Best Buy - Aurora - Aurora, IL Review

Aurora, IL

Overall 1.00 of 5 (by 1 user)

Eyerater
Fort Myers, FL

Best Buy - Best Beware if you are looking for customer service

seeking a bargain, daily computer user, technically savvy, a man, a creative, a writer

NOV

2008

Best Buy - Aurora - Aurora, IL —

I've shopped Best Buy before and - aside from a credit hassle with their Fort Myers, FL store, which may have been a HBSC problem - I have been satisfied with the service.

This time, I went looking for a new laptop computer. Best Buy had advertised an eMachine at at $299. I'm not a fan of eMachines so I went to Best Buy more to see what else they had that would be a good bargain.

Behold, there was a Dell with a display tag that said $377, reduced from $645. That's looking good for a 2G dual-core processor. Being thorough, I started to test run the display computer. It identified the unit I was working as being 3G, however.

When confronted with this information, the clerk said it was not actually the same computer, but that it was virtually the same computer, only with less memory.

So I asked if I could buy the computer on display with the 2G sign at the $377 price.

When the answer was "no", I asked to see the 2G version.

The clerk came back from seeing his supervisor and said the supervisor said 'No". I couldn't see the computer I wanted to buy.

So I asked to see the supervisor. He came out and verified that he would not open a box to show me the computer that he was trying to sell me at $377. He said it was the same computer and the same processor, just 2G instead of 3G. (At least the clerk and the supervisor had the same story.)

I likened it to showing me a 6-cylinder car and telling me the 4-cylinder version was just the same. Same shape. Same color. Just a smaller engine. But I wouldn't be able to test drive it or even see it until I bought it.

So I asked if I could return it if I purchased it and wasn't satisfied that it was the 'same' computer. Yes. But there would be a 15% restocking fee.

Summary: They are promoting a computer at a price that is not the price for the computer they are displaying. But they won't show me the computer that is at that price that that I would be willing to buy at that price, if i could just verify that it is the 'almost-the-same-computer'. And, if I buy it sight-unseen and return it, I will be penalized 15%.

The reason? The supervisor said If he opened the box and I didn't buy the computer, he would have to reduce the price to an out-of-box markdown. The supervisor wasn't ready to trust that I would buy the computer once I saw it in person. And he wasn't ready to risk that I might not.

This lousy customer handling led me to believe that the computer Best Buy was trying to sell me wasn't worth the price they were asking. Would you buy under that circumstance?

I did not. I walked.

But first, out of curiosity, I looked at the advertised eMachine. There was no data card with it. When I asked where the data card was, I was told they had just put the eMachines on display the night before and didn't have time to put out the card. I asked if I could see the data card, The supervisor told me if I wanted to know the specs, they were "in the ad."

It was like a cross between a Kafka script and a Saturday Night Life skit. Unbelievable.

The supervisor's explanation for all of this was his frustration that computers weren't moving at Best Buy and they were losing too much money on their computers already.

I wonder why.