Thumbs down on the Best Buy Geeks

Friday night, #2 daughter's laptop went belly up and started to freeze during boot. Geeks to the rescue! Just like in the commercial right? WRONG! Here's the story as presented in the e-mail I sent to Best Buy.

Thumbs down on your Geeks!

I have three problems with the way I was treated.

I brought a laptop into the Paramus Store in the Fashion Center on Route 17 for repair. It belonged to my daughter who needs it for her law school classes so things were fairly desperate. I was told that diagnostics would have to be run to determine the problem. I specifically asked how long it would take to make that determination because if more than a day or two was going to elapse, I would need to buy an inexpensive laptop for her to use as a backup. I was told that I would get a call either that day, Saturday 9/17/2005, or the following Monday 9/19/2005. That being the case I decided to hold off on the decision to buy a backup laptop.

PROBLEM #1
I got no call, so I called the store just after opening on Tuesday 9/20/2005. The first individual I spoke to said that she would need to get at the laptop in order to determine the status, but that they were locked up and she needed to get them unlocked. She asked if she could call me back. I said ok, but that I was on my way out (actually I needed to get to work) and please get back to me in a few minutes and she said ok.

PROBLEM #2
Thirty-five minutes later, still no return call so I called back on my cell phone. The individual I got this time took a few minutes and then told me that there was a week backlog. Huh, now I had clearly told the first person I had brought the machine in the previous Saturday, but, well people make mistakes.

PROBLEM #3
I'll admit I was more than a little surprised and said something to the effect of "that's not what I was told" and I got a reply of "Well you're being told now."

What the heck kind of way is that for someone to talk to a customer who has already been given some misinformation?

If I had known on the Saturday that it would take a week, I could have gotten a backup laptop for my daughter that day. Now I'm faced with looking for one after work on Tuesday instead. Not only will she have lost four days, but it's a lot less convenient shopping on Tuesday then on Saturday.

Maybe Circuit City has an appropriate unit, because I'm sure as hell not going to buy it at Best Buy.

What ever happened to simple curtesy and competence! And if you make a mistake, at least apologize. I think the problem is that with the big mega stores, a single customer is a total non-entity among millions. But hey guys, let me tell you, a customer here, a customer there, it adds up. I'll be curious to see if I get any response to my e-mail. I'm not holding my breath.