What happens when Best Buy’s in-store pickup fails?
Last week I decided to get a new monitor. I could have ordered it from my favorite computer store online, but I’m impatient when it comes to gadgets and I wanted my monitor right away so the anticipation wouldn’t ruin my sleep. I found a monitor in-stock from Best Buy and ordered it for in-store pickup.
A couple of hours later, Best Buy emailed me. Shorter Best Buy: “Sorry, the monitor you ordered isn’t really in stock. But you can call our customer service people and we’ll ship it to you! Otherwise, we’ll cancel the order in six days.”
This is a perfect example of customer service done for the convenience of the store and not for the customer. Best Buy created a number of headaches rather needlessly and tried to push me into shopping behavior I was avoiding. These are the kinds of things I try to avoid doing when designing and building websites for people.
If I am making an online order, I do not want to talk to someone on the phone. There needs to be a process for either accepting shipment or canceling an order using an online interface. Calling customer service is unacceptable. But from a corporate standpoint it’s a great idea, because when they have you on the phone they can advertise at you (while on hold) or try to upsell you. I’d love to see numbers on how many people actually follow through with phone orders after the fact; my suspicion is that it’s too much work for most people, which is why Best Buy turns into a nag.
Once I discovered I was going to have to wait anyway, I ordered my monitor from a trusted online vendor — one that let me order the item online, accepts return information online, and responds to customer service requests online. They shipped me the monitor and I had it in two days.
For a week, Best Buy continued to send me email messages urging me to call customer service and arrange for my order to be shipped to me. Pointless emails, because they’d already lost the sale. All they did for a week was remind me of their own failure.
Well, that’s not really all they did. When I made my purchase, Best Buy pre-authorized my card for the purchase price. I don’t have a problem with that, but it was on the expectation of their being an actual completed transaction at the end. When I chose another vendor, I then had charges for two, not one, monitor sale pending. One from the other store, one from Best Buy.
Pre-authorizations clear after a couple of days if you haven’t completed the transaction, and sure enough the Best Buy charge evaporated. Only to be replaced the next day with another authorization. They’re keeping the order open, you see. Even though they lost the sale, even though I had already accepted delivery of my new monitor, they were re-authorizing my card for a purchase I would never complete. That is not cool.
I can’t say I won’t buy from Best Buy in the future. They are the closest electronics store that is not Radio Shack and pretty much the only game in town. But I don’t have to shop in-town. In the future, I’ll order things for delivery from the company that does business my way, and deal with the shipping delays and charges. No more in-store pickup from Best Buy for me.
Too many bad return experiences prevent me from ever shopping at Best Buy. Their customer service is rude and takes great pleasure in telling someone they may not return something. Or at least without some kind of penalty.
If I shop for electronics at an actual store, it’s either Circuit City or Walmart. No hassle returns, no matter what the issue is.
The only time I ever returned anything to Best Buy, they did a exhaustive check of what I was returning and even called a manager over to make sure they hadn’t missed a reason why they didn’t have to honor the return policy.
I have the same adverse reaction, but about Circuit City. Best buy has looked my lost receipt and exchanged a 42 inch TV that was outside of the return period but it was clearly a manufacturing warranty. It was 40 days and this sony TV got so hot inside it was burning thru the chassis. I am very thankful that Best Buy exchanged the <span class=“caps”>TV. </span> I am have quite a record with Best Buy since I have purchased all my electronics from them since I had my house built. I just want to be fair. Circuit city on the other hand, would not take my credit card payment check because it had my name only on it. During my move I had lost my checks, etc. I can se how I would be using a bad check to purchase something but to pay on my card? I just did not want the interest to come crashing in on one of those no interest offers that was to expire on the card. I was not trying to steal, I was trying to pay my bill. It is a good policy to protect the store from fraud, but no in my case. A manager was involved and he was no help. I had all my IDs and the bill with my statement. You see why I do not like Circuit City. However this situation can be explained I am sure, just like the Best Buy policies that affected you negatively can be explained as well. Not that it will help anything. these stores are becoming more and more extinct that we will have no choice but to keep going back. Internet shopping is great until someone steals your computer and your identity.
You know we’ve been using Craigslist a lot for electronics. Yes, its normally used, but have had good experiences… and since the sellers are local, we get it more or less the same day. And anytime we’ve had problems, we’ve had no problem contacting the seller and asking questions. Haven’t had to return anything yet, but thats probably a good thing!
I hates Best Buy…a lie of a store name if ever I saw one. If you don’t buy their extended warranties, customer service is non-existent no matter how recently you bought the product and especially if it’s beyond the scope of their 30 day return policy. Plus…like you discovered, the in-store pick up is a lie. They claim to have everything in stock but then make you wait an eternity for it. Needless to say we don’t shop there any more.