Professur
Well-Known Member
Not at Best Buy
By Charlie Demerjian: Tuesday 13 December 2005, 18:32
BEST BUY HAS been very vocal about the ability for people to return the XBox 360s that they were forced to buy in bundles. They released memo after memo on it, all basically saying the same thing (1, 2 and 3). The burning questions is why so many?
If you read the memos, and the similar PDF on their press site here, the repetition gets annoying, the short story is 'Stores, from on high, the word is thou shalt take back bundles in pieces.' Pretty clear and hard to misinterpret, I'll give them that.
Then comes a letter from a reader who was in line on the Tuesday that was slightly blacker than black Friday, was made to buy a bundle, and tried to return it.
So, what do we have? The first memo from Shawn Score went out on the 23rd late in the day. As far as I can tell, the press release went out the next day. The third memo on the returns went out on December 6. Now, like I said, the word from Best Buy central was pretty unambiguous, and hard to misinterpret, really hard. So, why did the reader have such problems?Were out here in the Silicon Forest Of Oregon in Hillsboro. Only a few miles from Intel's Jones Farm Campus and Aloha Campus. Please feel free to post the article, either in it's entirety or a more reader friendly compressed version. I think it would be fairly nice to have my name in it, maybe make it easier for a return should I get their attention. And last but certainly not least, I find that helping the DOJ in this would be wonderful. My Wife and Myself were witness to many other chaps who were wronged in this flurry of corporate greed.
We originally tried to return most everything on November 28th. Our prison "package" came with A 360 premium, 2 games, Wired Controller, Game Fly Rental thing, Reward card, Memory card, and some weird Best Buy DVD. I tried to return all the "extras" minus one game. On launch day, we were so hurried out the door before the 10am hour, that I had not much time to look at the games. I ended just grabbing Kameo and a game called perfect dark zero, which is the one we tried to return. The Best Buy Nazi who assisted me said that, if I wanted a refund, I must return the entire package. Though I could exchange the game if I wanted. I tried to explain that all I really wanted was the system and one game. She snapped back and told me that her lords of management said to refuse ALL returns. So I exchange the wired second controller for a wireless and left.
On December 1st, after reading your article, I attempted to return it a third time, but was still refused. This time, the young man said he had herd of no such change in their monolithic policy, but said he would sell me a replacement plan at over $100 more dollars if I was worried anything would break. The Devil must be proud.
To put the icing on the cake, on launch day, we watched another mother, who, like us, just wanted to stick one under her tree. She was too far down the line when it formed to get a premium, and was forced to get a near $800 package core, just to have one. She was willing to take a core system, and upgrade it later when the cash flow was right, but to get even a core system at that point, she was forced to make that purchase. I suppose Best Buy had a point that no one forced us to buy one, but then again, what was a bloke like me to do. I couldn't really go to another store to buy one. There wouldn't be one. Alas, at least I still have the consumer power to avoid shopping there for the future.
At this time, there isn't much that could make us happy. The damage is done. I would still like to return the Game Fly thing, though it was partly ripped open when they put it into our bag at check out. So not sure they would take it back. More unfortunate now, is that we have pretty much opened everything after hearing the issues the 360 and accessories were having, so a case of too little too late. I just hope with greed like that, they get what's coming to them.
His first return attempt was made after not one but two Best Buy corporate diktats went out. They must really have force behind them, the reader says that the sales people either didn't get the message or actively lied to him. At least he didn't get the 'MS is forcing us to do this' story that others got. Strike one for Best Buy.
Then he tried again after my first story. I talked to Best Buy PR and they said the memos were real, and that they should be acted upon, they were not for PR purposes and damage control only. Sadly, he tried again on December 1st, more than time enough for word to filter down to the ranks. Again, he was denied, but they tried to upsell him on an extended warranty, how nice of them to think of the customers in this way. Strike 2.
So after the third memo, I asked the reader to go out again and try a third time in the vain hope that something really did change, and the memos were not being blithely ignored, again. Sadly, because of the problems with the XBoxes, he opened the packages to test before wrapping them and putting them under the tree. No returns are possible at this point, strike 3, Best Buy won.
So, we have three sets of memos, all of which were totally ignored and translated to nothing on the ground. Best Buy, when asked told me that the way for customers to deal with the problem is to return them to the stores. He did, they laughed at him, and in the end, they won. µ
Source
I just wanted to get reactions to this letter. I'll withhold my own comments for a bit.
