Best Buy is now on the Dragon's S--t List until further notice!

                      

After four years of working at Best Buy, over two years of still shopping there after I left, and, most importantly, referring MY customers and PURCHASING products for MY customers in the store since I reopened my computer business, Best Buy is now on my shit list of the stores I will NOT:

• Shop in.
• Refer my current and future customers to.
• Make business purchases in for my business or my customers.
• And not even shop in for PERSONAL reasons as well.

I'm sure you are all thinking, "what mighty strong words coming from the Dragon! What made the fire burst out of the Dragon's mouth?" These are all good thoughts, indeed. Here is the simple answer to those questions.

A long-time (over seven years) customer of mine was out of state to spend time with his family during the Christmas holiday. His wife had purchased him a laptop at Best Buy for Christmas. They decided to wait to open it until they get back to Florida so I could set it up for them. They decided to have it shipped through UPS instead of carrying it on the plane. 

The laptop arrived at their house and I showed up a few days later to set the laptop up. I took it out of the box carefully as I normally do, plugged it in, and turned it on while it was on my lap. As soon is it loaded the Windows set-up screen, I noticed there was a black discoloration of the screen in the upper-right corner with a spider web-like affect going down towards the middle of the screen. I knew the screen was damaged. I proceeded to  click on a few of those "bullets" to get past the Windows set-up crap and type in the name of the customer. After that, I told the customer and his wife of the issue of the screen. I was pretty disappointed as much as they were because it was a brand new laptop which has never been opened and an expensive model as well.

Since it was brand new and not opened until I went through the basic beginning set up of the laptop, I told them to bring it back to Best Buy, tell them what was wrong with it so they can swap it out for a new, undamaged one. They complied so I put it back in the box, along with the packaging it came with.

Last Thursday on February 9th, I went over there to teach them how to use the fax function of their new printer I set up for them a couple weeks prior. My customer told me what happened at Best Buy when they brought the laptop in and I just couldn't believe my Dragon ears.

He brought the laptop to the Geek Squad and told them what was wrong with it and the Agent (read: "immature asshole") told him I was the one who broke it because I was able to type the customer's name on the laptop. So, the Agent, if he should even be called such a status, told my customer it will be over $400+ to fix it. As you know, that's pretty much the price of a new laptop and about half of what it cost for the laptop at hand. My customer was not happy about this and neither was I when I heard this shocking news of this immature "blame game" because that's pretty much what it was.

So, according to the Agent, I, the Dragon, who has been setting up computers for over fifteen years, with a computer business since 2003, with customers who are STILL customers since then (such as this customer I speak about now is who was a REFERRAL from another one of MY customers since 2003 who lives in the same gated community) "broke the screen." My customer along with his wife were watching as I was setting the laptop up. They obviously did NOT see me drop, punch, kick, throw, smack, or step on the laptop so how could I be the one to blame because the screen is damaged? 

Because this is obviously an expensive fix on the Geek Squad's part to repair (or even swap that one out for another laptop to SATISFY the CUSTOMERS needs, even if it's with an inexpensive model, and send the other out for repair and when it comes back, resell it open box for a little less than retail cost) the Agent (possibly with the authorization of the supervisor) decided to use his immature tactics and put the blame on the customers' "tech guy." If you ask me, that's pretty shady business practices there and it should NOT even be allowed in a big electronics store such as Best Buy or ANY business for that matter!

So, for the reason of not going above and beyond to satisfy my unhappy customer with the broken laptop YOUR STORE provided at the time of purchase and for the Agent at the Geek Squad who decided to use the very unprofessional "blame game" just to force the customer to have to pay over $400 to repair a laptop which was already broken out of the box, I will tell my customers and family members to NOT purchase ANYTHING in your store again, nor will I purchase anything for myself, my customers, or even meet MY customers at the store to assist them in their technology purchase of which I have done many times before. 

However, when Best Buy does read this and decides to go above and beyond to take care of my customer (who used to be their customer as well), the above statement will likely change. I will give Best Buy one week from the date of this blog post to respond. If I do not receive a response from them regarding the obligation to assist my customer with his laptop, they will not only loose my business and my families business but also the 200+ and counting of the current and future customers under my companies belt. 

This blog will be updated to reflected any future correspondence coming from Best Buy until one week from this post. If, after seven days has passed, there will be an update stating there was no contact made from Best Buy to address this situation. 

Until the next update,

Dragon