While many of you are still hanging around waiting to find out what happens to the stalwart Colonel in the nexus, I apologize, I will get back to that as soon as possible. In the meantime however, I thought I should ensure that you knew the end of the story on the Best Buy Saga that I’ve been blogging about.

The nice lady from Best Buy corporate sent me an email telling me that everything had been fixed, and the store called my back to say the computer was ready for pick-up, about five days after I turned it in. (Note that this is slightly longer than the guaranteed 72 hours). If I wasn’t satisfied, she said, the store would exchange the computer or give me store credit in spite of the return policy.

I arrived at the store after work, and as I approached the Geek Squad counter, a geek (professional title, not a slur) was standing behind the counter staring at the door. As I approached the counter he said, in a tone of voice that hinted at having said the same thing over and over for some time, “Are you Mr. Jervis?”

“I am.”

He sighed relief then turned like Vanna White to show me the computer, my daughter’s computer, on display behind him. It was connected to a printer and the internet, and he quickly showed me that all the programs worked, though he explained how many drivers they had to download and how the settings had been changed to allow running of older programs. He showed me a test page, then printed another for good measure. He surfed the web briefly.

“Is there anything else you’d like to see, Mr. Jervis?”

“No, I think that will do it.”

He began to disconnect the computer and get it ready for me to take away, then handed me back all of the programs that I had brought in. As he worked I stood there being further annoyed, but keeping it in check. All the talk about how this operating system would not run older programs, and how there was nothing that could be done, and how I had to understand that there would be a period of transition from programs that ran on older systems to newer systems, had been…well…wrong. They had managed to get everything to work, in spite of the number of geeks who had told me they couldn’t. They just needed a gentle corporate push in the right direction.

How much trouble could I have been saved if the manager had just interceded to allay my concerns in the first place?

I applaud Best Buy corporate for interceding in my dilemma after-the-fact, but I still feel that a better business practice would have been to handle the issue at point of return, without having to rely on an internet clean up crew.

The store gave my daughter a one hundred dollar gift card so she could purchase new software if there were other programs that couldn’t run on the HP. I will not take her back to the store to use it, I will not likely shop there again any time soon. My wife plans to take her there on a future outing, but isn’t too keen on it either. While the corporate office cleaned up the mess made by the store and ensured that my daughter’s computer works, they cannot take away the feeling that I was treated poorly in the first place.

At least they attempted to make amends…perhaps there is hope.

For those interested in the nitnoid details of my shopping experience with Best Buy I feel I owe you an update. As many have expected I contacted the nice Best Buy corporate lady after she left a message here on my BLOG. Her response follows:

Hello Jervis,

I read the Blog and I could tell that there is a lot of frustration involved in this experience. I’m truly sorry for any aggravation and inconvenience this situation has caused. As I said, I would be glad to look into the situation further and reach out to the appropriate management teams.

It would be very helpful if you could provide me with your phone number, service order number and/or the customer service pin from the receipts. This would help me locate the information in our system. Do you have names of any employees that you talked with? Is there anything else I should know about the situation?

Further, please describe where this is at as of now and how you would prefer Best Buy to resolve the issues. I will be glad to look into what possibilities there are and hope to find a resolution that is satisfactory to you.

Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Lisa
Geek Squad Public Defender
Executive Resolution Team

I answered her on Saturday. I believe that I was thankful and polite, but still clear in the fact that I was quite frustrated with her company. I identified some of the characters in my Blog post by name so that she could verify my story and gave her all the customer PIN numbers and receipt information I had, including all the exchanges of wireless cards etc. I also pointed out that it was already beyond the guaranteed 72 hours and I had not yet heard back from the geek squad.

Sunday late afternoon, Master Geek (the helpful and fairly competent one) called me back and said that he had been working on my computer. The good news was that he had the wireless adapter up and running. The bad news was the program I had left wouldn’t run on Windows Vista. (I knew that, that’s why I brought it in). I reminded him that his store had sold me the computer and said that I could run other software in compatibility mode. I then asked about the printer driver. He explained that he couldn’t fid the printer driver because I hadn’t brought the printer in. I pointed out that the printer was part of the HP package deal and that they had one in the store. I had brought in the driver disk in any case. He said he didn’t know the model number. I suggested that he look in the work order for the receipt number and look it up. He asked if I could just get the model number for him, but then acknowledged that he supposed he could look it up since he had my phone number. By that time I had the model number and gave it to him. He said I’d hear from them again when they had it running.

Monday mid day I heard from Lisa. She asked me to give her a few days to research the issue now that she had the data. I replied to her note again, thanking her for her interest and expressing hope that we would be able to work this out. I also suggested that I didn’t want to profit from this whole experience, I just wanted a working computer for my daughter and thought that having spent more than three thousand dollars in the store in a short period of time would allow me some understanding on the part of store management. By Monday night I assumed that Lisa would be working her way down to the store while the geek squad continued to work on my computer. I assumed I wouldn’t hear from Best Buy again for several weeks. So, here is where I become a roadkill on the highway to shock and awe.

The in service store manager called me this evening, let’s call him Mr Efficient. I’ll summarize the conversation since it was very long, very apologetic and very, well…efficient. Mr. Efficient explains that he was contacted by Best Buy Corporate today and that he had read my blog post and the information that followed. He tells me that others in the store have read and it will be used as a training example for remedial training for the staff. (I will admit this makes me feel more positive about the store, if it is true. If it isn’t true, it still makes me feel more positive about the store).

He tells me that he knows that Master Geek fixed the wireless adapter and he believes that he has fixed the printer driver, but that he wants to see it run the printer. He will personally check it out. He is very apologetic about the whole episode. He then explains that there is a problem with a lot of the software we want to run, because the HP is running Windows Vista and is a 64 bit system. Most of my programs are 32 bit programs. I explain again that I showed the programs I wanted to run to his staff before I got the recommendation on which computer to buy. He says he understands that and wants to work through it with me.

He says that within a year most of the software in the store will be running on 64 bit, but if I really want a 32 bit computer and won’t be happy with the HP even after they get everything running, and even though it is beyond the 14 day exchange period, they will take the computer back and help me find one that will work for me. He also says that he feels bad that this computer was for my daughter and she still doesn’t have it. He suggests that Best Buy make up for some of the lost programs by giving her a gift card with which she can buy new software that will run on the 64 bit machine. I explain that I am not looking to profit from the experience. Those who know me will know that I mean this. I am actually happier at the thought that they might train their employees better in future than I am about a gift card. Then he says the card isn’t for you you understand, but for your daughter. She will probably be studying and using the computer for school and she should have a computer that works. I accede that if Best Buy wants to give her a gift card, that would be very kind, but that what I really want is a functioning computer.

We talk through the options that remain. He will get the HP fixed to the best of his ability, personally checking that it is repaired before calling back and that it should only take a few days. If I am still not satisfied with the computer, he will take it back and help us select another. I suggest we take it one step at a time. I thank him for his time and tell him I look forward to hearing from him.

So. Will Best Buy live up to Mr. Efficient’s phone call? I’m actually believing they will. I certainly have to hope they will. My daughter was standing in the kitchen listening to the entire phone conversation and i could sense that she was trying to be supportive without looking too needy. She was really looking forward to a new computer for her birthday. At this point, that was five weeks ago. Let’s hope things work out for the best.

I do have one question though if the Best Buy web crawlers are still out there. Why is the nice Best Buy Lady’s job title “Geek Squad Public Defender?”

My head is going to explode. If you don’t see me write again for several days it may be because I’ve been hospitalized for traumatic cranial rapid expansion. I’m told that venting about an issue is supposed to relieve the internal pressure. Let’s see…

We went to Best Buy on 2 August to buy a new desktop computer for my daughter’s thirteenth birthday. We stood around in the computer section making eye contact with the three blue-shirted adolescent employees that were apparently assigned to the computer section, but none offered to assist us. When I began to approach one of them, they suddenly found something they had to do in another section of the store and hurried away. It was rather comical to watch them avoid trying to help anyone.

While my wife went to the front of the store to ask advice from the “Geek Squad,” I sent my children to the software section to gather up several of the programs we have at home so that we could be certain that whatever computer we purchased would meet system requirements for the applications and games we wanted to run. I began to chase down blue-shirts asking if one of them could help me. Before my wife could return with “advice” from the “experts,” I finally managed to corner one at the end of an aisle and convince him that I really wanted to spend money to buy a computer. To protect the guilty, we’ll call him Tweedle-dee.

Explaining that I wanted a computer that would support gaming heavy applications, he pointed me in the direction of a Hewlett Packard Pavillion with a Pentium Processor that just happened to be on sale as part of a package deal that included the monitor and a printer. My wife returned with a list of computers we shouldn’t buy, but no real advice on what we should buy. There was a helpful suggestion that we might consider a Gateway if they had any, but the professionals in the geek squad had no idea if there were actually any Gateways in the store. So, wait a minute. Why are they even selling computers that we shouldn’t buy? Oh well says I, trusting consumer that I am, I’m sure they know what they are doing…

I handed the pile of programs to the blue-shirt and explained that the computer had to be able to run all of these applications and games. He looked them over and knowingly assured me that there would be no problem. I told him I had a wireless router and needed a wireless adapter that was compatible with the computer. He dutifully went and found a box with a USB wireless adapter. Keep in mind that I have tame geeks that normally help me with this kind of thing, so I don’t pay attention to all the little details like network configurations and the like. If anyone at Best Buy had asked me any questions about my current system, I might have called a friend and asked. But we just kept piling boxes on the cart until we had everything we needed.

Checkout took nearly 45 minutes as the clerk had a bit of trouble deciding how to ring up my purchases and where the buttons were to approve or disapprove the various promotional options that I turned down. More time was spent trying to sell me things I didn’t want than in helping me pick out the things I did want. While I normally do NOT opt for a service plan since I am usually overseas when something goes wrong and it costs more to ship the computer back than it does to repair it, I felt uneasy about spending $1000.00 on a computer that I had no coverage for. Exhausted from our mostly self-service experience, we went home to set up my daughter’s birthday present.

The computer took almost no time to set-up and I quickly learned that none of the programs or applications I had shown to Tweedle-dee would work on the computer. It was running Windows Vista and most of our existing software was made for Windows XP or earlier. I wasn’t pleased. My daughter was crushed. I decided to hook up the printer and deal with the program issue in the morning. There was no printer cable. Tweedle-dee hadn’t mentioned that I needed one, and I wrongly assumed it would be in the box with the printer. Sighing with intense frustration, I decided to install the wireless adapter. It was for an N-router. I have a G-router. Many will say that I certainly should have known what wireless router I was running. I agree. But I also think someone at the store should have asked me, rather than assuming that I had one model over another. The next day I returned to Best Buy and bought a printer cable, took it home and hooked up the printer and learned that the printer driver would not load. I had also forgotten to take back the wireless adapter. Angry, frustrated and a bit overwhelmed, I did what any good husband would do in a situation like this, I went on a long trip for work.

My wife went back into Best Buy with several of the programs and explained that the computer was not working correctly. They told her that it was the fault of Windows Vista and that there was nothing they could do. They suggested that we try to run the programs as an administrator or to run them in compatibility mode for other Windows versions. Not knowing how to do this, my wife could only let the computer sit while I traveled around the world.

I returned on 31 August in time for my son’s sixteenth birthday and, being a glutton for punishment, went back to Best Buy to get him a computer. (If you aren’t slapping your foreheads at this point you should at least be imagining slapping mine).

My son and I stood around in the computer section trying to make eye contact with the three blue-shirts that…what the hell am I doing this again for? I went straight back to the Geek Squad and explained to the girl behind the counter that we had recently purchased a computer for my daughter that we were having troubles with, and while I was still working through those issues I wanted a computer for my son that would definitely NOT have any trouble. I didn’t care what the cost was, I wanted a computer that would be game and graphics intensive and would work when I set it up. I explained the problems I was already experiencing in great detail and asked the Geek Girl if she could please come with me to the display section. “Wait a minute,” she said, disappearing through the clear plastic flaps that seperates the counter area from the Geekroom. A few moments later, the master-geek came out. I never saw Geek-girl again. “How can I help you?” he asked. I took a deep breath, frustrated at how difficult it was to get any help the first time I asked for it, and began the story all over again.

When I finished, he nodded his head and said “First of all, all you have to do with your daughter’s computer is change the compatibility mode, I can show you how to do that, but meanwhile let me show you what you need. I’m a gamer myself and I run WoW, Crisis and anything I can get my hands on. You will love this computer.” He took us to the display area, explained why the computer he recommended was absolutely the best that Best Buy sold for gaming (It is a Gateway FX gaming computer and if you really care to know all the specs I’ll go upstairs and write them down). He recommended a monitor to go with it, helped me find a PCI wireless adapter for it and took us to the front for checkout. He spent a bit of time trying to convince me to buy a service plan for the monitor that cost about 25% of the total cost of the monitor (no thank you) and offered to help with my daughter’s computer. The master-geek had restored my faith in Best Buy. Maybe they do train some of their people.

We went home and set up the computer. We installed the wireless card and a few games we had on hand and everything worked. Victory. Master-geek was a hero. Then we tried to download the patches and updates for World of Warcraft. The download seemed slow so we went out to dinner for my son’s birthday, leaving the computer downloading. We went by Best Buy to return the wireless adapter for my daughter’s computer, but the store was closed. It was 8PM on a Sunday, I should have known.

The following day was Labor Day and the store was open, so my wife took the adapter with her when she went to the store and told her she needed a -G adapter, not an -N adapter. They sold her a -G wireless PCI card in place of her -N USB adapter. Sigh. My son and I had spent nearly seven hours trying to get the WoW patches to download and opening router ports, opening firewalls, doing everything we could think of. What we hadn’t thought of, until my wife brought home the wrong wireless adapter, was to check the wireless adapter speed. Master-geek had sold us the most basic version of PCI wireless card with minimal 1x transfer speed. The new, incorrect card was a 10X. We put my daughter’s card into my son’s computer and it worked like a charm. The Gateway is up and running with no issues.

The Hewlett Packard is another story. I spent hours and hours trying to change configurations, made two more trips to Best Buy to get the correct wireless adapter and appropriate software, but nothing works. The printer driver hangs up at 96%, the USB router adapter software won’t load, none of the programs we have work in ANY mode and the computer is basically a $1000.00 calculator. I would say that it is a word processor, but since I can’t print from it, I would have to move data on a thumb drive anytime my daughter wanted to print out her homework. I didn’t pay $1000.00 for an electronic paperweight.

This evening I took the computer back to Best Buy. The receipt says 30 day return or exchange. I brought all the paraphernalia and programs that wouldn’t load or run and went straight to the geek squad. A young geek behind the counter offered to help me fill out paperwork to get the computer examined. “I just bought it and it doesn’t work,” I said.

“What isn’t it doing?” he asked.

“Anything,” I said, “it is a piece of junk. This software works on other computers in my home but not this one. I just bought a computer here two days ago and it works fine.” (I didn’t relate my initial troubles with the other one). “I just want to get store credit for this piece of junk and I will buy another Gateway instead.”

“I’m sorry sir, we have a 14 day return policy,” he said.

“The receipt says 30 days,” I said.

“Wait here,” he said, disappearing through the plastic flap door into geekdom. Moments later he reappeared with a smug look on his face. “The second line on the back of your receipt clearly states computer returns are valid for 14 days.”

I looked. He was right. In tiny print in the second paragraph on the back of the receipt it clearly told me that I had 14 days to return the computer. Of course I wasn’t in the country during those 14 days, but that wasn’t their problem so I left that out.

“My wife has been here several times, as have I,” I said, “trying to straighten this out, and your geeks kept giving us advice on how to fix it.” He seemed hurt that I called his colleagues geeks. It says geek squad on the nametag on his shirt. He went through the flappy door to get his boss.

“Hi there sir, my name is Chief-geek, how can I help you?” He smiled a warm managerial smile.

I took ten minutes, now fairly fuming, to explain everything I had been through in my six or seven visits to Best Buy over the past few weeks, and that all I wanted was to hand over the electronic paperweight that had been sold to me so that I could buy a better, more efficient and frankly, WORKING computer. His smile vanished.

“All we can do is schedule your computer for an examination and see if there is anything wrong with it. Our return policy is 14 days.”

“I would have brought it back within the 14 days, but your employees kept telling me there was no real problem and all I had to do was change modes, or run as an administrator or…”

“You should have brought it back,” he kept saying.

“You could give me store credit and get even more money out of me, nearly $800 more, by selling me the other computer.”

“I can’t do that sir,” he said.

“I spend several thousand dollars a year in your store, but I will NEVER shop here again,” I said, not as a threat, but as a certainty. “This is the worst customer service I have ever seen.”

“Okay,” he said, not concerned in the least that Best Buy was losing a customer. “Did you want us to look at the computer? It is under service protection. We’ll have it back to you in 72 hours. What exactly is wrong with it?”

“What is wrong with it?” I asked. “It doesn’t work. It doesn’t run any programs, it won’t load any drivers, it can’t run the wireless router you sold me which incidentally is the third one you’ve sold me for this computer. It is a piece of JUNK!” Several other customers turned and looked at me and shook their heads sympathetically. They clearly had been where I was standing.

“Can you connect to the internet?” he asked.

“I just told you that it won’t load drivers for the wireless adapter,” I said, how on earth would I connect to the internet.

“When you plug a cable into the back of it, it doesn’t work?”

“A CABLE!?! I have a WIRELESS ROUTER! Why would I have a cable lying around my house? This computer does nothing, nothing, it is a piece of junk!”

“Well sir, we’ll certainly look at it and see if there is anything wrong,” he said condescendingly. “Please sign this paperwork certifying that you won’t hold Best Buy responsible for any data or media loss.”

“Data or media loss!?! How could there be any data or media loss? The computer doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked since I brought it home! There is no data on it because it has never been USED!”

“Please initial here sir, and sign here.”

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “I assure you that no matter what happens with this computer, I will NEVER EVER shop in a BEST BUY again.”

“We’ll call you in 72 hours about your computer. Have a nice day sir.” I knew that was Best Buy code for “How nice for you, which is of course code for other less pleasant expletives.”

I left the store. I will go back once to get my daughter’s computer, then I will never go back again. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, I will take it to a local hack shop and cut it up for parts. Maybe I can sell tickets to smash it and use the proceeds to buy her a new one. Anyone have the name of a reputable computer dealer with even modestly helpful customer service?

Nope. Venting did NOT work. My head is definitely going to explode.