Yes, I had a bad experience at Best Buy

It’s true. I’m proud and unabashed about trumpeting our customer service successes and I’m always happy to call out helpful Blueshirt employees by name (via Twitter) when they live up to the promises of the Best Buy brand. But, if I hope to have any credibility at all, I have to be willing to talk about less-than-stellar experiences, don’t I?

Before we dive into the details of my experience heavy on the lousy, I am going to say that the vast majority of interactions I have at Best Buy are overwhelmingly positive, and make me feel good about the company for which I toil.

Far more often than not, the Best Buy person I encounter on the sales floor takes the time necessary to answer my questions and help me find the product(s) I’m looking for (one went so far as to go out back and pull a CD off the delivery truck before it was unloaded; another consulted the store product map to find an obscure cord I wanted that was “21 feet from the aisle”), to make sure I’m fully and completely satisfied with my shopping experience.

(I should point out that I never tell store employees that I’m a Best Buy employee – until it comes time to claim my discount – so there is no “favoritism” of any kind. I am a regular Joe looking for something cool).

But for every rule, there is an exception.

I dropped by the Shakopee (Minn.) Best Buy yesterday to grab a PC microphone headset. As I was looking at the selection, a young lady came up behind me and asked if I was interested in talking about saving money on my TV bill with DirecTV. I wasn’t really in the mood to go through a selling process, but we had talked at home about ditching Mediacom (really lousy service), so I agreed to listen to her pitch.

I followed her back to her table set up in the home audio section and she wrote down the exact services I have now. HD-DVR, second HD box, premium channels, extras, and the cost thereof. She then said I could get the “exact same thing” from DirecTV for about $40 a month less. And I get a $50 Best Buy gift card to boot. So now she’d gotten my attention. I did a little more math in my head, made a phone call home, and decided to sign up.

As she was filling out my paperwork, she informed me that I could apply the $50 gift card toward the $100 charge for the second HD box, and it would only cost me $50.

“Uhm,” I said. “You just said I got the ‘exact same thing’ I have now for $40 less per month. You didn’t mention having to buy the second box.”

She looked up from her writing. “Oh, right. I’m sorry. Yes, you have to buy the box if you want to upgrade to an HD box. But if you do upgrade, you’ll already have the third box if you want to add another TV. And, again, if you use the gift card, the box only costs $50.”

I wasn’t impressed with the argument or the slight of hand, and told her so, but decided the $40 a month was still a better deal than I’m getting now – even if the second box wasn’t HD (I’m not going to spend $100 to upgrade because that TV is used for my lad’s Xbox about 98 percent of the time it’s on).

A question suddenly occurred to me. I’m not in a position to sign a multi-year contract, so asked her clearly. “Is there a contract involved here? I don’t want to sign a long-term contract.” She said we’d cover all that in just a moment and asked me to fill out another section in the paperwork. As I did so, she called the DirecTV people to finalize my order and schedule the installation. I asked her again, “Is there a contract involved in this?” She held up a finger, shook her head, and began talking on the phone.

A minute or two later, she handed me the phone and said I needed to give the phone representative my credit card info, and review a few details with him. So the phone rep and I completed my credit verification, reviewed installation and billing … and then …

“We’re almost done here,” he said and started to read the legaleze. “You are entering into a 24-month contract with DirecTV …”

I cut him off. “Oh, no I’m not. I already said that’s a deal breaker.”

He didn’t pause or miss a beat. “Okay, can you hand the phone back to [Whatsername], please.”

I did. She talked for a moment and hung up.

“I asked you specifically if there was a contract involved and you weren’t up front with me,” I told her. I was miffed but not overly angry or unreasonable. “I’ve just wasted all this time (it was probably a 45 minute process) and you could have saved us both the trouble by being honest.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

So I paid for my microphone (Yay, discount!) and left. I was very unhappy with that young lady. If I weren’t already inclined to really like Best Buy, I’d likely have been 5- or 10-times as angry. I might even have joined the haters on Twitter.

But I have to remind myself that the vast majority of my experiences at Best Buy are extremely positive, and “one bad apple” shouldn’t spoil the bunch. Unfortunately, many customers don’t have a host of happy experiences to fall back on, and many won’t give us a second chance.

It’s always good to be reminded of that, so we keep striving for consistent excellence.

I’m really glad the victim in this instance was me – and not one of those haters on Twitter.

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