How is that not totally appropriate? It’s useless for resale if it didn’t have the packing stuff. The lady should have figured out that she bought the wrong thing before she threw out part of the packaging. She made an expensive mistake and it wasn’t the store’s fault.
Best Buy’s return policy has given me many headaches, so you can imagine how pleasantly shocked I was during my most recent return, in which things went SMOOTHLY!
I had purchased a new digital camera because my old one was dropped onto pavement and suffered irreparable damage. This time, I added the store warranty. Anyways, later that night at a Philadelphia Sixers game, I stood up to cheer and my friend put the camera down on my chair. I sat down on it and broke this camera as well.
The following week, I took it to Best Buy and was informed that there was nothing they could do to fix it. My only option was to replace it. That was fine by me, except one thing… since the time I purchased it, a newer model came out, so the store no longer carried mine and ergo could not swap it. Fuck! Also, the newer model was $30 more expensive. I just purchased an extra battery and other accessories for it, so I didn’t just want store credit for another camera.
Anyways, with little fight at all, they upgraded me to the newer camera and didn’t even charge me more. My batteries and memory cards were still compatible with this one, too.
The tires, yes. But the return policy - Nordstrom does have a wonderous return policy. Of course, the last thing I bought there was a bra for $130 - I think they still have margin left. A nice, functional, rather plain but high quaility bra in an unusual size.
WalMart has a relatively liberal return policy despite have slender margins - if you are planning on returning something - try WalMart. Sometimes they’ll take Best Buy’s stuff back.
So just to summarize, we have in this thread people who can’t understand why various chains have such strict and uncompromising return policies…and other people swapping tips and loopholes that circumvent those policies.
Makes sense to me.
That takes me back to my BBY manager days. They really did have the managers by the balls. Two of the “measurables” your store was graded on were “customer satisfaction” scores and “return/exchange” over ride rate.
The two were extreme opposites when looking at scores district wide. If you had high customer satisfaction scores your return/exchange rate was crap because it meant you werebreaking policy to keep people happy.
If you had a nice low return/exchange rate your customer satisfaction scores were crap since you were pissing off customers by holding tight to store policy.
You couldn’t win.
Do you know anyone else who bought a nano from Best Buy recently? Use their receipt to return it.
Also, something I found out because of the incredibly cheap shitty thermal ink they use on the receipts…if you’re a member of the Best Buy Rewards Club, they can reprint the receipt for you. I had an extended warranty on a wireless speaker, and I tried returning it after about 6 months. The receipt was all but illegible, they had to print out a new one.
And you probably discovered, as I did, that trying to walk a middle ground just pissed everybody off…
I bought a GPS unit from Best Buy a few months ago. It was faulty - it frequently refused to power on. So I went in shortly after purchasing, full receipt, all that - and they let me exchange it for the same model, less a 15% restocking fee. The unit they sold me was defective, but I had to pay for an exchange. They told me that once it’s open, you pay the fee, regardless.
Is that standard for retail business now or specific to best buy? That irritated me.
No, they shouldn’t have charged you a restocking fee. From post #23:
RESTOCKING FEE A restocking fee of 15% will be charged on opened
notebook computers, projectors, camcorders, digital cameras, radar detectors,
GPS/navigation and in-car video systems unless defective or prohibited by law.
I had a store give me grief for a defective item return. The problem was their thermal paper receipt was illegible. I was like that’s your problem for using thermal paper. Thermal paper printouts easily go bad.
Who gives someone an expensive electronic gift and no gift receipt? Or just any gift with a possibility of being fucked up upon opening?
Your sister should have gotten and given you a gift receipt. What if the iPod didn’t work? SOL? Waste $150 or however much it was?
If you did not like your gift you should have asked for the receipt. It’s not like it costs $276675 to mail a letter from Ireland to the US.
If you can’t either tell your sister the truth “I’d much rather have a Touch” or lie “Can I have the receipt this Nano is wonky and I need to exchange it” then you should quit your bitching - there was a solution but you just didn’t want to try.
I would not expect any store like Best Buy to take something back without a receipt - even if it has a BB sticker on it. Could have been stolen. Could even have gotten lucky and found one in the store that was not locked up. I worked at a Circuit City and while yes that company is a piece of shit, people tried to rip us off, scam us, etc ALL THE TIME. Much as these big box stores often deserve our contempt they are just trying to be profitable.
I don’t know if I am just lucky or what but I can’t recall returning any items really except a necklace my aunt bought me and she told me when I was opening it “sorry it’s ugly I broke the one I was going to give to my son’s girlfriend right before she came over so I gave her yours, here is the receipt.” I probably should have returned some jeans I ordered online because they were ugly but I didn’t…but all my electronics (albeit a small number) work just fine.
I had this exact same situation happen to me with a DVD. Not opened, labels still on it… They wouldn’t take it back. I escalated it to a manager, and still no deal. Those guys apparently don’t realize that the damage this does for their business is much worse than the “harm” caused by exchanging perfectly good merchandise.
Did that really happen? I have never heard of that, I guess from now on I’ll make them open the package in front of me before I pay for it.
The BBs near me all open the replacement software in front of you and put a new seal on (a green sticker) to prevent this.
You know your sister can go into BB and get a copy of the receipt herself? If she used a credit card, she can do it online.
I had it happen to me. Bought a copy of Civ4 which had 2 of disk #2 and no disk #1. They flat-out refused to exchange it for me.
Best Buy lost me as a customer several years back. I ordered something on line to pick up at the store. I thought I was being so clever by paying for it, printing out the information as instructed and zipping in and out to pick it up.
How wrong I was. Although they did have a “pick up sign”…there was only one line. A line for exchanges and problems. The line had at least 50 people on it and each one had a story.
I got a manager and explained I only wanted to pick up the merchandise I had already paid for. I asked if I could at least go to a register which also had lines but much shorter. Sorry he said, you must wait your turn at this counter.
I cancelled the order and have never gone back.
I guess they got wise to what people were doing.
I used to work at a Kmart in a crappy suburb of Detroit and the lengths people would go through to steal merchandise and try to return it for cash was unbelievable. If they spent half that time and brainpower towards pursuing an honest career they could make a good living. I’m surprised we can return anything even with a receipt and I’m certainly not surprised if they demand one. By now the thieves are probably shrink wrapping guttless ipods in perfect looking packaging and printing their own BB stickers.
On the other side is my father-in-law demanding that a store accept a shirt back that they didn’t even sell. His justification was that to keep him happy they could go to the other store themselves and get their money. He got what he wanted but I’m sure a lot of people thought he was a super asshole that day.
One more - My mother-in-law would always buy things at Hudson’s so we could return them at Dayton’s since we don’t live in Michigan. We could never figure out why she would send the wrong sizes, they weren’t even close to correct. My husband took a shirt to Dayton’s to get the correct size, they didn’t have the shirt anymore so they gave him 35.00 as a return. Later he called his mom and found out she paid 50 cents for it at the Hudson’s clearance place. Now we know she was just grabbing whatever because it was cheap. We started just giving the clothes away or saving them until the children got bigger.
So, can you blame the stores when everyone, in all levels of society, is trying to put one over on the retailer?