It isn’t just Best Buy. We were in Sears buying their top-of-the-line dehumidifier and the salesguy explained about the (obscenely priced) ew, which included a technician actually coming to our house to vacuum out the coils once a year. Ooh.
When I declined, he got all snippy with me, said that if I opened the the cover myself and voided the warranty, well, sniff, it was my money.
I wish I’d had more gumption at the time to point out to him AND his manager that the owner’s manual clearly states that it’s opening the sealed refrigerant system that would void the warranty.
Oh, and it also gave simple directions on how to take the cover off and vacuum the coils.
In other words, he was either suffering a profound lack of knowledge of his own department, or he was lying through his freakin’ teeth.
Jerk. Guess pulling that bullsh*t snares enough suckers for them to keep doing it. I only do catalog orders these days.
About five or six years ago I bought a VCR at Best Buy. For some reason I violated my usual policy and bought the extended warranty. During the next year that VCR broke down three times; the first two times I brought it back to Best Buy, waved the warranty paperwork at them and they fixed it. The third time I pointed out the Lemon Clause (or whatever they call it) that says that if any product with their warranty breaks down three times they will replace it with a brand new one.
The customer service clerk gave me a voucher showing how much I had paid for the original VCR, I picked out a new one from their stock (which was better than the one I’d originally bought because in the meantime VCR prices had dropped). When I took it to the checkout line, they pointed out that the warranty I had bought for the first VCR was being extended to cover the new one.
Never had any trouble with the second machine. And never bought another extended warranty, either; I figured I’d used up my karma on that one.
I <heart> my emachines. It doesn’t come loaded with crappy software that slows everything down to a crawl, like a Compaq, and as of yet I’ve had no problems with it. And since I didn’t buy it at Best Buy, no one pressured me into the bleeping extended warranty.
In my experience, Best Buy is a perfectly wonderful place to shop, PROVIDED that you know exactly what you want, and just want to go in, find it, pay for it, and get out.
On the other hand, if you need information or guidance, you’re out of luck. Their sales staff isn’t on commission and doesn’t get paid a lot., Thus, you’re likely to wind up served by a kid who could just as easily be working at Wendy’s, KFC, Starbuck’s, or Safeway. PROBABLY a perfectly nice kid, but one who doesn’t know the first thing about consumer electronics, and isn’t really sure which of his managers might.
So, if you feel you may need some genuine customer service, Best Buy is a terrible place to go.
I’d like to offer a counterexample to the “don’t buy an extended warranty” issue.
I was very happy with the 3-year, next-day, onsite service/parts/labor warranty I bought for my IBM business-model (PL300) computer that I bought online from IBM in 1998. I paid $94 and got a parallel port controller and a CD-ROM drive replaced in the three years. I told the phone techs that I had the warranty, and they sent somebody out the next day to replace the parts. Didn’t even run me through diagnostics for the CD-ROM, which was only making weird noises – just came to my house and swapped it out. This was excellent for me because I’m self-employed and live out in the sticks, so when my computer goes down I lose work time and income trying to putz around and fix it myself.
I recently had a HORRIBLE experience with the warranty on my Dell laptop. Will never buy another Dell computer.
My new Micron came with a STANDARD 3-year-next-day onsite warranty, and their support seems to be rated excellent. Interesting to see if I’ll ever need it, and if I’ll be as happy as with IBM.
My experience has been that STORE warranties are crap, but getting the warranty direct from the manufacturer, at least with IBM, it was worth the money for a business machine. But if you have time/knowledge to putter and fix your computer, yeah, I can see why the warranty would be a waste, especially for components that are not as likely to craok as the salesguy would have you believe, or if the cost of the warranty approaches that of replacement.
And yeah, seconds on “don’t go to Best Buy unless you know what you need.” I’ve read the box trying to see if a piece of software/hardware does X, been unable to figure it out, asked a salesdrone “Does this do X?” and had them start reading the box. Thanks, genius. I can read. Now if I need to do reasearch, I do it online ahead of time.
Do you have any idea how many people these guys must get asking them about features that probably ARE right on the box? Not every consumer is as literate as you, I assure you.
Me: Babe, why did you annoy people by giving them the extended warranty spiel?
Him: Because I was required to.
Me: Yes, but why?
Him: Because that’s how they make their money.
Me: Why did you push extras on people that they didn’t want?
Him: Because they had to have it. I mean, people with camcorders need bags to carry them around in.
(Always the salesman)
Also, that’s how they make their money.
So, there ya have it folks. Extended warranties and extras are where the profit is, because the “big” items are marked down as close to cost as possible.
I don’t think it’s in Best Buy’s interest to have especially good customer service. If you provide good CS, then people start to expect it, and that costs money. On the other hand, if you provide particularly bad customer service, then your customers (few of whom will think to just shop elsewhere anymore) will be happy when you just staff the place minimally and give up on the CS idea altogether.
When I was shopping for my Visor, I stopped by Best Buy to ask some questions, and the sales guy–the one who sold PDAs and cell phones, and very little else–knew far less about the subject that I did. Another time, I bought some memory for my Gateway that the sales guy told me was 100% guaranteed to work in my machine. However, when it didn’t work and I tried to return it, they tried to give me crap about it!
A friend bought a computer from Best Buy, and had a nightmarish experience trying to get work done on it under the warranty. They had to ship it off to some undisclosed location, despite the two bored “technicians” sitting there on their asses every time he went in. It was several months before he got his computer back, without a hint of apology.
There are very few components in a computer that you couldn’t replace for about the cost of the extended warranty, and replacing them is far easier than you imagine.
All right…I can kinda understand the Best Buy EW spiel as its partially a “Cover Your Ass” thing and partially a tool to increase profit margins. I can see how its safer from a legal standpoint to give everyone the same info.
However, why in the world would a security system company need to require the sales pitch? Is anyone really going to say “I bought a home security system and I wasn’t frightened into signing a contract with a bunch of misleading statistics! How dare they not do that?!” The whole point of the sales pitch is to copnvince people that their faimily is in danger unless they install this security system right away. It doesn’t provide info on if it breaks or how to use it, its just there to convince you that you really need it. It’s just to get people to buy the main product. Who’s gonna sue because they bought te system but didn’t get the sales pitch too?
Good question, Second Echo, but I don’t have an answer. Maybe the dude had the thing so well-rehearsed that skipping part of it would have thrown him completely off.
And there is, of course, the ending part of the pitch (after you’ve said “OK! I’ll take it!”) where they try to sell you “extras” (you know, every single door and window alarmed, as opposed to just a couple of entrances), and it would certainly be more likely that a customer would buy them (though I didn’t) if you included all the scare tactics.
I even had a bad experience with them online. I purchased an item from them to be sent to my dorm. It never arrived. I called to inquire (they said) they traced the package and that I was not home to receive it. I live in dorm with a front desk which is operated 24 hrs a day. Fair enough - it was probably the shipper.
So I asked them to resend the item. No can do - we have to wait until the other item finds it way back to us before we can replace it. I really needed the item - a computer part - so I told them to go ahead and ship another one - charge my credit card again and then when the delayed item arrived back at Best Buy to just remove it from my credit card. No can do - for security reasons they needed to resolve the issue before they could ship another to make sure that I wasn’t some lowlife charging on someone else’s credit I guess.
Now mind you, I never received the original item and when they checked the package tracking number - they were told the package was on its way back to them. Finally, I told them to forget it - that when the package arrived back at Best Buy to just keep the damn thing and credit my account. Okay they said - sorry for all the trouble - they said. I thought that was the end of it until the I received the item from Best Buy a few days later after I had purchased it at a local store. I returned the item to Best Buy (even though it was the cheaper price - which I why I brought it online in the first place) and kept the one that I had purchased at the local store. Finally - the end - even though the charges for TWO of the items stayed on my credit card for two months - Never Again! :eek: