EleVate Yourself

RANT: BestBuy.com Sucks

So I go online to BestBuy.com and order something for in-store pickup. I don't want to get to the store and not find it there, so this sounds like a great idea. Right? Wrong. First they say that it will be 45 minutes before I get a pickup notice so I should just wait around for the e-mail. However, since I have my trusty Blackberry and have to go out anyway, I head to the store. When I get there, the e-mail still hasn't arrived, so I browse around. About an hour after I placed my order, I get the notice that it has been cancelled because they were "unable to verify my information."

So I go up to the BestBuyGuy and tell him that I want to buy the item and that even though there aren't any on the floor, maybe they already pulled mine and have it in the back because I KNOW they have one since I ordered it online. Of course, he can't find any even though 2 are in the inventory and so he sends me across the state to another BestBuy that has some. I decide to go because 1) it's a few days before Christmas and 2) they had a good price.

Now the fun part. I call BestBuy.com to see why my order is cancelled. After waiting on hold for 20 minutes I speak to a jerk who "looks it up" and then tells me I have to call Discover and see if my credit card is ok. I tell him that it is fine since I used it for purchases after the cancellation, but he says I have to call them before he can refer it up the chain. After 5 minutes of telling him that makes no bloody sense, I relent and call Discover. Guess what? Discover had approved the transaction !!! And BestBuy.com had never cancelled it. Sounds like the only "information" they couldn't "verify" was that they had the damn item in the first place. Instead of admitting it was out of stock, they tried to pin it on me.

[Update] So I speak to another woman (after another 20 minute wait) and she can see that my card went through. So why the hell did the guy make me call Discover ?!?!? Now their story is that they do an independent verification of the account information to see if it jibes, but it is going to take a day for them to get back to me and tell me what the heck problem was. But in the meantime I have been assured that it wasn't because the item was out of stock.

Her explanation actually makes me even madder. When you go online and purchase something that is listed as "available for in-store pickup" at BestBuy.com, they don't contact the store to set it aside or verify that it is actually available. Even after they get your approval they still don't set it aside. Only after they "confirm the information," which took over an hour in my case, do they send a message to the store and see if they actually have it. So it's essentially worthless to shop online at BestBuy.com. If you can get to the store in under an hour, then you can just pick it up off the shelf yourself. Otherwise you sit around waiting for the confirmation while some other joker buys the last one. If the store is out of it after you've waited around, you get an e-mail offering to ship it to you or to let you to drive to another BestBuy and pick it up.

I've done online/in-store pickup with Circuit City and it is loads better. You get your order confirmation immediately and use that to get your items.

I will see what they say tomorrow, but I am probably going to report them to the Better Business Bureau for their shady tactics. I wish I was still in NY and could sick Eliot Spitzer on them too.

posted by D.J. EleVate @ 12:41 PM