I also once had the best customer service experience there, with my wife, so it really seems to depend on who you get and where you are. I know this, that if I had other legitimate choices in my area to buy computers from, Best Buy wouldn’t get any of my business. Last one I bought was advertised as this wonderful media center computer; turns out that’s not the one I got. I got the one they had displayed, but supposedly it didn’t contain any of the good stuff, and would have cost me $750 more. I didn’t even learn about that until 3 weeks later when I was trying to figure out why certain things wouldn’t work.

Horrible customer service and sneaky also; not that Comp USA was better, though.
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A. Angry customer cost = $0 – ($0 Profit From Future Purchases) + ($X Negative Press) ($X Employee Time Paid Without Purchase) = Costs Way More Than $110

B. Happy customer cost = $110 – ($111+ Profit From Future Purchases) = Profit

C. Angry customer cost = $50 – ($0 Profit From Future Purchases) + ($X Negative Press) ($X Employee Time Paid Without Purchase) = Costs Way More Than $110

Let’s recap: Corporations want to profit. Corporations want to make decisions based on profit. There is only one way to achieve the profitability goal in this scenario. Just to be clear, it’s not A or C.

Worst service ever. Worst handling of customers ever. Worst excuses ever.

My letter made it to the BBB, Attorney Generals Office and the FTC.

Never got my money back nor my iPod repaired but spending thousands elsewhere is my reward.
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Perhaps the most surprising thing about these huge corporations is that they constantly operate under the misapprehension that there’s always another sale to be made to someone you haven’t already pissed off. It never dawns on them that at some point your market becomes so saturated with unhappy consumers that people would rather take their chances shopping online and having something as expensive as consumer electronics shipped across the country, and often at a greater cost, than deal with their local stores.

I used to work for TruGreen and while I certainly have a laundry list of nonsense I could run down, the local branch I spent more than 4 years in was finally able to turn that corner and understand that the area we were serving was so saturated with bad experiences ranging from slimy sales to ghosted applications that something had to change. And we changed it. We raised our proverbial middle fingers to the corporate SOP and did things our way.

The best part is that all along we led them to believe we were doing what they were telling us. By the time they figured out we were, they couldn’t do anything about it…because at that point they’d been pointing to us as a glowing example of what can be accomplished to failing branches around the country. Only then did we start to let them see behind the curtain (and even then, only to a certain extent) and prove that everything they were decreeing from their board rooms about how to be a successful branch was wrong. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. And it was awesome.

I say that only to say this: things CAN change. But it has to start at the local level. People have to be willing to do what’s right and do what works, even if there’s a chance they’ll get caught before they have the evidence to support that what they’re doing isn’t only the right thing, it’s the more profitable thing.

Had we been exposed before we had the numbers to shut them up, we might have all been fired…but that was a chance we were willing to take. We reached a breaking point. We were tired of not being able to look people in the eye and tell them where we worked. We were angry that people called in to our branch every day screaming about how much we sucked and that our service was a waste of money. As a management staff we were failing miserably. We’d had enough. We stood up for ourselves. We stood up for our front line. We stood up for our customers. Instead of taking an employee vs. customer approach, we took an employee & customer vs. the problem approach.

In the long run, we won…but we had to do a lot of finagling to get there. We had to play a lot of games and engage in some deception with regard to what we told our regional and corporate management, but we pulled it off. And by the time they figured out what we’d done, we’d reduced our cancellation rates such that they couldn’t even be mad. The best part was that they just started leaving us alone and to our own devices. Which is all any good front line and local level management team really wants to begin with…don’t tell me how to do my job better when you’ve never done my job at all. Don’t “Office Space” me.
Alysson´s last blog ..When Loyal Customers Feel Wronged

It’s like a politician who is stupid enough to refuse to do what is right when it is ALSO what is most popular with their constituents and will guarantee their reelection. If you’re too stupid to do what’s obviously the best thing when people are paying attention, imagine the poor decision making that goes on when no one is looking…
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I had a similar experience with Blockbuster and actually managed to get the regional manager on the phone and they put a $200.00 credit on my account and since that credit is present the account cannot auto close. Each year I get a letter asking me to use my credit and I refuse. They can deal with the accounting nightmare of keeping up with me now. They have a legal obligation to retain that credit, and hold my account open. If they close it they have to pay me the credit on the account.

If more client put their foot down, and actually did stop using retail locations when there was an issue then these companies would change. One of the big reasons that Circuit City died was the in-store experience. My friend is a former eastern region (6 states) manager and he recounts to me the corporate lack of care for clients. I am sad to see them go, but honestly did anyone want to keep them around.