Don’t Ever Put Down The Pen!

Why is it that that something as simple and basic to good business, customer satisfaction, no longer matters? How is it that awareness of its importance to business success is lost on those who run these large companies? With the Wal-Mart’ing of America and the death of Main street mom and pop shops and the demise of Sears and Penneys as viable appliance stores, the box stores are our last resort. The electronics box store, Best Buy, was my source for electronic doodads ever since Circuit City fired all its senior and experienced sales staff in favor of high-school kids who work cheap. Some of us can remember from way back when Circuit City was a new outfit but populated by a surly staff of non-native english speakers. It was painful and tedious to be harangued about purchasing those “service contracts” for your appliance. We all knew it was a rip-off and detested the hi-pressure tactics that were applied. But then, somebody in the Circuit City corporate management got the message and transitioned to knowledgeable and helpful staff. For a few years Circuit City was a pleasant place to shop. Then the bean counters got control again, they fired all the good sales staff and now we have children, mostly, it seems, still with pimples…. and then Comp-USA abandoned the DC market . So it was to Best Buy, the only competition left that I turned to for toys.Best Buy was “friendly” enough even if they suffer from being constantly out of stock and I will admit I had a very nice experience there two weeks ago buying a Blu-ray disc player. But that is done now, over, forgotten and erased by some corporate stupidity silliness that really fries me. Apparently, Best Buy only likes customers who buy things and not those who need to return or exchange some items.Case in point: I was given a movie in HD-DVD format for Christmas and I have a Blu-ray player. Without any technical jargon the bottom line is that the Blu-ray player will not play the HD-DVD format. The movie was purchased at Best Buy online and shipped to me because my daughter-in-law lives too far away down deep in the South. So I went into Best Buy in Germantown Maryland yesterday to exchange the HD-DVD for a Blu-ray version. Same movie, same price, same company, easy thing to do right?. Nope, no deal. Best Buy will not exchange a like for like item if it is purchased through the on-line store. They prefer to refund the sale to the buyer of record and lose the revenue, piss off two sets of customers and embarrass one. The reason for this stupidity? Corporate Policy. It even says so on the website. Where is the sense in this? Are they trying to mitigate credit card fraud? no, they run the same risk in the store of that as on-line. Does it cost them money to make the exchange? no, the items are the same price and nothing changes in inventory. They even make a little bit more with the on-line sale because they get some piece of the shipping fees and the on-line operation is likely more profitable than the brick and mortar store. Is it because they think I bought or stole it somewhere else? no, they have a record of the sale to my daughter and shipping to me.So where’s the harm? Here’s the harm: they have lost three good customers, they lost $80 in revenue, because I WILL return it and I WILL walk next door to Borders and buy it there and I am telling you this so you might think about this next time you climb in your truck to go buy something electronic.

Choice, it is the only right we seem to have left as consumers and I plan to exercise it and I hope you will too.

POSTSCRIPT – 1-21-2008
After the kind offer from Hollywood Video (see comments) Marti decided to first try her hand at flimflamming the management at Best Buy. Being a former retail manager at Sears (decades ago) she knows a thing or two and so yesterday we ventured up to the Best Buy in Frederick. While she made me wait in the parking lot ( she knew my temper might be a problem) she walked in and gave them a story. To use a football analogy, she found a seam in their defense, (for a cash sale they don’t keep a name record) and she lied. A little white lie but it worked. 15 minutes later she walked out of the store with the right copy and off we went home very much feeling the wrong kind of customer satisfaction. By the way, the movie, Planet Earth is in a word, simply extraordinary. I know,  that’s two words…..