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Since you had no expectation when you came in the store that you would get a $10 gift card, I fail to see how this is a \"scam\". When you leave the store, you have exactly what you came in expecting, plus a warranty.
If you had come in knowing about the $10 gift card, and they then tried to tell you you had to get a warranty, then that is a scam.
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\"I'm starting to think that ripping off the customer is corporate culture there.\"
It's more of an unspoken rule. Aka being nice could get you fired, allegedly.
Of course, having read every one of the customer and employee complaints over at http://www.bestbuysux.org/ , I have to admit that I may be a little paranoid about them.
I would never risk a major purchase from them without serious thoughts about how much hassle I'm willing to go through if I need any support.
Best Buy bought Future Shop in Canada, and it sounds like they run the same way. I thought Best Buy was better than that. Every single time I go into a Future Shop I meet moronic, sleazy salespeople. I guess Best Buy is about the same. I'm going to have a look at the SUX site.
Guess I lucked out. I went there twice, no problems.
Once was to get the graphic card I still use in my PC (Which I bought about a year ago), which was half price. The other was the day Narnia came out and I got a deal on that (Used a cupon that got me 20$ off any purchase over 100$, and bought a pair of speakers.)
Hell, when I took the speakers back, they didn't even deduct the 20$ so I go the Narnia DVD for 10$. (Collector's edition went for around 40 at the time, they had a deal for 10$ off if you bought it first day, + 20$ discount cupon)
\"Wrung up?\" I feel \"wrung up\" every time I go in a BB. Great Freudian typo!
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When I worked at Best Buy in a Columbus, Ohio suburb many years ago, we were told to use this trick by management. There was a $30 off coupon for stereo receivers that we had many copies of in our department. We were instructed to only offer this coupon to customers who were willing to purchase the $30 \"Performance Service Plan\" (warranty).
The trick was to offer to give them the 'free rebate' by sneaking in the coupon and not telling them how the discount really worked. They'd pay full price for the warranty and $30 less on the item. The coupon itself said nothing about the warranty- it was just a in-store scam to raise 'the numbers'. It was definitely shady, and I disliked doing it.
One catch about working at Best Buy was that the sales associates don't make commission on the warranties, but if your attachment percentage wasn't high enough, you got in trouble. The incentive was backwards- no bonuses for selling particularly well, but if you didn't, your job would be on the line. This sort of policy goes all the way up the chain- associates, supervisors and management alike all needed to keep the attachment rates of accessories and service plans high to keep their jobs. 'The numbers' as they called them were their own religion. Every morning and every night there was a brief store-wide meeting where they would review the numbers for every department.
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I used to see this kind of crap when I worked for a subsidiary of Ritz Camera (the retail camera business and the retail electronic business have very similar business models). What you're seeing is probably corruption at the store, district, or regional level.
What's almost certainly happening is that store/district/region warranty sales are being used as a performance metric and/or incentivized with bonuses or stupid contests. Some manager came up with the coupon scam to juice his numbers, and is making all his underlings do it. If the manager responsible is a district or regional manager, you could have dozens of stores in one part of the country doing this, and the home office won't even notice.
The fact that his complaint was short-cicuited at the local manager level is telling. The manager didn't want to risk his higher-ups getting wind of the scam.
So I'll say don't be so hard on the salesman. If he's a gullible sort, he may really believe this scam is corporate policy. And even if he saw through his manager's scam, the manager probably threatened to fire the salesman for not playing along.
(My mysterious firing from Ritz Camera may or may not have been related to my failure to go along with a regional manager's incentive-manipulation. In my defense, nobody in the store was going along with it, I just happened to be the sucker who was working the day the regional manager decided to stop by and demand total obedience.)
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HA! I know this BestBuy... It's one of the worst in their chain. The staff are just downright useless. Last time I tried to purchase a camcorder from them and they knew so little about their products that they just kept saying \"yes\" to every question I had.
Worthless.
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I'm torn about this.
Obviously, it's greasiness at a highly oleaginous level.
On the other hand, as IanthePez points out, the customer lost nothing. He was sold his items at the agreed-on price. Had he agreed to go along with the scam, he would have gotten a free warranty (perhaps of dubious worth, but whatever).
I'm afraid this is just whining.
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Best Buy has applied the Monster Cable model to computer cables.
I needed a SATA data cable for my new hard disk (which had come to me without one), and I stopped by the Best Buy in Prescott, AZ, since I was in town, and live 100 miles from the nearest decent computer retailer that isn't a hole in the wall.
The cheapest cable they had was 20 bucks. Fuck that. I left. Ordered on on Ebay for 4 bucks, shipped.
Is he merely complaining, or has he offered a helpful general warning about Best Buy? I think it's good to know that Best Buy (or this location in particular) pulls this type of shady shit. The comment about Ritz Camera too sort of confirms my suspicion about these electronics retailers taking advantage of customers and requiring high volume sales at the expense of helpful and honest customer service. Thanks for the post, Phil.
True, Best Buy employees do not make commission but by selling their warranties they get to keep their job.
Sell Warranty = Keep Your Job
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I'm confused.
Guy purchases item. Salesman offers him a free warranty. Salesman takes a gift card and rings up the warranty on that. Guy gets mad because he can't keep the gift card.
Why is the guy entitled to a gift card?
And why did he wait almost a year to make this complaint? Father's Day is in the middle of the summer. It's March.
I'm not sure I understand what the guy's issue is. He says in the email that the employee asked him if he wanted a free warranty. Phil says sure but then gets mad when the cashier rings up the warranty and the GIFT CARD in order for it to be paid for(in other words...get for free). Am I missing something?
Now maybe he was supposed to get a $10 gift card anyhow and they weren't forthcoming with that, but he was offered a free warranty and they were trying to give him one.
He's entitled to the gift card because Best Buy's coupon said everybody who spent a $100 that day got $10 gift card. It wasn't really a free warranty. It was a sneaky attempt to spend the customer's free gift card on a warranty. The salesman lied.
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It definitely a scam. If it wasn't a scam, then it'd be a 'coupon for a free warranty', not coupon for any merchandise. If they want to give away free warranties, then they'll just give them away, they won't muck around with coupons that don't say anything about warranties.
This is definitely something to watch out for, I can see a person going in to best buy, inquiring about a product and asking about free warranties or discounted warranties, then seeing that they're doing it through this coupon and saying you don't want the warranty and want the coupon (which you're entitled to, at least in this case, because it was supposed to be given to people that spent a certain amount).
In IL this might be a scam, but in some decent areas i think best buys aren't that blatantly stupid. also the sales person might of offered the warranty information incorrectly. The warranty is technically free after the deduction of the gift card...but then again I'm sure the service plan is worth purchasing because people love to believe that they are covered with best buy when they buy a pc: AND THEY ARE NOT, ONLY MANUFACTURE WARRANTY. With a warranty now the customer has a free diag and if comp has to be sent out for repair its free with best buy.
best buy sucketh...............
Wow, and I had an actually good experience at Best Buy over the weekend.
I bought an APC UPS before December. Due to various circumstances, I didn't even open it until month ago, which is when I found it was defective. Oh Joy. No receipt. More Joy.
I took it to Best Buy and was told that since the box was open, I had to have a receipt. The CS girl looked up my information (and I'm not so happy they keep a record of every friggen transaction made with a credit card) and couldn't find one (I think I paid cash for the UPS) and so said no, you can't exchange it.
I was not amused, and got the store manager. She couldn't find evidence of the transaction either, but I pointed out that, just behind me, they had the exact same make and model, and all I wanted to do was exchange it.
With no crap, nastiness or hassle, she did -- which is why I bought a few other items there afterward.
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@IanthePez: You don't have to know about a sale or special in order to be entitled to it. You only have to meet the conditions, which he did by purchasing at least $100 worth of merchandise.
It is a scam for Best Buy to make their customers spend their gift cards on warranties.
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The smart Consumerist plays the scam in reverse.
Basic idea: agree to the warranty only if you can get them to agree to take some $$ off of the price of the merchandise. (They will never discount the warranty agreement.) Next day (or different store), return the warranty. Enjoy joy your merchandise which still has the discount.
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@Rectilinear Propagation:
I am amazed that I had to read through 4 negative confused posts before finding someone who actually RTFA. Thanks Rectilinear Propagation, for not being a whiner.
why does ANYONE still shop there?
@Michael_Bauser: Come on dude, what warranty do you think costs only $10? They should have given him the $10 gift card too, but for all intents and purposes they were trying to give him a free warranty.
@Nygdan: But the two have nothing to do with each other. The guy should have been given the $10 gift card but for all we know the cashier forgot or didn't know about that offer. The cashier did offer a free warranty, he didn't say, \"I'll pay for you warranty with your free gift card\" or \"I'll trade you\". I just don't think there was anything really underhanded about this unless they deliberately didn't give him the free $10 gift card.
Working at retail, I've seen this before. I haven't read all the other comments, as I'm on a short lunch, but this is what I've seen...
Often, management is given a budget or loophole to use gift cards for customer satisfaction (usually to shut up people who are complaining in line). What they generally do is tell the poeple to use them to boost the warrenty numbers (a metric they are measured on) by saying that the gift cards are FOR the warranty.
The reason the manager gave in is he knows he was pulling a scam, not on the customer, but on his company to make his warranty numbers look better without actually bringing in any money for them. He would rather you go tyour gift cards and got out of there then you made a big deal about it.
Too late...
@dewrock: Are you reading the same article as the rest of us, dewrock? The cashier did say the gift card had to be used for the warranty. It's right here in the first paragraph of Phil's full e-mail:
In a second purchase, he bought warrantees with that gift card. I asked him if I really needed the warrantees to get the gift card. He acted like a guilty moron, and said yes. He said that if I got 100$ worth of merchandise, and warrantees, I'd get a gift card that I had to use on the warrantees.
The cashier gave the customer the free giftcard on the first transaction (like the cashier was supposed to) and immediately started a second sale that used the card to buy the \"free\" warranty.
Please stop insulting other people with your illiteracy.
@Jaideepg:
Basically their whole business model and employment system is based upon a certain percentage of their customers being idiots, then? (Warrantees, cables, Geek Squad, secret website)
You know, there's not much that gets my blood boiling more than being someplace that assumes all people are morons, thieves, liars, while simultaneously depending on them, either just because they need SOMEONE or because they're depending on those character flaws. I hate being lumped in with those people with no way out.
It's why walmart kind of makes my skin crawl a bit, why I don't generally shop at electronics chains (except Fry's...they may have other ways in which they suck, but they aren't bad about this sort of crap), and why I left the military.
I used to work for best buy, and all of your comments are ridiculous! This IS a scam of course, but your ignorant rants and reasoning are amazingly incorrect. It may look nice to sell more of these warranties, but we were NEVER threatened with our jobs. As stated, there is no commision or personal gain. They sell warranties for a reason, and they work. The warranty in question I believe was on a video game. I have a friend who got drunk, knocked his 360 over, ruined his game, and got it replaced problem-free. I saved $100 on an ipod battery with a 3 year service plan. I blew my car speakers and had them replaced without an arguement. So some asshole gets pissed because HE broke something that isn't covered under warranty and wants it fixed. Should they type in the small print that it's not covered if you nut all over it? That's obviously not covered. Maybe they should start selling common sense instead of helpful warranties. Stop crying. By the way, those people at that store are a disgrace, and that is shady as hell. I just think that if you don't know what you are talking about you should shut the fuck up!
I agree with ILHED12...
I work at a Canadian Best Buy, and I consider it a great place to buy stuff.
Perhaps my store is an exception to the rule, but there are only knowledgeable people working there with the full intention of helping out anyone who steps through the door.
Stuff like this happens (the coupon thing); hell, I've done it a couple times, but NEVER without informing the customer that the coupon is available to them for anything.
Sound like BBYUS is the crappiest place in the universe...
I'm starting to think that ripping off the customer is corporate culture there. I too have been a victim, in my case I bought a warrantee and they won't send me my \"replacement voucher\" aka gift card because my address is not valid (funny, I get all my other mail just fine) and recommended I get a new address.
This guy should know those in-store warrantees are worthless if you ever have to actually use one.