Shopping… over…
Last week I just happened to be shopping. You know, we all do it from time to time, especially around Christmas. This time I was shopping at BestBuy for very good deal on Sony N130G laptop ($699 after rebate) and Wi-Fi range expander, from Linksys (seems like no other company producing anything like this). First, I bought the range expander that didn’t work because folks at Linksys still unaware of the fact that HTTP is a stateless protocol. Fortunately, BestBuy has this generous 14 days return policy. Unfortunately I went to the 5th Ave & 44th Street store to return the device and was truly amazed at the quality of the customer service… or the lack thereof.
When I got in and went in line for customer service department the store was literally full. However, only two reps were in customer service. One of them was stuck for a long time with a couple from New Jersey trying to get a refund on city tax. Another was looking around for customers. I am not a small person and I don’t regularly wear invisibility cloak, so I assume I was quite visible at the moment. However, the customer service lady decided that there is no one else to help and proceeded about her own business. She also served couple of more people who were picking up something – no line, no wait. I was still stalled behind the tax-refund couple, who pulled three other people from customer service. However, the second customer service lady was still quite relaxingly chatting with some other people. Waited some more. The couple was still trying to get their tax break. Customer service lady was still glancing at me and did nothing. Finally, after another 5 minutes of the stalemate, she proceeded to take my return. In fact, I was thinking of getting a replacement, but that “busy” lady discouraged me from getting anything.
Two days later with hope that on a last day of sale the laptops will appear I drove to that same BestBuy on 5th and 44th early Saturday morning. Ofcourse, there were no laptops on sale, however, I picked up a pre-N Belkin ExpressCard adapter for a friend who owns a Dell laptop that only takes ExpressCards. So I figured it would be a good Christmas gift. Ventured to the cashier, only to find out that the whole stack of packages had a wrong price on it, with the actual price being ten dollars higher. Being fed up with the store already I asked the cashier to make sure he rings it through for the price of the tag. He politely refused and asked me if I can show him the tag. Since I saw no problem with that, I went downstairs to the lower level and brought him a tag. Turned out the tag was for a different type of merchandise, however, it wasn’t my problem that the tag was attached to this specific kind of card. Ten minutes later, I was still surrounded by three other cashiers who offered various kinds of suggestions. Finally, some smart girl dialed the manager who resolved this matter in less then a minute to my full satisfaction. Outcome – $10 savings, 20 minutes lost. Morale to the story – never ever go to BestBuy at 5th and 44th. Deals are no better then anywhere else, but overall customer service is worse then in Russia.
