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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 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
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)
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/
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.
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.
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.........
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.
I think that you overestimate the influence of /.ers.
We're not even 1% of the population, and while we might make 10x as many purchases as the rest of the population, we're still a small portion of BB and such's customer base; We're too likely to buy our stuff online from places like Newegg and tigerdirect.
I don't read AC A human right
My blog
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.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
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
My wife and I purchased a comforter set at Target that included the comforter, bed skirt, and two pillow shams... except after getting it home, opening it, and putting it on the bed (it's a queen-size bed, so getting the bedskirt on is not a quick and easy process) we realized that one of the shams was defective. I took the bad sham back to Target and asked the customer service drone if she (or I) could just replace it with one of the shams from another set. She was sympathetic, but explained that The System would not allow her to do that; that I would have to return the entire set and swap it out for a new one. I didn't bother to explain how much of a pain it would be to pull the bedskirt and everything off, repackage it, etc., etc., and how gee, it would sure be nice to buy something and have it actually meet a certain standard of quality, etc., etc., since I knew that I was not up against this drone but against The System.
So I told her I would be back in just a moment... I went to the shelf, pulled off a matching set, and went to customer service to pay for it (just for the pure thrill of having her witness the whole transaction). Took it out to my car, swapped out the shams, and brought it back to the customer service desk. "I'd like to return this comforter set--" I says to her, "it has a defective pillow sham." She refunded my money and I went home with my nice new, non-defective sham.
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
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.
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.
You should've known that before taking the test. Best Buy sells "image", not results to the customer. As long as their happy (according to their marketing metrics), they want cheerleaders.
Remember, extroverts far outnumber introverted geeks. This is the world we live in, even if it's all a farce. In other words, learn to be social or accept lower wage opportunities let alone a job.
Life is not for the lazy.
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.
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!
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
Women know. When you find one who moves in, you will soon learn. You will also learn about the pillows that you aren't supposed to use for sleeping, and the blanket that sits on the foot of the bed, only to be removed at bedtime and replaced the next morning. You will learn about towels that nobody except for "guests" may use. Ditto plates and silverware. Occasionally, candles will fall into this category. When this woman moves in, you will often find yourself nodding as though it all makes sense, if only to ensure that you will get to continue to have sex.
"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand" - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Not quite the only way...
- Always use a credit card... if he'd done that, as soon as Best Buy refuses to take it back, just stand there in front of the manager, call your card customer service, and have it charged back
- Contact your state's attorney general and notify them that Best Buy is fraudulently selling bathroom tiles labeled as hard drives
- Then complain to the BBB just to cover all the bases