HD; if you buy a hammer, it will work as a hammer.
The problem here is that the HD is probably worth $40-$120 -- the cost of a suit is much higher so WorstBuy basically knows they can do whatever they want.
I've proudly avoided WorstBuy for the last four or more years. I suspect this guy is going to join the rest of us who won't set foot in that bastion of evil.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The cardholder's agreement for at least one of my cards says that they will refund the charge (presumably sticking it to the merchant) if the merchant will not accept a return. There may be a $50 minimum. I think that's a pretty standard clause.
You must be new here. Remember, you can only pick two words...
Occasionally they use "Your rights."
Sometimes they use "Rights (Republicans) Online."
Most of the time they just use "Your (you're) online"
Remember, this is Slashdot. Spelling is optional.
Agreed. But if Best Buy is accepting returns without looking inside the box to verify that there is a real product inside it, it becomes Best Buy's responsibility. If I buy something from Best Buy and I get home and the box contains something else, I absolutely positively expect Best Buy to "eat it." It's their fault. They should have inspected the contents of the box before accepting the return, and definitely before putting it back on the shelf for another victim to purchase.
http://www.tomsphotos.com/router/ happened to me too.
I'm not surprised, as this very same thing happened to me at Best Buy about many years ago. I was about 16 and had saved up for a sound card, which I happily bought from best buy. When I got home, I found that the sound card was, in fact, some other weird PCI card (it was a USB card, although I didn't know what USB was at that point - hadn't really been adopted yet).
I took the card back to best buy and asked them if I could exchange it. They accused me of stealing the card and refused to give me an exchange, store credit, or my money back.
It was only after I came back with a my father, who is a lawyer, that they made it right. But I had to drive to Best Buy (about 45 minutes each way) 3 times in one day and wait in long customer service lines twice. Huge waste of time.
I don't shop at Best Buy any more.
or else!
While it's true that a single instance wouldn't be proof that a person actually did it, if it happened twice, even if it's different items or different stores, that information would be correlated and a determination made that it was that person. Not that it would be sufficient to prosecute, but they could certainly ban the customer from their stores.
Either way, the majority of the time that someone claims the product wasn't actually in the box, it's a flatout lie. I've seen it happen before, and typically the scammer realizes they won't be able to get away with it and they just give up.
You know the one I mean. "Instead of office chair, box contained bobcat. Would not buy again."
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
I don't know how they do returns, but in my opinion, they should do that. Require photo ID upon all returns, that way they are alerted to potential suspicious activity if the person does more returns. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Shipping companies really need to consider asking for photo ID when getting signatures for one thing. A simple signature isn't valid in my opinion. Someone could be faking their name. If there is a name, along with double checking to make sure that it is the signing person's name, then there is a way to track down that person.
Here is how I see ordering stuff online. If I don't receive the exact product I ordered, I complain. If I am sent the wrong item, or a misdescribed item, I don't consider that to be a finished sale.
I'm amazed at how many people just want to blame Best Buy, when MOST of the time they have a relatively painless return policy. Bring the product and your receipt is all they ask, but please leave your 25+ year old shoplifting tricks at home. You people complain that they check receipts at the door. Guys like this is the reason why.
... which factory worker got a free hard drive in exchange for six ceramic bathroom tiles?
Ditto. Anything I buy of considerable value, either online or brick-and-mortar, I use my AMEX card for just the same reason. They have always dealt with these problems quickly, effectively, and with no more hassle for me than to make a quick phone call to the 24 hour toll-free number on the back of my card. I haven't been so lucky with Visa/MC, probably because each card is handled by a different "bank" and each one has a different customer "service" policy.
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
Except it was a SNES game and a block of wood.
I called up sears and they refunded me without any probelms. I was surprised too because i was about 17 and looked shady!
As a Staples employee, I hear of this kind of garbage all the time. Usually about the Geek Squad messing up something on someone's pc/laptop, but even my ex-manager had a great story about Best buy refusing to take his $100 bill (which he had just got from the bank after cashing his check) and calling the cops.
I think you and everyone else is overlooking the fact that it could, in fact, be a best buy store employee.
Just a thought.
+5, Truth
Well, and I'm not sure if this is reflected in reality (or worldwide, for that matter), but the public perception certainly is that Amex is a "better" card that is more difficult to be approved for and signifies something positive about the holder. Who knows, tho.
I just bought a box of six ceramic tiles, only to open the box and find a Western Digital hard drive! Took it back to the tile store and they told me "tough luck". I blame the Malaysian tile and hard drive factory.
I will gladly second this. I love amex.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
good god that made me laugh!
A bag of dirt that declared you to be less than manly for being foolish enough to buy this product.
Classic.
I have tears rolling down my face and my cube neighbors probably think I'm over here having a seizure.
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
A guy bought a monitor, took it home, removed the monitor from the box, and stuffed the box full of papers. He returned the box to Best Buy and claimed there was no monitor in the box, only papers. Best Buy gave him a new monitor.
His scheme fell apart when police showed up at his door a few hours later and arrested him. Turns out one of the papers he put in the box had his name, address, and other personal info on it!
I've got a better idea, how about the stores check the returned items. If this is something that has happened in the past, then Best Buy and other retailers should at least check.
Can I bum a sig?
While Best Buy is probably a victim here as well, they're being extremely shortsighted in their customer service department. They've lost a customer permanently over this and don't seem to care. Maybe they're big enough they don't have to care, but this is just another sign that consumers are looked at as being annoyances instead of assets.
I've had similarly great service with LL Bean.
The button popped off one of my jackets once, after 5 years of use. I returned the jacket for repair, and they gave me a new one for free.
Maybe they lost money on that Jacket, but now we shop there all the time for alot of our clothes.
I've had other jackets last for 10 years. Sure, $150 is expensive for a jacket, but it lasts four times as long as that $80 jacket from Urban Outfitters.
Most store theft is from insiders and not outsiders. What I don't get is why the manager "took the box" from the customer after he bought a new one and was double checking to see if it was indeed a harddrive. You'd think the manager would stand right beside him to make sure that it was a harddrive instead of getting defensive.
Can I bum a sig?
visa is not that bad either: about 10 years ago I bought a treadmill and paid 50% on order, with the remainder due on delivery (they kept my c/c on file for the delivery). Everything went fine until the month after the delivery I noticed that the store charged me 100% of the retail price (in two transactions) on delivery. Of course I called them right away and started this month-and-a-half-long back & forth with them using more and more implausible excuses about why this happened (the most interesting was this one: there was a power outage while they were processing my payment so there had been two transactions) and why it was taking so long for them to refund me (because the c/c machine mysteriously stopped working (for 3 weeks?) and they were waiting for it to be fixed).
In the end I called up td visa, faxed them the receipts and they immediately refunded the extra 50% and dealt with recouping the extra $$$ from the store without me having to do anything else. I was going to return the treadmill altogether to punish the store but unfortunately it was one of those 30-day-return-limit ones so I couldn't. Drove by the store about 6 months later and saw it was boarded up and out of business, big surprise!
-- the cake is a lie
I am having a hard time feeling any sympathy for all these people who report anecdotes about getting less than what they paid for when buying computer equipment at best buy.
.. simply because there are people in the room who honestly believe that they understand computers, just because their brother or cousin managed to upgrade their hard disk, or install the latest version of Vista on some dual core rig that they got from best buy.
Computers and information technology are a critical part of modern society. And yet, even at the highest levels, its getting harder and harder to have a remotely sensible engineering discussion about incorporating computer technology in a new project
Unless I go back 100% full time to working with PHD engineers on WMD's and other military applications, Im faced with the prospect of seeing so many dangerously stupid, over simplified plans for automation that completely miss all the basics of good design. And this is thanks to the existence of so many plebs in the industry that have totally misplaced confidence in the completeness of their own knowledge.
So thanks to Best Buy and Microsoft, there are now those who believe that because they upgraded their own hard disk and jumped the learning curve to Vista Ultimate, they are now qualified to design a transaction management system for a remote fuel distribution network. Because they learned how to knock up a web page and embed some flash applet that they rolled themselves in MX, they now understand the internet apparently, and they can 'web enable' your company's accounting system.
Look - good luck to them if they perceive value in buying at Best Buy, but the net effect on the rest of the world is becoming horribly dangerous. Mix in with that the appalling condition of public education (eg - have a look at this http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071029/D8SJ435G0.html), and you have to wonder how bad things are going to get before people really start to notice that we have gone backwards.
We also have a shortage of good doctors, and medical insurance in 1st world countries is something of a luxury. Free, first class medical care for all used to be considered normal for developed countries with a strong infrastructure, but not any more. It wont be long until the common uneducated pleb in the street, the product of the high school dropout factories and the proud owner of a Best Buy Vista gamerz rig, manages to save up his income to purchase an array of scalpels and surgical forceps. Your next invasive but life saving surgical procedure may well be in the hands of some know-it-all 'doctor' who "lernt wot he needz to no abuot surjury' from Best Buy's medical division.
God Help Us All !
So if Best Buy are substituting hard disks for bathroom tiles, then they may well be doing the rest of us a huge favour.
Best Buy does have a fairly robust customer tracking system. They can see what you have purchased, using what methods, and what you have returned. Im guessing the General Manager took a look at this customer's sales history and found it in line with what Best Buy determines to be potential fraud(Only deals in Cash, Lots of returns exchanges).
I work at a Best Buy and we have Black Listed some customers. Quite literally telling them they can shop here, but we will no longer do any kind of returns for them. Our Rep II's(returns, exchanges, pickups) are fairly decent and check every return. On questionable stuff a Geek Squad Agent gets called over to check Serial numbers and what not. You would be surprised at how often people will try to scam Best Buy by placing cheap-o items in the box of a similar but much more expensive product.
Its funny too, because customers always complain that returns take to long when the Rep IIs check returned products. But when they dont check, something like this happens and you complain more. I guess you guys just like to whine at BBY.
How far up your ass did you have to reach to pull out this "most" data? Please supply a citation to back up your hand-waving. Swaps inside stores are pretty easy.
I recently went to a drugstore to get a heating pad for a friend. They had three grades, with only one or two of each on display. I pulled the best grade one partway out of the box to see if the cover was included. It didn't look like the picture on the box. I looked at the remaining best grade one and it was correct, but the box was torn. It was obvious that someone had pulled out a best grade pad and swapped it with a lowest grade pad, then took the cheaper box to the checkout.
Since I didn't want to give my friend the torn box, I took the whole mess to checkout and explained that I wanted the best grade in its own, non-torn box. Fine by them. I didn't want to take a chance on switching boxes by myself at the shelf in case they happened to be watching the monitors at the moment.
They destroyed the power harness in my Eagle Talon, when I had them install a CD deck. They claimed it was the fault of the repair shop troubleshooting. What the f(*&-ever...Worst Buy. They will owe me 300 bucks if I gotta bust windows...darnit! I have not forgotten this, and they will pay; for I am from the HOOD!!! Just waiting until I seriously need money. I will hit them up with every trick known to mankind. Bet the m*&^-f(*&^* house on that!
This site is like CRACK; hooked on the first use!!!
This is actually a case *for* unique ids like RFID to be implemented everywhere. At least that way you would be able to track down the asshole that stole from Best Buy and the guy in question. Now it is still possible, but will take time. I'm sick and tired that Best Buy should "eat it". The thief should be the one that eats the damn tiles.
As for the guy that ended up with garbage (if BestBuy didn't do the right thing, as they didn't seem to),
1. file a police report
2. chargeback credit card
3. contact drive manufacturer and report that the drive in question was stolen -- this at least voids warranty on the drive
4. if new drive is not handed over by Best Buy (show them police report), add to the police report that they stole your new drive
5. if Best Buy continue to not hand over the drive, sue them for selling you a brick (small claims) + taking money for it + ALL your time you lost + court filing fees. Just do not exaggerate your time - judges don't like that.
Unfortunately, theft like this hits us all in the pocketbooks all the way from customers up to Best Buy shareholders.
As to parent, I don't know what "people" you hang around with that "do this all the time". Sounds like a bunch of assholes to me. This would require effort on behalf of Best Buy.
Remember way back when the 3DFX Voodoo 2 was all the rage, well I go to Future Shop (BC, Canada) and buy a tape sealed box. When I get home and open the box all I find inside is a crappy video card. Back to the store I go, stand in line at the returns desk, get to the front and present my case (no pun intended) and was promptly told "there's nothing they can do". I blurt out that this is bloody bullshit and it's heard by the manager who promptly suggests he'll call the police in if I don't behave. My response, "go ahead and call them, want the number!" So manager and I go to his office and spend the next couple of hours going through my credit and purchase history with Future Shop and researching if the box I bought was previously returned and what the return procedures were and if they were followed by staff. Now I got off lucky, had a very good purchase history with Future Shop, the employees did admit that some returned boxes do make it back onto the shelves and not returned to the manufacturer and finally the big one.....This box was PREVIOUSLY returned! The manager then gave me a new box, checked the contents, and promptly asked if this incident won't affect my future purchases at Future Shop. Since then I try to either buy unboxed OEM parts or open the box at the cashier before buying.
I certainly hope they have fixed that since.
http://usa.visa.com/merchants/risk_management/cisp.html
I know my company has been quite busy lately making sure the equipment we are selling is compliant.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
??? I've had a personal c/c since when I was 14 (I am now 37), always pay my balance in full at the end of the month (with very rare exceptions, paying 18% interest when I can get 3.5% max is quite stupid): I treat my c/c as a bank card with more protection. If somebody installs one of those pin stealing machines at a store (happened quite a few times around here lately) and gets your bank card info they can take a LOT of money out of your account; if they took my c/c info I'd be a lot more protected.
The fact that most families are drowning in debt is due to people always trying to 'keep up with the Joneses', if people budget it doesn't make a difference if they use a bank card, cash, a credit card, clams or whatever: if you figure out that your income is $x, that your fixed expenses are $y, that you want to save $z every month and consequently your discretionary income is $x - ($y + $z), well, you'll never go in debt or have financial issues (unless something bad happens, of course, if your house burns down and insurance doesn't pay, or you lose your job, or whatever).
There is no reason whatsoever for a dual-income family to be in an increasing-over-time level of debt: having a decreasing-over-time debt is pretty much a given (mortgage), but if you find that your debt is increasing it's because you either are not budgeting your expenses well, or you are living above your means (including being in a house that's way too expensive for your salary level).
I grew up with my parents in a 500sqf apartment without even having my own bedroom until I was 18 (I slept on the couch in the living room and did my homework on the kitchen table), did my parents envy their friends who could afford bigger apartments or even houses? you bet! did they extend themselves over their means just to satisfy this envy? you bet they didn't! If they had been like the 'typical' family we so often hear about nowadays they'd just have gotten a big place and ended up in foreclosure/bankruptcy some years later.
It's like the article I just read today about people with resetting mortgages maxing out their credit cards in order to be able to pay their mortgage: talk about throwing good money after bad! People should be taught the concept of sunk costs and why it's a bad idea to become emotionally attached to an investment (properties included). If you're underwater, unless it's obvious that it's a temporary thing, get out, take the (still) small financial penalty and start again, much better than really end up at the very bottom...
this was long and rambling, but I hope it will help people see that credit cards are not evil, they are just a different form of money, and like all forms of money they need to be understood, treated with respect and used accordingly.
-- the cake is a lie
This was discovered when some of these special drives were accidentally shipped to customers.
See http://www.answers.com/topic/miniscribe for more details.
Er, or a link that is actually working and hasn't been obsoleted.
https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/tech/index.htm
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This was a few years ago but something quite like this happened me. I bought a 400GB WD HD from CompUSA. It was shrink wrapped and even had one of those in-store anti-theft devices around the box. I bought the HD, took it home, and installed. After formatting the drive, I noticed that it was only 40GB! I thought that maybe I did something wrong, at first. I tried a couple of times to format the drive, but still 40GB. I took the drive out of the computer and looked for serial numbers. Turns out that the drive was a Maxtor drive, and researching the serial number and part number revealed that the drive was in fact a 40GB drive. I was angry, to say the least. I went back to CompUSA to get a refund or a new drive. It was like pulling teeth. I argued with the store manager for like 40 minutes. He was accusing ME of trying to rip them off. I was accusing him of being an id10t. If I was trying to rip off the store, why would I point out that the drive was the wrong manufacturer and size? He threatened to call the cops; I said go ahead, maybe they can find that shrink wrap machine in the back that you are using to illegally resell returned items as new ones. He then changed his mind and allowed me to replace the drive for another one. I had them open the new one to ensure that it was a 400GB WD HD.
I purchased a 750 GB hard drive from Best Buy, installed it in my machine, and found that it was a 250 GB hard drive. The weird thing was that it was the same model number as the hard drive I already had installed in the machine, so it took some head-scratching to figure out what happened. The 250 label had been replaced with the 750 label, and it was almost perfect, except for 2 small scratches. I went to Seagates website, and found that my "new" drive had been sold 2 months previous. Best Buy took it back, but insisted that they do not re-stock returned hard drives. I knew they were lying. The thing is, I think that the employees at the store actually believe it.
Calling the store "WorstBuy" is the same sort of pseudo-clever wordplay that RMS uses in his arguments, and maybe one step about "M$". It's kinda stupid, and makes you seem like an angry teenager ranting from the basement.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
The liability rests with the retailer for ensuring that what they sell you is what is advertised. If I were to tell you that I had a bridge for sale and told you the name of it was "London Bridge" and you got a crappy little bridge made from a few pieces of stone, I would be telling the truth, but if I showed you a picture of Tower Bridge in London and called it "London Bridge" you could sue me to high heaven for misrepresenting what I ended up buying.
The box shows a hard drive, the paperwork (receipt) shows a hard drive, by extension you expect to be able to store more than the 10 commandments on it and they sold it as fit for a certain purpose.
A box of tiles does not match what was handed over in the transaction and therefore the onus is on the store to take back the goods and (under UK law: give full money back) or at the least (I believe in the States) give a store credit to the value of the monies paid.
The store can then begin the process of chasing up the person that defrauded them out of a perfectly working hard drive and replaced it with a few lousy tiles. Not that they will have much luck, plausible deniability as has been stated in other posts goes a long way to establishing innocence.
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
That is why I pay with a credit Card. If the store decides to fuck something up, I can always call the bank and have it listed as a fraudulent transaction.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
This brings to mind something I went through with Beastly Buy this Summer.
:P
The beginning
No good deed goes unpunished
The punch line.
If you don't want to read TF Blog Entries: I bought a cakebox of DVD+Rs through BestBuy.Com. They sent me a Toshiba laptop instead. I wanted to do the right thing and return it, and Best Buy made it really tough to do it. I should have kept the thing.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
L. L. Bean made several customers for life that day.
Of course, since L.L. Bean items are guaranteed for life, your daughter was already a customer for life the second she got her item.
I'm with you, though. Customer service reps who aren't dicks do more to promote their companies than any pre-sale rep ever could.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
Agreed, and I've never given them my real info. *I* know I'm not ripping 'em off, and so feel no reason to jump through hoops clueless suits create.
Somewhere, in a marketing database somewhere, sits:
Elmer Fudd
22 Acacia Avenue
San Antonio, RI, 90210
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
What you are missing is that the store did in fact refund the persons money. The person then purchased a new hard drive. The store manager proceeded to commit a robbery by seizing the persons property without their permission. The property that was siezed was a hard drive. The transaction concerning the tiles was over and done with in a legal fashion.
;) ) and when I called you on it, you told me that sometimes this mistake happens, and delivered the Tower Bridge, there would be no breach of contract. Of course, if after the transaction is over, and the correct bridge has been delivered, you turned around and seize the Tower bridge from me, and told me to take it up with your corporate headquarters, you would not be in breach of contract. It would be a simple robbery. OK, not simple. It is a bridge after all, but it would still be robbery.
To use your analogy, if you showed me a picture of Tower Bridge, and delivered the London Bridge, (Yes, even though I am an America, I do understand the difference.
The issue here isn't that the store refused the return. The took the return. The real issue is that after the guy bought a real (presumably) function hard drive, the manager of the store approached the customer, and seized his property. That is robbery.
Mom, is that you? How did you learn to use a computer?
Do you pay $300 for cereal?
In this situation, just take it up with your credit card company if you bought using your credit card. Otherwise, you're in trouble, no?
Despite what you may think, chargebacks aren't the be-all, end-all of resolving customer complaints. For example:
A couple of years ago, I was working in the accounting office of a "destination" hotel, and a woman named "Ann" was charged for 4 no-show reservations, to the tune of about $700. Of course, she had given us her debit card number when our reservationist asked for a credit card to guarantee these reservations, and she had about $10 left in her account. Ann called me and tried all sorts of tactics, mostly yelling and belittling me, threatened to sue, threatened to call her card company and repeatedly said these were unauthorized charges. My hands were tied by company policy (we would have been sold out that night, and in fact, we walked other guests to accomodate her block of four), so I suggested that instead of merely threatening me, she actually call her card company. She had me escalate the call to my boss, who told her the same thing I did, and then she called back and swore at me.
Any sympathy I had for her evaporated, and I made it my mission to ensure she paid for those rooms. I fought the chargeback, and won. She wrote to the Better Business Bureau - twice - and I responded that we could do nothing. She called the GM, and when I told him we paid for guests to stay elsewhere on her account, and that ended it for him. She somehow got the number for the owner of the company, and he talked to the GM, who then came to me for a refresher.
The moral is: your bank signs agreements with the credit card brands, and can only help you so far in issuing a chargeback. And, incidentally, keep your cool when talking to customer service reps. I could have given her a large chunk back, but she decided to bully me instead.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
This is actually a case *for* unique ids like RFID to be implemented everywhere. At least that way you would be able to track down the asshole that stole from Best Buy and the guy in question.
Yeah, that's it. We're all supposed to give up our privacy to protect Best Buy's profits.
WTF is wrong with you?
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
As long as you realize you should be grateful to their customer service for this - one thing merchants are never obligated to do (except in big ticket purchases like cars/homes, and sometimes not even then, where you have a cooling off period) is accept a return for refund because you /changed your mind/.
. . . so I can meta-moderate you "+1 Insightful" clowns down where you belong.
Assholes.
More importantly, I can threaten to void purchases. The threat of voiding purchases via your credit card, in my experience, is more useful than actually voiding purchases.
You are absolutely correct. In my experience, businesses would rather lose a little money than all of it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
5. if Best Buy continue to not hand over the drive, sue them for selling you a brick (small claims) + taking money for it + ALL your time you lost + court filing fees. Just do not exaggerate your time - judges don't like that.
Unfortunately, one can't sue for time in small claims in the US. A small claims action is designed to replace property value. A plaintiff will never be made whole in small claims court.
IANAL but have been a plaintiff.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
>How hard do you think the manager would have tried to get the hard drive back from me if he saw my Glock 23 on my hip?
If he sees it, it's not "concealed". If you flash it, it's assault.
>Best Buy in the city I live in does not display a sign prohibiting concealed weapons in the store.
If it's private property, they can make this decision ad-hoc.
Did you sleep through your CW permit course or what?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
More amazing is that we apparently now have proof that someone actually uses Amex...
Last time I checked the sixth sense is not universally accepted by scientists, and if you could know when someone is lying then we would have no need for so many laws and regulations for everything.
So, no, you can't tell whether someone is lying or not. You may be able to say whether they are extremely stressed, which can be an indication of a liar who doesn't know how to lie. But whether their stress comes from lying, social anxiety, some form of allergy, madness, some past event that the client experienced before coming to your shop, or anything else you really don't know and cannot know with the available science/technology today.
That is the consequence of them passing so many stupid laws.
I have to stop reading any further. No need. Any thign Ibuy in the past few years needs a knife, a pair scissors and or pilers to open. And has lots of tamper proof seals to show clear unwrapping / opening. I bought a nose-hair trimmer: seal in clear plastic > hard plastic > crimped unpriable around all freaking edges. A frigging $10 buy. Opened my new cell phone: wrapped in plastic > seals everywhere a joint / meeting occurs. Try flim flaming that. Bought a 4-pack of stylus (stilii? :-) Small & narrow flat package > clear hard plastic > crimped all around. Awkward pakaging for a human to open. No way to open that without a pen knife, a pair scisssors and 3 hands. No kidding. If a $4 pakage (and cheaper items similarly) can readily evince handling wtf not a piece of electronics.
In a pile of scattered text, puns are sometimes our only outlet. Would you prefer that the store be referred to as "That fucking retarded crook-harboring scamshop Best Buy" ?
WorstBuy it is.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Several years back I bought a video card from Best Buy only to have the wrong card in the box. Took it back and they wouldn't do an exchange, told me to deal with the manufacturer. After going back and forth between the manufacturer and Best Buy I even had the manager at Best Buy admiting it was problably tampered with at their store, but he still wouldn't exchange it.
So I disputed the charges and my bank reversed the payment.
Keep trying, eventually Mr. Burns will 'warm up' to you.
I was wondering about this last night. I returned a GeForce 7300 graphics card. I had opened it but returned it in its original box with all the parts with my receipt. I originally paid cash and got back cash. But what's to stop me from returning my old broken graphics card or a ceramic tile? I assume they check the merchandise at some point (though I bet in this story it was an unchecked return that they resold), but even if they check it later, I'm already out of the store and they have no way of tracing it back to me. I'm not advocating theft, but Best Buy should update their policies, and not pass the buck onto the unfortunate consumer.
I bought a CPU which I didn't realize at the time was in a returned product box. When I got home, it wasn't even the same brand of CPU. I bought a AMD64, but in the box was a Pentium-something with a bunch of bent pins. I took it back and though the manager was at first reluctant, he finally listened to reason, checked my purchase history and decided that I wasn't a serial returns scammer and gave me the correct CPU I had purchased, in a new unopened box.
Edith Keeler Must Die
There is an old anecdote in the industry about a hard drive manufacturer which was in dire trouble financially (this was back when there WERE actually about 10 HD companies, so it will be harder for you to guess) and went a little to far to cover it up.
The company had HD inventory on the books that a shrewd auditor thought had to be bogus but the company insisted "Oh, yeah we have it. Those trucks parked out by the shipping docks are full of drives." The enterprising auditor did not believe them and decided to open up a truck, then a few boxes and found the boxes were all full of bricks. Real masonary, red bricks.
At that point, the financial slide got a lot faster and slipperyer.
I bought a shrinkwrapped copy of OS X at CompuUSA a few years ago and found an AOL disc inside. The manager whined but did exchange it for me.
When you manage retail you have to understand that there are several people wanting to rip you off, and it's impossible to catch everybody. Most of the time it's better to let somebody con you than to risk accusing an innocent customer. With this guy I think it's obvious that he wasn't running a scam, because if he was he wouldn't of done something so off the wall. Con-artist like to keep a low profile, and returning a box full of tiles isn't it. They should of accepted the exchange at the store, and marked their expensive hardware (marking hardware w/ store stickers is the best way to counter a shrink-wrap scam).
I dream of being pussy whipped.
The first PC that I personally owned was a Packard Bell back in the summer of 1993. When I got the machine home and plugged it in, I was greeted with a DOS prompt. Wierd, since it was supposed to have Windows 3.1 on it.
After messing around with it a bit, I was able to pull up some software. Turns out that this machine was installed in a local hospital to keep records, they had problems with the machine and sent it back, and that the reason Windows wasn't on the system was because the software they were using didn't require Windows. So I had the medical records of thousands of patients on my system instead of the neato GUI I had waited for.
And people wonder why Service Merchandise had such a hard time staying in business.
If you paid with a credit card and the manager wouldn't accept the return, then call your bank and dispute the charge. Then YOU get to tell the manager he's shit out of luck, because the bank will always take your side of the dispute.
BTW, many many years ago I worked at BB. I was going to sell an open box computer to a customer, and for some strange reason I really really felt compelled to open up the box. Had no real reason to, either. But lo and behold, I opened the box up to "show them the computer"... and it was filled with junk.
Also, this is a very well kept secret, but Best Buy has more theft at their service centers than at all their stores combined... and there are only employees at the service centers. So employee theft is not an issue Best Buy is unfamiliar with.
Cut the guy some slack! He's getting 2% BACK on purchases that are marked up 5% on a card that charges 15% APR.
Sad thing is, that doesn't even scratch the surface of how bad Worst Buy really is.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
You get my point, but you defend credit cards because you seem to be able to handle them. The fact is most people can't. And I still contend that you are spending more than you would if you paid cash. As far as the pin stealing thing, you get your money back. Same as a credit card. You go through the same process as if someone stole your credit card. Personal finance is 80% behavior.
When a man lies he murders a part of the world.
I once ordered three widgets and got six. This widget came in boxes of two. Someone at the warehouse had put three boxes of widgets in the shipping box, not three widgets.
I kept them for quite some time unopened in case they contacted me, but it would have been more hassle than worth to try to return them given how hard it is to deal with returns of mistakes that aren't a big deal.
I never heard anything and eventually used the widgets. I don't know if anyone ever noticed. It was a minor mistake, but still amusing.
I still remember it because usually the error is in THEIR favor.
i am a soviet space shuttle
after working 20 years for Data General as a field engineer, he now wears the blue vest.
Working in electronics, he sees people try the scam of returning stuff all the time.
Most store employees don't give a crap and return anything without checking the boxes.
My dad has everyone check serial numbers on stuff now before they'll return it.
most likely, the bestbuy either had a theft, or the employees took back a box full of tiles from some scamming customer.
They're using their grammar skills there.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
Parent is right, what the store manager did was theft, pure and simple. A call to his lawyer on his cellphone at the store in front of the manager would likely have cleared the whole mess up rather quickly, especially after teh lawyer has had a chance to explain to the manager what the penalties are for said theft.
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
How big are your storage units? I need to move... too little cubic feet for the money. :)
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
In all fairness, the reason I changed my mind is because the Robosapien toy is a piece of crap. It wouldn't walk on any surface I could find. It wouldn't even walk on the floor or carpet at Best Buy when I demonstrated it to them. It is quite possibly the stupidest purchase I have ever made. So my returning that item because I didn't like it would be sort of like returning a television that I didn't like, because it didn't have any way to control the volume.
But the fact is that they could also have made me go through hoops to return it and they didn't. They just asked what was wrong. I said it sucked and didn't work and they had me sign something and gave me my money back. About as decent an experience as you can get (except for Amazon.com where they've even let me return opened software, such as when I bought Anarchy Online and three weeks later their servers still weren't even remotely playable and Amazon paid for return shipping and a refund).
By the way, I've spent about $11,000 at Amazon since that return, too. Just goes to show that if you do treat a customer right, they will definitely come back.
after formatting you can only use 5 of the tiles.
What was the pattern on the tile? Would it perfectly complement her bathroom interior, or would a more subtle shade of autumn be more suitable?
BestBuy should be asking these tough questions. Eventually, under the unfeeling, harsh light of an incandescent lightbulb, the truth will eventually come out.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Until he needs to return something and doesnt have the packaging... then he just screwed himself
I have to return some videotapes...
This simply illustrates how the US is way behind in terms of customer service and corporate policies. If management cannot think to implement such a simple policy to protect themselves and the customers they serve, they deserve whatever negative press they get. They will get no sympathy from me for their laziness and ignorance.
I strongly disagree, I research whichever purchase I am going to make before making it, so however I pay for it it's immaterial.
I think the main issue with people and credit cards is impulse buying: if people had a rule that they will NOT buy anything non-essential (food, gas, etc.) unless it was decided at home at least the day before, for less than $50 purchases, or at least a week before, for less than $200, or at least a month before, for anything above $200, then there would be no issues with overspending regardless of things.
Credit cards have only one difference compared to cash/bank cards: they allow you to spend more than what you have, if you know how much you have and you don't spend more than that then there is no difference between c/cs and other types of cards.
-- the cake is a lie
and if this happens, you contact the credit card company. Best to take photos of the box, too.
Also contact the city/county/state consumer affairs folks and the local newspaper...
dave
In the UK consumers rights extend to a "fit for purpose" law whereby the goods you bought must be fit for the purpose for which they were sold.
I.e. if you bought something which is supposed to be a fridge/freezer with separate compartments it better had work in both compartments at once or you can demand a return, WITHOUT a warranty, and without so much as a receipt. If the store refuses to take it back you can set the law on them.
Doesn't the US have a similar kind of law?
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Dear Mistuh Togie,
I'm glad I finally twacked you down. I've been getting endless junk mail related to prowducts I've never purchased. I got a restwaining order against that pesky wabbit, but the junk mail still kept coming.
May you wot in hell.
sincerwly,
Elmer J. Fudd
Who's the moron who takes ownership of a hard drive that clinks like a bunch of tiles!? I mean, WTF? You'll initially believe that it's just a hard drive, but when you shift the box and it goes "clink clink", you'll think, "shit, this hard drive is toast" without even opening the box or getting more than 10 steps from the store.
This guy is totally scamming best buy and using us to try and put pressure on best buy and get a second hard drive for free.
What bullshit. The tiles were wrapped in newspaper! Only a complete dumbass wouldn't be able to tell that it wasn't a hard drive.
and BTW, I *hate* best buy.... but i hate the type of people who would do this more.
don
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
it happens. at our big chain we rarely get a digital camera off the truck with a piece of a 2x4 in it rather than a camera. i realize that it would be an easy scam, but these things go through too many hands before reaching the store to place all the burden in the customer's hands.
I shop at LL Bean's retail store in Maine quite regularly, and I've always had the same first-rate customer service. Their employees know their merchandise, they treat their customers (and employees) well, accept responsibility for issues that are clearly someone else's problem (such as UPS), and guarantee their products for life. Hell, I knew a kid growing up who would get a new LL Bean backpack every couple of years because he'd overload it with 80 pounds of crap or drag it through hell and back then return it for a new one when the shoulder straps started to give way at the seams or he ruined the zipper. They never hesitated to give him a new one.
But all that comes at a price, and that's why you pay $40 for the same pair of jeans you can get at JC Penney for $25, or $120 for the same pair of Rockport shoes you can get at Macy's for $90, or $250 for the same hunting knife you can get down the road for $220 from the illiterate high schooler behind the counter who is too busy playing with the Samurai swords to even notice that you entered the store (despite the 70 decibel entrance chime). Best Buy is a JC Penney and a Macy's and a store down the road, not an LL Bean. They compete on price, not service, so they can't afford to take it on the chin when someone screws up. LL Bean and similar retailers that distinguish themselves by customer service don't have to take it on the chin - they build it into the price. I'm willing to spend a little extra to buy a winter coat at LL Bean because I consider the additional money an insurance policy against poor customer service; chances are my extra cash will go towards someone's missed UPS shipment, an employee bonus, maintaining the indoor trout pond, or the cost of hiring a hiking gear salesman who is actually a frequent hiker*, but at least I know that if the stitching on my coat comes undone in six months I will have a new or repaired coat without question.
You get what you pay for. Hell of a deal on that 500 GB external hard drive at Best Buy? Gee, I wonder how they can afford that.
---
* My most interesting LL Bean experience was when I was looking at backpacks in the hiking section for a while, and the customer beside me noticed my indecision and asked about how I planned to use it, what type of hiking I did the most, etc. He gave me a 10 or 15 minute discussion of the pros and cons of each one, and recommended a few as the best choices for my needs. Come to find out he was an employee in that department doing some shopping on his day off.
So you are an identity as well as a hard drive thief! That is my name and address!
Err, wait. You have my apologies. I misread my ID which says Jules Vern.
If you want a real thrill ask them to open you DVDs or even better anything in those vacuum formed plastic containers.
A good friend of mine bought a Sony Digital Camera back in 2001 or 2002 at Frys. I was there with him when he bought it, when we got home and he unwrapped it, the Camera was missing, only the manuals, packing material and drivers were there. The Camera was missing. We went back to Fry's and tried to explain the camera was missing from the box. The CSR people basically didn't believe us and told us to get lost. My friend ended up writing a letter to the CEO himself. Surprisingly, he got a response (a form letter) that basically said they are sorry, but there is nothing that Fry's can do. I know I've shopped at fry's many times, and Fry's has a reputation of putting returned products back on the shelves. I've heard many stories about how people would buy a GeForce 8500GT video card and after opening the package, would find an older 6500 or something to that effect.
I can download every credit card transaction without any effort and track my spending. It requires a lot more effort with cash.
As far as the pin stealing thing, you get your money back. Same as a credit card. You go through the same process as if someone stole your credit card.
Your exposure to credit card fraud is limited by federal law. The same is not true for debit card fraud.
And even assuming you're lucky enough to have a bank that does, you're in much different circumstances. With credit cards fraud, you fight to NOT pay money. With debit cards, your cash is gone and now you have to convince the bank to give it back.
I've heard the same thing from multiple people about Amex. I've avoided them for a while because of the annual fees but it seems that they're safer than the others.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Indeed, this is one of the landmark fraud-leads-to-business-failure cases from the 80s. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/08/29/BU12623.DTL
Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people!
Hear, hear.
"Worst Buy" isn't even worthy of being deemed wordplay. It's like an "Oh yeah... well you're a... a... WORST Buy!" quip that a three-year-old would be ashamed of making up. At the very least, go for something remotely clever... Detest Buy, Busted Buy, anything... something that shows a spark, a glimmer, some sign of having composed for a moment.
Why, "M$" shines like a jewel, a glimmering beacon of wit in the face of "Worst Buy". (Although, I've got to say, "Bad Vista" does manage to sound a little bit dumber. That's about where it stands on the scale.)
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
Perhaps it was returned as an "unopened", re-shrinkwrapped box.
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
NO! there is NEVER a need for RFID tags unless you plan on being cattle or sheep.
This will be handled by the manufacturer. They have these things called Serial Numbers.
The Purchaser has the box, the box has the serial number on a label affixed to it (this is standard practice for all computer related components). When/IF the person that has the drive ever calls or attempts to return said drive he will be caught, (that is IF the HD manufacture does their part) In the Meantime the should send the purchaser a new drive.
Could BestBest just claim that they weren't tiles until the consumer opened the box?
we walked other guests to accomodate her block of four ...
I told him we paid for guests to stay elsewhere on her account,
I would have you fired for overbooking the place to begin with. No other places 'overbook' except hotels and airlines, and it usually ends up costing the customer time and trouble. Overbooking should be illegal.
I've learned not to ask for help. More often than not you spend more time trying to explain what you want than it'd take to just hunt around and find your item. Even after explaining fully I don't think I've ever had a useful answer. Not that any other store is better. Small shops, usually, just don't have what you want and big places like Fry's and Best Buy hire idiots. Sadly, if you aren't a computer whiz and don't know someone that is a computer whiz you're just kind of screwed. Can't really be helped though as most people don't want to pay for the expertise.
Life becomes difficult when you move from one Fry's location to another because they don't have the same layout. Suddenly you no longer know where everything is. You're forced (or so I tell my wife) to spend hours and hours browsing until the new store is memorized.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I just had a similar problem with a book. Last year I bought a book from Amazon.com. Since it was a replacement for a copy I had lost, I didn't like inside it when it arrived, just put it on the shelf. The other day I went to consult it, only to find that although it had the cover of the book I ordered, inside was a completely different book! Amazon's response was that since I bought it last year they won't give me a full refund but that I can apply for a partial refund. On the other hand, this is really the publisher's mistake, not Amazon's, so perhaps I should raise it with them. (And yes, it's an expensive academic book, so the cost of a new copy is not trivial.)
..and if it breaks a week later, he can't return it because he doesn't have the original packaging!
Bought a new 200 gig hard drive maybe 4 or 5 years ago. They had just come out and I paid through the nose for it. When I got it home and tried to connect it, I discovered it wasn't a 200 gig drive at all but a 10 megabyte drive...yes megabyte. I took it back to the store and they questioned me pretty heavily. They said that this couldn't happen because all returns went back to the manufacturer. To which I said, "Look, all I know is I bought this expensive hard drive and this antique is inside. I know how this looks, but that's what happened. I want my money back, or I want a 200 gig hard drive." They made me stand there for an hour, I guess to see if I start to sweat and make a break for it...but they finally gave me my new hard drive. I guess I lucked out.
As a former Hotels.com customer I would recommend you never use Hotels.com again. The hotel I went to also had trouble finding my reservation. They found it after I gave them a printout from the web site*. Anyway, Hotels.com prepays for your entire stay. If you leave early the Hotel can not refund your money, that is up to Hotels.com instead. Hotels.com has a policy of never refunding your money unless you cancel 24 hours before your stay is scheduled to begin. Talking to the customer service lady, I got the impression she hears stories like this all the time.
* I think hotels generally ask for the credit card you made the reservation with. Then they look up the room based on that. Hotels.com gives the hotel a completely different number.
I'd turn around, obviously grab another drive just like it, and walk out of the store with my receipt in hand. Let the bastards call the cops and look like assholes when I calmly hand over my receipt to prove my purchase. Or if they hadn't given me my receipt yet I'd start yelling about how they stole my money. Let lots of other customers hear all about it.
I'm so pissed off at being pushed around by big companies. I've had a couple different companies this past year that I canceled my service from and they kept charging me and claimed I hadn't canceled. I've had several more that have screwed up billing and keep submitting charges I've never authorized for stuff I didn't buy and my bank refuses to help in any way - including not removing overdraft charges. The worst are businesses, in my case a merchant services company that was serving my business, that require a bank account number for auto-pay - you just can't get rid of the bastards. 1&1 Internet is pretty bad too - they accidently charged me for a hosted server whose contract I'd canceled and my wife for a bunch of domains she canceled. Their billing department is horrible. Of course the worst one I'm dealing with right now is the IRS. I'm fighting a case of identity theft to get last year's tax refund still. They acknowledge it's obviously a case of identity theft and they say they know who is responsible but they can't release my money to me until they've figured out how to collect back what they sent the thief. It's their screw-up so how the heck is it my problem? Of course fighting with the government is hellish and it's not enough money to make it worth paying for a lawyer probably.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
I know from experience Visa is equally helpful in cases like this. I had my identity stolen, and Visa was super helpful in refunding all the purchases that were made. What I never figured out is why the crook had the items sent to my address...
Comment of the year
I was shopping in Best Buy one day. I was looking at hard drives. Some other customer was looking at a couple open box video cards. He asks one of the blue shirts if he can open up the video card and check it out. Blue shirt says sure. I look over and the customer pulls a modem out of the video card box. He asks the blue shirt where the monitor plugs in. I interrupt and tell them that's a modem and not a video card. The customer puts the modem back in the box, hands it to the blue shirt and walks away.
Then what does the blue shirt do? He puts the box BACK ON THE SHELF.
Why do you assume that Best Buy wasn't breaking any consumer protection laws? Based on the summary, it sounds like the Best Buy manager committed plain old fashioned theft (taking the second HD after it had been paid for), regardless of what other laws may have been broken.
But of course us stupid Americans could never, ever approach the pure enlightenment of you Europeans! How foolish of me to even wish it.
Comment of the year
Ahem. If I show you a picture of tower bridge, and you buy it, and then it turns out you got ripped off trying to buy a bridge from me, the cops are going to laugh you out of the station.
I still side with the customer especially since businesses have insurance for product loss but lets not forget that it is entirely possible that the victim actually has the drive and is trying to pull a scam on the business. Business abuse occurs quite often. For instance: 1) Customer carries a little ketchup sized packet of water to squirt on the ground to sue for dangerous conditions. 2) Customer pockets a product in plain sight then drops it out of sight while still in the store. Once the customer is falsely accused they sue. Pardon my incorrect legal terminology.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
It always amazes me how technology on the cutting edge http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1473839 like this are utilized via commonly available commodity products by clever retailers. Unfortunately this seems to be another lack of support and customer service that ultimately scares the consumer away from these fabulous new technologies. I hope Best Buy learns that they really need to up the bar on customer service and support for these new technologies. I'm sure that Best Buy made the common profit driven mistake and did not include a cable to connect the memory tiles to the computer. As with HDTV's and lack of HDMI cables bundled with TV's at the retail level, they surely sell the memory tile cable at an extortionate markup, again scaring the consumer away from these wonderful new technologies. Of course I'm sure Best Buy support offered to send out the Geek Squad to fix the problem, but the cost to this poor consumer would be more than the item itself for the Geek Squad genius to configure the memory tiles, and that also required a 20 year service agreement sign up (including automatically signing up the consumer to MSN dialup account for life . Last but not least, I hope they branded with their private label to retain that customer marketing edge! Overall, I still give Best Buy the highest mark for running such a great company, good for the consumer, good for the economy, go Best Buy!
Real men don't need signitures!!!
"That fucking retarded crook-harboring scamshop Best Buy" has a nice ring to it! I think i like it better than "Worst Buy"
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
I was on the other end of a similar scam at CompUSA. Bought a DVD burner for $25 from the clearance rack and got a broken CD drive. After CompUSA directly claiming in exact words "You are a thief" and threatening to call the police on me which I encouraged them to do, I eventually got my credit card credited the full amount and have not shopped there since.
So what's the problem? He already had the CASH/STORE CREDIT and was REPURCHASING the drive when the manager took it away. So if they took that drive away after he bought it does that amount to theft by the store? If I were him then I would call the police instead of the store, if I had not commited fraud then I have nothing to fear.
FlyingPizzas.com, for the tasteful hermit
I hate to burst your bubble, but Amex is one of the worst cards to use (some serious flaws in their databasing and insane fees).
I personally don't have a credit card - I have a debit card (Visa). It works great, I've had a company repeatedly try to charge me AU$550 every month because they reckon I owe them the cash (case is with the Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman here in Aus so they're not supposed to bill me let alone charge my card). Every month my bank reverses the charge and any fees involved with being overdrawn as I only keep a limited supply of cash in the account.
TBH, you guys in the US have no rights when it comes to purchases. If the same story had have happened here it would have gone to the Department of Fair Trading/Consumer Affairs and the retailer would have backed down rather quickly. Heafty fines or giving the customer what they deserve, I know what I would prefer as a retailer.
Transparent packaging also might work, without the enormous expense of millions of RFID readers.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
ok i work in retail management. And although many /'ers think people in retail are mindless dolts, lets look at this case.
First the GM at that best buy store is no college kid. He makes 100,000 per year PLUS bonus. He likely has a degree and 10 years retail management under his belt. For a guy like that to make such a bad decision is beyond the pale. The media attention from this will likely get him fired.
Of course in retail you have many "Scammers" trying to beat you. Any one of them does not cost your store much, BUT if you feed them( give them what they want) they will come back( in numbers) and break you. Plus the calls to home office usually cost you money( or ranking points that amount to money/job security).
Although I think it was likely a bad decison KUDOS to best buy for backing this guy up. Most companies will not.
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Not sure what your story has to do with my point. You're talking about noticing in the store that the item is missing because the box is torn. I'm talking about someone purchasing and taking home a sealed product and then returning with the claim that the item was not in the sealed package. In my retail experience (four years), this has not once proven to be anything other than a scam. Ask anyone else in retail, and you'll find the same is true. Open packaging is another story entirely, as that presents an easy opportunity for someone to rip off a store, hence why you find DVDs and games with all those annoying seals around them to clearly indicate if a package has been opened.
I would have smashed that cunt right in the face!
A hard drive in a sealed box is very easy to open up and check for the right contents in the presence of a sales person. They can't very well accuse you of fraud when you have a receipt timestamped a few minutes ago as proof that this item was bought there and you couldn't have swapped the thing for something else. It could potentially be a different capacity drive that would be very difficult to prove was supplied in error, a returned as faulty device that a manager decided to put back on the shelf after a return, or as in this case, something totally different to the item purchased.
I've bought quite a few lower end devices from computer fairs, and to avoid getting ripped off, I always inspect the item after paying. So far, I haven't been stung. But it would be very easy for a stall holder to substitute the item for something else and deny all knowledge of the swap. Bring out the dodgy stock an hour or two before the end of the fair, and few would have the time to go back and challenge them.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
No, it's not your guess, it's part of the quote from the website you provided earlier.
It's also not only false but patently ridiculous. The people who have trouble with credit cards typically do so because they apply for the cards out of desperation because they're already in financial trouble and that makes the cards a bailout tool. At that point it's too late and the cards only add to their misery. Or there are the people who get credit cards either before they become gainfully employed, before they live on their own, or just plain before they learn fiscal responsibility.
As to your point about spending more, no, that's not at all true. Money is money and if you treat the medium different from one form to the next you're a fool and deserve what you get (high debt load, reduced enjoyment of life). If you research your major purchases and are mindful of the small purchases and always negotiate the price before discussing the method of payment you can't lose. If they ask me "How will you be paying?" before the final price comes out, I ask why. If they're a deep-discounting store who charge more for AmEx than MasterCard, or offer a cash discount, sure, I'll take them up on it - but it'll be on my terms. You'll note that I ask "why?" before I answer. Always.
Further; I've found that the people most vehemently opposed to credit cards (or personal debt / financing) are the people who either don't understand it, or more specifically whose lack of understanding has found them in serious trouble. To which category do you belong, sir?
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
One word: Costco
Clearly you didn't understand the link you put in your post. The victim in this case, thought that this manager could stop him from leaving with his property. There was clearly intimidation involved, or the guy would have left with his hard drive. Thus robbery.
Either way, a crime was committed. Seizing another persons property without their permission is a crime. This was definitely a police matter, and the victim should have treated it as such.
Our company purchased 4 external Iomega hard drives from Dell. Two of the boxes received contained hard drives. The other two contained vitamins!!!!
God dammit not floor tiles again! I knew that cereal box felt too heavy...
Relax I just want some peanuts.
How many people do you know would return a box of cereal with a brick in it?
But your example is a bit silly, most of the thefts from cereal boxes are from kids and they just steal the toys straight out of the store.
Who exactly appointed you as an insult keeper?
It will be always WorstBuy, M$, GeekSquish, AOHell,
Compaq Imsorrio, Rat Shack, and an old favoite: Compu$pend etc.
You want some wit? ok here's some:
Shut up you Fuck!!!
I've worked in retail and been a customer. While a majority is a scam, this is not always the case. CDs and DVDs are pretty good with their anti-theft packaging. Hard drives aren't. A lot of them just have plastic wrap and a seal. Our store had plastic and a heat gun to reseal any damaged packaging.
If you've worked in retail, you would know that not all employees care enough or are smart enough to figure out a hard drive was stolen. That doesn't even include the employees that are actively involved in theft themselves, which accounts for about 45% of inventory shrinkage.
Of course, it all comes down to what the law is in the specific place where this occurred -- where I live, the 'intimidation' must be a threat of violence. I imagine that in this case the offence is more akin to fraud -- the customer is (fraudulently) led to believe that they are required to hand over the hard drive.
You would think that somebody would realize the many errors in that info. 1. Elmer Fudd being a cartoon character 2. San Antonio being in Texas and not Road Island 3. 90210 being Beverly Hills and not Road Island Some people are idiots.
My sig beat up your sig.
I'd heard the number was more like 20 (this was in a real estate agents' seminar, during a time when I was in the process of discovering that I don't make a particularly good real estate agent). It was certainly true of me, when United Van Lines screwed me over; I made a point of telling everyone I knew who was looking for a mover about that experience.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
I know I'm late, but I figured I would share my own personal story. I went to Fry's in Sacramento a number of years ago and purchased Visual C++. I was traveling for work. I got back to my hotel room to find that the promo CD that came with it - the training video - was in the box, but there was no install disc. This wasn't a box labeled as a store return which Fry's is normally pretty good at. I went back to Fry's. I was told by a manager that this sort of thing happens and that I would have to contact Microsoft - he even had a phone number for me to call. I was adamant that this was a store issue and I wanted my install discs, but to appease him, I called Microsoft on my cell phone.
Microsoft literally laughed at me on the phone and told me I would have to get the discs from Fry's.
They wouldn't give me my discs and demanded I leave the store. I refused. I wasn't leaving without my discs. They threatened to call the police. I dialed the number on my cell phone, explained my story to the dispatcher and they sent a unit. The Managers then were very upset with me and demanded I leave again. I refused and said the police were coming and if they wanted me to leave I would.
Enter the next set of managers. They had me walk them through where I got the box from, inspected my package and again tried to pass off the Microsoft number. I told them I had already called and they told me Fry's was on the hook for giving me the CDs. At that point, all the managers just walked away from me, but stood a good 40 feet away staring at me.
The police finally showed up and before we got into it with them they gave me a replacement box.
I've worked retail plenty and I understand that customers will try to pull a fast one on you - but as a paying customer I am not responsible for shrinkage. You don't go to stores and gamble on whether or not you should receive what's in the box. If they don't deliver, they have to refund your money or deliver the product you were promised. There isn't any grey area.
The moral of the story is that when you are right, you are right. Don't back down, and don't let some retail manager push you around. Leaving the store without either your money or the product you paid for is a bad idea no matter how you look at it.
Miniscribe all over again?
Many years ago a failing hard drive manufacturer scammed their own accounting system They booked the value of drives the minute they were shipped, but did not adjust the books for returns. So some bright spark came up with the idea of shipping real bricks - each one showed as revenue, but when it was returned, the revenue was not cancelled.
I think there may have been some jail time for management after this one came to light.
There is a reference to the story here
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7482
If it had been me, I would have felt perfectly within my rights to put said manager on his ass the moment he tried to steal what was, by then, my property, and let the law sort it out if he objected.
The nearest we've got to Best Buy in the UK is PC World / Dixons, and I've had so many bust-ups with managers in those stores over mis-labelling, poorly placed stock, etc. that I now just don't shop there any more, else I would be risking getting done for GBH.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
...and 22 Acacia Avenue being an Iron Maiden song.
Money for nothing, pix for free
...and 22 Acacia Avenue being an Iron Maiden song.Good catch! You get the bonus brownie: I also use 1313 Mockingbird Lane as an alternate street...
Ye gads, it's fun to skew marketing.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
I worked briefly for Best Buy (though not in their returns department) and also for CompUSA for a bit (I know...pity the fool.)
At CompUSA we never took back *any* returns until we had verified what was in the box. On top of that, we always required a drivers license or valid photo ID. I vaguely recall returning something to Best Buy once and them requiring the same information. If they are not taking that info, they are not doing their jobs correctly.
Which, in the U.S., the way some people behave, is not necessarily surprising.
Do You Experiment?
Police: If it was unopened, how did you determine it was tiles and not a disk drive? Do you x-ray all your purchases and mail to verify proper contents before opening them?
Alleged Crook: Mommmmy!!!
I work in retail, in fact the customer is frequently wrong as well as loud and stupid.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Have started coming with clear windows on the packaging becasue this sort of thing has become so common.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Nice - well done for being honest. Reminds me of the time I ordered a colour laser printer on-line...when it arrived the driver was somewhat surprised to be at a residential address, "Where do you want me to put the pallet?".
"Pallet?!"
"Yeah - these things are heavy and as there're four of them we bundle them on a pallet."
"Four?"
"Yeah - four packages right here..."
Well, it was pretty easy in that case to just refuse delivery and return to sender. Never got so much as a bean in thanks though, and it was another week before I got my one colour laser printer...
-- Pete.
Monochrome - Probably the UK's largest internet BBS
I wonder whether they gave him one of those adorable little hats as a reward?
What 'proof' would you find convincing? I've known it happen to several people so either my friends are all con artists on the sly or this is an endemic problem in electronics retail.
It became tiles only when the customer opened the package and observed it.
Then when there is a problem & the store have refused to do anything about it, ring up the credit card company & tell them to sort it out. Certainly here in the UK (and I know this from experience), the credit card company is jointly liable with yourself for any problems, so as a minimum you should always get half your money back.
And if the credit card company refuses to accept liability, complain to their CEO.
I had exactly this scenario with a Moben kitchen some years ago. The kitchen was not completed, installation was substandard & Moben refused to do anything about it. We went to a solicitor who wrote them some nasty letters but Moben still refused to do anything. I went to the credit card company as I'd paid for the kitchen on the card, they refused liability initially. So I found out the name of their CEO from the Internet and wrote to him directly. He wrote back, apologised for the mistake, admitted joint liability and the issue was solved - after a year of hassle, we got the kitchen corrected and, including our legal fees, ended up paying £2000 less for the kitchen over all as compensation.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I don't know why this problem keeps turning up. I've returned several things before to Best Buy because they were damaged. Each time, they opened the package to verify what I had said was true. And, at least in New York, I've never been able to return or exchange anything without my driver's license, so there's no way I can just make up a fake name.
Granted, this guy should have been able to make the return but I never make a large purchase from anyone without checking the contents first. You just never know these days.
Actually, I think my local supermarkets play football with the boxes. So a significant amount of cereal is reduced to fine dust (i.e. I end up having to chuck out the last of the packet). This week one of the supermarkets reached a new low, many of the boxes had dents and holes in them and a couple were sellotaped closed after having opened.
Supermarkets rank alongside banks and telcos in my personal "leagues of evil" table. The ones here have recently only managed to stock bread that at best will go off in about 2/3 days (i.e. there is even stock out that has a best-before date of that very day). Buyer beware indeed. The fiends even get away with selling meat that has gone off (they just reduce it to half-price, or not even that sometimes).
I'd not be surprised at any retail store here in Ireland selling an empty box nevermind one tiles in it. You still get to pay more than anywhere else in Europe as well!
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
In the magazine were a couple of pages detailing their ordering & shipping process, most of which is done robotically. When a customer orders a stack of items, the items get placed into a carton which is finally checked by weighing it - since the weight of each inividual item is already known, checking the total weight is a good way of checking for any errors in a customer order.
It strikes me that this would be a good way of checking items at the tills of PC stores - weigh the item, report that weight on the till receipt & that can be used to detect problems at point of purchase or later on when the customer brings something back.
Incidentally, in the UK, the onus for this is very much on the retailer due to the Sale Of Goods Act. You are entitled to a full refund if what you have purchased is unfit for purpose & it would be very much up to the retailer to prove the customer wrong. This is why, for example, a lot of unscrupulous customers in UK clothes stores will by an item for a party, wear it & then take it back for a full refund a week later - Marks & Spencer are particularly willing to give customer refunds and therefore get this a lot.
I did have one occasion in PC World where an item was missing from a box but I make a habit of always opening the box when I go out to the car from the store - so withing minutes I was back in the store for an exchange which helps also.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
You should try 57 Mount Pleasant Street.
It's the same room, but everything's different...
-- Steve
Not all of them have annual fees. Check around, Amex has multiple card types now. They used all have fees, but that has disappeared for the most part as other cards drop fees, too.
...they'll be worth more in 2 years.
I have ridden the mighty moon worm!
"He said I was shit out of luck".
That says it all, really. You just need to decide whether you want to deal with a company that speaks to its customers like that. I would say, "Not while there are any other companies".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Well, someone in America did buy the London Bridge back in 1968. But he knew what he was getting.
I stopped at a local computer shop once upon a time to buy a network card. Got carried away, wound up buying a NIC, new video card, and a hard drive. Came to about $350. Paid with my credit card and left.
Few days later I notice a $350 credit on my card. I go back and look at the receipt and realize that the guy processed it as a CREDIT instead of a CHARGE. So I'm gonna do the right thing and tell him about it. Stop in his store a little while later:
Me: Hey, I was in here the other day. I think you messed up the charge for my credit card.
Him: I didn't OVERCHARGE you sir, and I'm getting sick of people nickel and diming me.
Me: Yeah, you didn't overcharge me, I was looking at this receipt and....
Him: Read the sign. NO REFUNDS, NO RETURNS
Me: Your right, what was I thinking?
Went in to do the right thing and got attitude for it. So fuck 'em. They never did catch it. They PAID ME $350 to take their stuff. For some reason they went out of business a few months later..... ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Since when did Best Buy get into the home improvement business? The quote "The employee and assistant manager were more than willing to help, saying that it happens." They redily admit it happens and therefore has happened before and will happen again. This needs to be persued for sure. Of course one obvious question comes to mind, why shop at Best Buy? They are clueless anyhow.
Stop by and watch a Christmas movie, commercial or cartoon! -->http://www.XmasDVD.com
"Well, maybe at first, however, in TFA, I got the idea, that BB had already accepted the return, and the customer had bought and paid for a NEW harddrive and had that in hand."
Why would you pay for a hard drive which is based on an exchange? He returns a HDD because it's tile and pays for a new HDD? No. If it is returned, the credit card is debited before you pay for the new merchandise. I've returned many things in many places, and the narrative is very different from anything I've encountered. Standard practice is to first validate the return, process the return, then transact the new merchandise. If this were an exchange, then he would pay nothing.
Furthermore, we have only the word of the consumer that the package contained tile instead of the HDD. Why are we taking his word for it? How is he more credible than a manager only because he is complaining?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
D00D, are you crazy?? " Kudos to BB for backing this guy up "?
They should have judged it on a case-by-case basis and said "FU, YOU R TEH FIRED" to the idiot manager for being a complete mental asshat!
In the past I've dealt with online stores that will only ship to an address other than your billing address after you complete one order to your listed billing address. Perhaps the crook was hoping that you'd let it slide long enough that he could get another purchase in and get away before you flagged it and got the card cancelled.
Bought a home entertainment system, complete.
Was actually buying it from out of town but got a great deal so was willing to buy it and pay shipping.
After 2 weeks with no word on the shipping, I began calling on average once a day trying to get a hold of anyone from that department to find out what was going on. It was xmas season and they were so busy I couldn't get anyone on the phone. 6 weeks later (!) I got a call from the guy who sold it to me saying they had forgotten to ship the tv and stereo.
The next thing I heard was another 2 weeks later, when some no-name shipping company called to say my tv had been stolen from their loading dock.
Now did I specify to BestBuy that I wanted the shipment insured? Yes. Was it? No. At that point I said don't ship me anything, not even the stereo that was still on the loading bay. I called visa and got the charge reversed on the basis that I had paid for tv and stereo and gotten neither after almost 3 months.
So they shipped the stereo anyway, of course. It took 3 or 4 months after that to straighten everything out between BestBuy, visa, and myself.
If that happened to me I'd simply refuse the charge on my American Express card
after phoning Amex and Best Buy would be shit out of luck.
Already been there and done that with other ass hole vendors.
No, they didn't. It was a group of investors from Arizona who were looking to create a tourist attraction. They thought they were buying Tower Bridge, which is the tall fancy bridge near the Tower of London. London Bridge is actually a plain, ordinary concrete road bridge. Oh well.
Cardboard boxes are a whole lot more eco-friendly than plastic transparent packaging though. Although cardboard boxes plus RFID I'm not so sure.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
He should have called 911 right there and reported the robbery when the manager stole the drive from him. Although we all know how well that type of things turns out.
I was taking my wallet out to pay 400 Dlls for a digital camera and the teenager suddenly pulled out a yellow sticker. I asked: What is that? He replied: Is for restocking. I looked at the print and warned that if the sticker was torn, there was a 25 dollar charge for returns. Right there I realize what kind of customer Best Buy was taking me for. I just turned and walk away. Everybody should.
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
...and other people know how to spell Rhode Island.
I was a yellow-shirt. The job is nothing more than a glorified greeter; I'm surprised we didn't have a roll of stickers to give to the kids. There was no running of names/credit cards against anything. On truck night I got to put things in locked cabinets, though!
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
From the article : I got on my computer and bought a Western Digital 1TB hard drive from BestBuy.com
Please. Tell me where you found a 1TB hard drive for $40-$120. I really want to do my shopping there from now on.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Somewhere, in a marketing database somewhere, sits:
Elmer Fudd
Too bad you didn't go for Terabithia, RI, 90210. (I mean, why stop at fake city names?:)22 Acacia Avenue
San Antonio, RI, 90210
Cool song on a great album.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"I do understand the difference ;)"
:-)
Glad someone does:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/59/Fergie-LondonBridge.JPG
The solution is a simple case of packaging. If you can see the hard disk with label then it is not a problem. Someone has to work awfully hard if you can see the merchandise in the box. The other option is special wrapping. It may cost a few nickels more, but if it means customers trust your product then you have to do it.
It's not the size of your stack that matters, it's how you push and pop
Not to mention, Road Island not existing, but Rhode Island existing. ;)
If you treat the customer like a criminal, you will lose the customer.
I used to occasionally buy RAM from BB, and I'm sure most people here have some stories about supposedly compatible RAM, especially if you're buying from an OTC retailer. So I'd buy a stick, and try it. If it didn't work, I'd return it. If it did work, I'd buy more. When they started up with the, "Not our problem if it doesn't work" I stopped shopping there.
I'm not a picky customer, but the minute you start treating me like I'm trying to scam you, I'll take my money elsewhere.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Take the logic further and open the box PRIOR to purchase. Not that I recommend it but that would be my course were I so concerned. Then again, I once returned a PS2 in a garbage bag because I was too lazy to put the POS back in its cramped little home.
One of the listed "benefits" of my card is guaranteed 30 day returns on purchases. It's right there on the contract. Most credit cards probably have this as well.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
The moral is that you overbooked, and you let your ego get in the way of customer service. You are not being honest when you write that your "hands were tied by company policy" because you write that you "could have given her a large chunk back, but she decided to bully me instead." So in response to what you perceived as bullying, you decided to retaliate by bullying her by making it your "mission to ensure she paid for those rooms." Your entire post reeks of the undeserved ego of minimum wage clerks. The only damage you describe--having to reject other guests at your expense--happened only because you overbooked.
I hope your hotel goes out of business.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
next time i want to spend 40 dollars to have them plug in something for me and then get conned into paying 40 dollars for some add-ons i don't need i'll go to best buy
I worked at Maxtor when the purchase of Miniscribe happened. One of the people in shipping, who was a buddy, gave me a gift when he left the company: an ESD packaged brick with a MiniScribe label on it. I still have it, somewhere.
The best buy employee will just re-shrinkwrap it and sell it as new. All you'll be doing is wasting your life sticking it to "teh man".
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
choose products that you know you can get the product out of without visiblly damanging the seals in a way you can't repair, replace the item with something of similar weight and return it as still sealed in box.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
"Cock-harboring" would have been funnier.
The employees, at least, get paid straight time. No commission, and really no incentives.
I happen to have worked at a Best Buy in the past (briefly, mind you... my manager and I had a disagrement about the best way to serve the customers' needs - I wanted to explain things to them so they could make an informed decision, he wanted them to buy things based on purchase price).
I have no idea what management gets paid, or what their incentive plans might include. I do know that the blue-vested people you see wandering around in the aisles ignoring customers are paid not much more than minimum wage, regardless of the speed at which inventory fails to fly off the shelves.
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I do IT work in a warehouse/distribution company. When we ship out double orders or other mistakes like this, it's actually harder to catch, since customers don't report these errors. So and bugs in the system or picking errors are actually more likely to be in favor of the customer, since errors are not in favor of the customer are reported and fixed.
That's pretty funny. I wonder if they ever belatedly realized what you were trying to tell them. Of course, if they then tried to charge you while you weren't present, you would have been within your rights to file a chargeback.
I've never had that happen but I once did get a purchase charged to the card of whoever had checked out ahead of me. I did go back and have them fix it, and they were surprised (I think) that I reported it!
i am a soviet space shuttle
The problem is, since people find it hassle enough to deal with returns and other similar reasons to get RMAs, they don't want to have to deal with it when it's a necessity. If it's such a hassle, they're not going to want to do it when they could just put the extra away to gather dust somewhere because they've run into the hassle that is a return in the past.
...
If the process were totally painless and very quick and didn't require a lot of hoops to be jumped through, I think mistakes like that would be reported more often. I know I didn't want to deal with the hassle of a return, having had problems with that place's return process in the past.
Another explanation that didn't apply to my particular case below
I don't understand why it is so hard to attempt to return something so often, especially when the mistake is so clearly the merchant's fault (managers stealing customers' returns, and corporate then supporting them!? - see the hard drive/tile story from yesterday).
I also suspect that given all the reports of people being defrauded (failing to sell what you claim to be selling is fraud) and the merchant outright refusing to make it right are leading to a lot of attitude of "they obviously don't care if they outright defraud people, why should I care about them?"
i am a soviet space shuttle
I got my girlfriend a PS2 for Christmas (2004 IIRC) at Toys-R-Us. Come Xmas morning, we open it up and the first thing I notice is the Sony tamper tape, is covering an already broken piece of tape.
Pull out the PS2 and it's obviously used, it has burn marks on it, a black tar like substance and melted candle wax, and the serial label hanging off (label swapped with stolen one). Surprise, surprise it doesn't work. An employee must have brought there broken one from home and swapped them out, and added the tamper tape over the old one and put it back in the cage.
Long story short, I got f***ed out of $200+ and the frustrating delight of dealing with Toys R' Us and the CC company for a year.
So they screwed me out of a couple hundred, but come Xmas, my 16 nieces and nephews get presents from elsewhere.
I'm always apprehensive about bigger ticket items now.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
This is getting ridiculous. Not a week goes buy that I don't hear a story of Best Buy screwing its customers. I use to love going to Best Buy because I like shopping for stuff brick & mortar, but no more.
This may be slightly off topic, but I have to take this opportunity to vent... My son worked for Best Buy for a short while, while he was there he bought some gear with his employee's discount, including a USB cable. The sticker on the cable was over $30, but with the employee discount it was $1.68. Incredible.
There was a guy who would buy stuff from Best Buy/CompUSA/etc. $500 graphics cards, CD burners (which were a lot more expensive in 1999-2000), etc. He'd empty them out, fill the boxes with manuals from our floor models to give it appropriate weight, then use the store shrink-wrap machine to rewrap it. It ended when a co-worker and I caught him, called over the store manager, and he called the police. It wouldn't surprise me if something similar happened here - Best Buy got ripped off, either by someone with a shrink wrap machine or by one of their own employees. The fact that their trying to pass off their "shrinkage" costs to the consumer by doing crap like this is reprehensible.
Having read a few stories like this lately I have to ask: how can this possibly be legal? Are there no consumer protection laws in the US which have something to say about this?
Here in the Netherlands the law says among other things that a retailer (not the manufacturer) is liable when a product sold by them does not work like the consumer may reasonably expect. The retailer is obligated to at least offer to repair the product or replace it with a working one at no cost to the consumer. Presumably, a "harddisk" consisting of bathroom tiles instead of electronics would be interpreted as not working as could be reasonably expected...
I think you may be in the minority, most people are happy to get free stuff and won't report it, no matter how easy! :)
No, the real fact is I am not brimming with debt. In fact, I have no liabilities whatsoever. I do not have a mortgage, and if I did, it certainly would not be one that I couldn't afford. As other people have said, tracking spending with credit cards is easier. There is a reason why I specifically don't carry cash with me most of the time, because it leaves no record once I have spent it. Ponying up a couple bucks from my wallet doesn't bother me; looking at my credit card statement and seeing transactions that are a necessity put my spending into perspective for me.
With two small kids, I tend to eat a lot there. They have some stuff that's terrible, but also some decent stuff now. Their salads are OK, and they have decent chicken sandwiches (select ?). Their cheap chicken (nuggets etc) is terrible, and their burgers are not great either (but they're edible)
No matter how much you eat, you still pay a much smaller amount for one box.
So if one box suddenly is filled with scabies, then you can return it for a new one or chuck it out.
10$ max lost.
Shut up about your kids, this is slashdot. We're all either hot gay nerds or ugly fat and unable to get it hard.
... then this guy has the more compelling argument. After all, he was actually present when the box was opened, Best Buy was not.
If he says the box was full of tiles when he opened it, then Best Buy is in no position to refute that claim since they didn't insist on inspecting the box's contents when they sold it, and they weren't present when the box was opened. The fact is, Best Buy has no idea what was *really* inside the box when they sold it to the customer. As such, they have no grounds upon which to refute the customer's side of the story. If he says there were tiles in it, the court is going to have to believe him.
But it shouldn't have to go so far as small claims court since the guy bought it on Amex. They can take care of the problem for him.
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
I once ordered the Adobe AfterEffects 5.0 upgrade direct from Adobe. The delivery person left it on my doorstep, whereupon my lab puppies decided it was a new toy from the toy gods. They destroyed the package, chewed the CD into millions of tiny silver slivers and ate the manual. Aside from seriously suppressed laughter, the Adobe service rep never flinched, and happily reshipped another copy, on their dollar.
Within a week the puppies were behind a new wooden fence, as far from that porch as I could get them.
That's good customer service!
Am I reading this correctly? Drive is returned, new drive is purchased, manager takes drive, Best Buy Corporate stands behind manager's decision? That would seem to make Best Buy Corp culpable for conspiracy to commit robbery... which is a felony.
So, are you *sure* that corporate stood behind this manager's decision? Sounds to me like the police should be picking him up... maybe they should stop by the corporate office, while they're at it.
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Are you stupid? The rest of my post clearly shows I meant how hard is it for BestBuy to inspect the content of the box.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
Here is a summary.
http://www.nbc5i.com/news/14356988/detail.html
The Crux is that she not only got one Video iPod box of rocks but when she returned it, her daughter opened the other box at the customer service desk and sure enough it was full of rocks too.
I believe the guy, it's easy for an employee to open the box, grab the gear and put something heavy in the box so no one notices until the sale.
Bottom line is, unless the thing is packed in an unopened blister pack - then open the thing in the store and check that the products there. Many places even have shrink wrap units so that returned units can be re-shrink wrapped. Check your purchase before you leave the store.
It's good to hear WD has upgraded their drive internals to ceramic components.
The said part is I could tell more stories like that.
A buddy of mine and I went through the local McDonald's drive-thru once. Ordered some stuff off the dollar menu. Came to $3 and change. Gave them a $5. Got change back for a $20. Tried to bring it up with her when she came back to the window and got "I DIDN'T MESS UP YOUR ORDER, SIR!".
"No, you didn't, have a nice day" and we drove off. Let the little bitch deal with her drawer being short at the end of the shift. *sigh*, whatever happened to customer service?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
These are the same people who put cheese on burgers ordered by the lactose intolerant who have a damn good reason to say "no cheese". I wonder how long it will take someone to nearly die due to that and sue.
i am a soviet space shuttle
It's fun to mess with them sometimes though. My favorite past-time is to ensure that I get a fresh order of fries by specifically requesting them without salt. Nine of ten times they will grant this request, which requires a new batch to be made. Then when you hit the drive-thru window you ask them for salt packets ;)
Yeah, that's probably evil. But it works.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Evil? nah. Harmless? Yup. Putting food on orders that was requested to NOT be there might well be harmful, though.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Let me get this straight.. you want the government to have a record of everywhere you go, everything you do, every transaction you make? You best hope you stay in control of that government and NEVER decide to go against what they say. Unfortunately a government like that threatens us all, forget about the thief.
You post is disgusting, it involves nothing more than crying to your government to save you as if they are some sort of magic entity that can prevent all crime. Good grief.. How much would you charge in government services, police, and court fees to go after a measly $50 hard drive?
They don't want to take it back.. fine, just don't shop there anymore.. Newegg sells hard drives just fine give them your business.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Obviously your stupid for not making your point clearer, Dumb ass.
However, fingerprinting the tiles (a perfect medium for preserving prints) and the store employees might have been very interesting... of course one would need to call local law enforcement about that.
Regardless, as some pointed out, once he paid for the replacement drive, the manager TAKING it from him was theft, pure and simple. Doesn't matter about ANY of the surrounding circumstances, nor that he's still in the store. Was time to call the police on that one.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I am a retailer upon occasion. We had just gotten a new Credit Card processor and a new machine. Some company in New York called my manager out of the blue, and said "You have machine X, right". She replied that we did. They said "We are sending out an order for you." Since we had just gotten a new machine, she thought that this was the processing company sending something. So she said "OK". Never any discussion of what was in the order, and no indication of any price. Well, lo and behold, we get this big box of supplies for our machine, with probably $100 worth of credit card machine supplies in it. When we got this the manager called me and I called the company up telling them that we did not order this stuff and they had better take it back. They said "Your manager is authorized to order isn't she? She ordered it." I told them she is not authorized to buy from them because we don't have even have an account with them. They said all their orders are double checked. We only had gotten the one call, so I don't know how they figure it was double checked. Then, we got the bill for over $400 for that $100 worth of supplies. I told them again to come get their stuff. They said I can send it back to them. I took it to Fedex, and they happily shipped it...right back to me. I told them I wanted it shipped back to sender. They said they can't do that without authorization. By this time, I figured I had spent over $100 worth of my time on these crooks, so screw it. I'm using their supplies. Maybe they'll send me some more.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Did you get more or less than you paid for? Not quite sure.
I sure hope your purchasing people didn't blindly pay a random bill from them! Seems like a scam. You didn't order it, you shouldn't have to pay for it.
And since when do you need authorization from someone to ship them a package?
i am a soviet space shuttle
The moral is that you overbooked, and you let your ego get in the way of customer service
Did the fact that she made a verbal contract to occupy and pay for these rooms somehow elude you? She was in the wrong, and we had attempted to accomodate her even though she obviously had no intention of honoring that arrangement.
You are not being honest when you write that your "hands were tied by company policy" because you write that you "could have given her a large chunk back, but she decided to bully me instead."
You have obviously never worked for any sort of business before - there is company policy (which would have been repeated to her by everyone above me in the food chain) - and then there is what I could get away with. At any point I could have chosen to break with policy and not one single person would have questioned me on it. I had been with the company longer than most people she would have come into contact with, and because I routinely enforced policy (spirit of the law, if not the letter), it was assumed that I was capable of making these judgements. I wouldn't have heard a thing further had I caved to her; I got in zero trouble for adhering to policy.
Your entire post reeks of the undeserved ego of minimum wage clerks.
No, my post reeks of the undeserved bitterness that accompanies years of undeserved abuse. I was a manager.
The only damage you describe--having to reject other guests at your expense--happened only because you overbooked.
Yes we overbooked. You know why? Because every day people like her make reservations they have no intention of showing up for, nor have any intention of paying the no-show fee. In hotels, we overbook - to a point. Statistically speaking, 99% of no-show fees we be reversed; far fewer are kept than pay for the increased staffing levels at the desk, and on the shuttle, and in the restaurant, not to mention the business that's turned away that might otherwise occupy and pay for the room. She booked four rooms - it is extremely unlikely a group that large will no-show. If she'd bothered to cancel, even after check-in, we would have waived that fee because in reality, she'd have done us a favor.
What sort of upbringing did yo have that makes you think it's okay to be a dick to a perfect stranger, wage-slave or no, and expect that you'll get whatever you want?
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
I would have you fired for overbooking the place to begin with.
Good luck avoiding the unemployment on that; I was in accounting.
No other places 'overbook' except hotels and airlines, and it usually ends up costing the customer time and trouble. Overbooking should be illegal.
It is, which is why those guests we walked got a free room nearby, taxi fare back to the property, and breakfast in our restaurant, all free of charge. See my other comment as to why it's done.
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
You'd better be damned sure the receipt is timestamped within the past couple of minutes. You can't just buy something, then keep walking into the store day after day and leaving with a new HD. If you mean the one you had just purchased as a replacement, it should work OK.
I don't know where you live and work, but I used to work for a major HP/Compaq VAR in the NYC area. For a while we had a major problem shipping notebook computers via a certain three-letter shipping outlet. Someone in the shipper's local transfer station was opening the boxes, taking out the laptop and accessories, replacing them with the equivalent weight in bricks, and then sealing them back up as if they were never opened. This happened on both incoming and outgoing shipments.
Commercial shrink-wrap sealers necessary to make a product look like its never been opened are not cheap in comparison to the price of a hard disk. I think it's much more likely that a store employee stole the hard disk and re-wrapped it using the store's own sealer -- which I'm sure every Best Buy has in their warehouse -- rather than the customer. On top of which, retail stores have insurance to cover big losses and figure a certain amount of theft and fraud into the mark-up on sales. Unless they have some reason to suspect this customer is a repeat offender, their treatment was very short-sighted. I doubt that this customer will ever return to Best Buy when its time to buy that $3,000 HDTV (or the $100 HDMI cable, $120 home theater power filter and all the other overpriced crap BB tries to pile on a sale). And, over time, that will cost BB more than the $100 write-off against taxes that they would have encountered.
--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
I don't suppose they checked for fingerprints on those tiles...
I meant in a more general sense, as in "What the hell do you mean you wont give me my copies of these school photos that still say proof on them? I'm gonna get you fired and my husband is gonna kick your ass." that i deal with on a daily basis. Not necesarily just returns.("How long does your one hour photo take?" is another good one.) Our company has policies for returns that employees will attempt to follow for fear of reprimand, but if the cutomer complains enough management will not back up the employee or the policy. Although our district manager was in today and she denied several returns, that although ridiculous, probably would have been approved otherwise. The funniest today was a treadmill the guy bought six months ago and dont have a box or recipt for, were supposed to take that back why?
I specifically work in Photo/Electronics. Last week we had this girl bring in a camera she had bought 6 months prior. 3 months ago she had tried to return it because of poor battery life but we talked her out of it because she was using alkaline batteries and not high energy ones. Came back with the same problem a few weeks later, popped it open, she at least had energizers this time and not "HEVY DUTY", but not the energizer lithiums we had reccomended and explained for 20 minutes the last time... That one was eventually approved, but she exchanged it for a different model that also took AAs, i expect to see her back soon. But is there any reason we should accept a camera thats been used for 6 months and has nothing wrong with it? Are we running a free rental service for digital cameras and other high end electronics? And this one wasnt even a scam, just stupidity.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I do that all the time, I have never been questioned. Except there was this one time...
Once this hot chick who wanted my # at the line after I gave her a ton of fake information she got 253 867- 5309
A play off of and not very original either. Sadly the # was real, and some guy in the little town of Graham, WA. had yet another "prank" call.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Solution is simple.
Vendors create packaging that shows contents, be it a window or clear packaging.
I once had a shard of glass in my glass (ironic that) at a restaurant I visited. I was insanely lucky I hadn't managed to swallow it. When informed of it the restaurant decided my compensation for being put in a potentially life threatening state was to make my drink free and give me a new glass... Needless to say I was not terribly impressed and even though I liked the food, I never went back...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I'm pretty sure the inflated supply order is a standard scam. Because they sent you something unsolicited, you're perfectly within your rights to keep their stuff and not pay them.
Ahh, yes, here it is:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/supplies.shtm
Hey, just because you can't handle credit cards and mortgage debt doesn't mean others can't. I probably AM spending more with credit cards than I would with cash, but it's not because I don't feel the pain. Actually I'm so miserly I feel the pain twice, once when I charge the card and once when I pay the bill. The reason I spend more with credit cards is because cash doesn't work so well with online vendors, and a lot of the stuff I get online I simply wouldn't get if I had to purchase everything with cash in person. The credit card companies are good at their game, but they only have to win most of the time. If I want to (and I do) I can beat them. When they have an "no interest for 6 months" promotion, I'll charge everything to that card, transfer balances to it, then pay off the entire bill before the big increase comes. You know how they punish me for getting free use of their money for several months? By offering a credit line increase. It's not personal for them, it's just algorithms, and they aren't optimized to make sure e_veryone_ loses. As for mortgages... hey, I'm the one who was shaking my head when people were buying ARMs when interest rates were at an all time low. I got a 15-year fixed instead.
I always go "Mr. Donald Duck". Most type it in uncritically, the few that ask, I ask if identifying oneself is a requirement for shopping at this store. Only once did someone say "yes", at which point I left the $700 worth of stuff I was trying to buy and left the store.