20 December 2005

Geek Squad / Customer Service at Best Buy Store Leaves Computer Consumers to Fend for Themselves…







A “UB-The-Judge” Complaint: Spotlighting Bad Customer Service, Lousy Customer Service or No Customer Service

Best Buy

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Store Location: Raleigh NC (Store 821)
6101 Capital Blvd
Raleigh, NC 27616-2943
Phone: 919-876-1003
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As I entered the Best Buy store on Capital Blvd during a recent visit, I was immediately struck by the Volkswagon Beetle that was parked just to the right of the Best Buy store entrance. The “Geek Squad” advertisement was prominently painted all over the vehicle.

I had two customer service issues when I entered the store and had brought my computer’s CPU with me to return if I could not get the problems resolved.

One issue was the fact that Best Buy’s rebate center personnel (via phone) had decided not to honor a $320 rebate which I was entitled to based on a computer purchase I had made on Black Friday. So I had decided to visit the store to talk to a real person to try to resolve the issue. The first young lady--who might have been an assistant supervisor in Best Buy’s customer service department--took care of that issue and offered me some options as to how to requalify for the rebate. Basically, I would need to purchase a $50 printer to go with the computer bundle in order to qualify for the $320 rebate. So I made the purchase even though I had no respect for the Lexmark brand due to previous issues with its overall quality.

The second issue was a Geek Squad issue. Microsoft, as part of their selling effort, had placed a 60-day trial version of Microsoft Office on the new computer. And I, already having a disk for Microsoft Office, had elected to delete this trial software and install the version I already had. Well, long story short, poor Microsoft software programming had led to my not being able to use my Microsoft Outlook program on the new machine as a result of this. That would not have been so bad except that as a virtual assistant operating a home-based business, it was crucial that my email program be working.

So for 90 minutes the Geek Squad person worked to delete hidden files, etc., to get the Microsoft Outlook program to working, but nothing was working. After all the failed attempts, the Geek Squad person said I was within 30 days so I could have the CPU replaced. So he sends me to the computer department to get the same model.

Now it’s five minutes before the 10 p.m. closing time, and some slickly dressed young woman (who might have been the supervisor) shows up from out of nowhere and asks what the issue is, proceeds to tell me that because I was outside of the 14 day return policy that I would need to take my non-working CPU home as it was, even though the operating system would not allow installation of my Microsoft Office software. I had purchased the machine on 25 November, and it was now 17 December, and she was in effect saying that I was just out of luck. She offered to let her geek squad look at it again, but it would cost me by the hour. Now, this is the same geek squad that had just spent 90 minutes trying to fix the problem without success.

I asked her if it was fair to place the burden of fixing a new machine back on the consumer when her Geek Squad could not fix the problem, and then she informs me that Best Buy is not responsible for software issues. So in effect, Best Buy peddles these e-Machines with the Microsoft trial version software preloaded onto them which causes a problem for everyone and Best Buy does nothing to fix the problem.


What Stellar/Excellent Customer Service would have looked like in this situation:

Best Buy would have offered to uninstall any Microsoft Office trial version from all CPUs containing this program. Free of charge.

What Good Customer Service would have looked like:

Best Buy would have included an instruction sheet with each e-Machine it sells explaining upfront how to uninstall Microsoft Office trial for those customers who had no intention of purchasing the full product. Best Buy would uninstall the software for free to customers who experienced problems.

What Bad Customer Service/Poor Customer Service/No Customer Service looks like:

Read story above for details.

Best Buy sells/peddles e-Machines with pre-loaded software that is known to create problems for users, offers no support, and has a Geek Squad not trained to fix such problems. Best Buy places on its computer shopping customers the burden of not being able to fully use the merchandise it sells and offers no remedy, save that the customer has to incur additional expense to fix a non-working new machine.

So the question: bad service, lousy service or no service? UB the Judge.

Well this is Lo and I gotta go …cause I’m running for my life.

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