Best Buy, not Best Service!

I like Best Buy, I really do. I think they have some of the greatest prices around on electronics. They finally wised up and lowered their prices to reflect what people are selling on eBay etc. They are FINALLY competitively priced. I've never liked their service though. NEVER! I had a huge issue with them about two years ago regarding honoring the warranty on a laptop. About 3 years ago I had a problem with just getting customer service. I was wandering through the television department and there was no one there to serve me. I was annoyed. While in the store I called Best Buy and complained that I was standing there and NO ONE came by to help me. Suddenly I have 6 employees on me. UGH! So annoying!

Anyway, last night my husband asked me if I minded him using the gift card my boss gave me to Best Buy on a universal remote for the basement. We already had one for the upstairs family room but George wanted one for the basement. We went to Bestbuy.ca to see how much they cost. My boss had given me a $500 gift card and the Logitech Harmony One 1100 Universal Remote was there and on sale for $379.99. I told George that he'd have to pay a little extra out of his pocket since I did use about $120 on some Wii Games on Christmas Eve. Not a problem! Usually the website lets you click a button to see if your local store has it in stock. There was a message "During Boxing Week in-store pick up and store stock availability is unavailable until January 4th. We apologize for any inconvenience. Visit a store near you". Okay. Well we weren't in the mood to go out to Best Buy only to find out that it wasn't there so we decided to give our local store a ring...and a ring....and a ring. We tried pressing 0 to speak to customer service and no answer, we listened to the automated messages to direct us to Audio/Video Accessories including remote controls. No answer.

George was at home for about 10 minutes on hold when he decided to actually get up and go to Best Buy. He went, found the remote, and came home. He was still on hold with Best Buy (he called from his cell and took his cell with him). By the time he showed me his phone the call log was up to 48 minutes and 37 seconds on hold. I decided to hang up at this point. Not only that but while George was in the department he saw the phone ringing and asked a customer service rep "are you going to get that" to which they replied, "I'm too busy!"

I get that its a very busy time of year for stores right now. Americans have Black Friday and we have Boxing Day which has slowly become Boxing Week. It's our biggest shopping days of the year. People go insane. But why not change your automated system to reflect that of the website? How about something like, "We are sorry for any inconvenience but due to the number of in store customers at this time we are unable to answer any questions over the telephone regarding products or stock availability? Please come to your local store for any questions or call back after Jan 4, 2010?"

I mean its a really crappy thing for a customer to point out that the telephone is ringing and for the employees to just shrug it off and claim they are busy. Yes, you are busy but why can you not excuse yourself from your in-store customer for 30 seconds and pick up the phone and say "Best Buy, please hold". Finish with your customer and take a minute on the phone with the phone customer before finding the next person to hawk commission from? Believe me proper customer service goes a long way and the person who called is very likely to come into the store, into your department and ask for YOU by name to serve them to give you the commission. I know that I do that when I call a store. I ask for their name and when they are working, I especially do that if I'm doing comparison shopping in stores and have just eaten half an hour of someones time. I'll ask for their card as well as when they are working next in case we decide to come back and get the item from that particular store.

Anyway I thought that was rather crappy of them and thought I'd share. I guess its true that you always complain about bad service and never really rave about excellent service!