How To Lose A Customer 101 - Courtesy: Best Buy

Am I the only person around who's really hard on companies who do stupid things?

I was looking at purchasing a laptop that turned out to be a pretty good deal from Best Buy (a store I would normally never buy ANYTHING from, much less a computer, but my needs aren't that great for this laptop soooo...). For $850 when all was said and done (after mail-in rebates: strike one) it wasn't too shabby: AMD 1.53GHz, 512MB PC2100(266MHz), ATI Radeon Mobility 4x AGP, 14.1" viewable XFT, 40GB ATA/100 and a battery. Wipe WinXP off and put Win98 2/e on and it was a pretty good bargain. Except... I found out today that it was backordered. Well, no big deal, I figured at that price it was sure to sell quick. So, I went to the site intending to cancel the order... no way to cancel orders online, you have to call CS (strike two). So I called them, canceled the order, went back, and found a HP that I had to buy 256MB of RAM seperately to make it the same specs as the other one, but still turned out to be roughly the same price in the end - just a little more before the rebates kicked in, but I'd get the money back after awhile. I went through the process of placing the order, and this one was actually available at a local Best Buy store to pick up - cool, I can get it a little quicker. So, I went to finalize the order, but the credit kept being rejected because it was over the limit even though it only has 500 bucks on it. Huh? So I call up the card company and, after a little initial confusion on my part with the automated system, the rep tells me that Best Buy has a merchant hold on my account for the previously back-ordered, now canceled item. Strike three... yer out. I'm not putting up with this kind of crap from some two-bit junk grocer just to get a notebook. I'll gladly pay the slightly higher Googlegear price once these idiots finally get the hold off my card just because Best Buy, like many companies before it (Circuit City, Wal Mart, Verizon, Microsoft, Compaq, etc.) screwed around trying to milk me for money and I won't put up with it. I'd have been okay if they'd have put the hold on an IN STOCK item that I canceled, but they put it on a backordered item that both they and I knew would probably never ship (they were trying to clear the last of the stock - hence the low price).

Maybe it's just me, and I'm just not a good little American consumer who assumes "the position" for big corporates, but I'd prefer not to get ****ed around and pay a higher price than put up with crap like this from companies offering me juicy looking deals (I'm in the process of changing to Sprint from Verizon because Verizon decided they were gonna charge me an extra $3 a month for long distance on my local only plan that I use to dial into the net - it'll cost me about $6 more a month to go with Sprint, but I'm not putting up with that kind of bull**** from some crummy little monopoly - which normally I doubt they'd care about, but I'll be looking into high-speed Internet, and I WON'T be looking at Verizon for it). Too bad good deals usually equate to lousy service and flat out mean-spirited contracts these days.... now I just sound like an old fogey

I agree, that does suck...but you're mad at the wrong people. It's totally a bank issue that your card is tied up... My wife used to work for US Bank, and they LOVE to pull stuff like that, because it causes overdraft fees and lots of other revenue-generators...

I don't want to defend Best Buy, but I don't think you should blame them for the credit card part. Everytime you use a credit card a memo is placed on the card in some amount. When you pay at the pump, the gas company places a hold on your card in the amount of $1.00 to make sure the card is valid. For most other purchases, a hold is placed on the amount and then removed when the batch officially settles. This is really easy to see if you have online access to your accounts.

How is it the bank's fault? If Best Buy wanted to check the card for validity they should've carved out $1, not $1200. I don't think it's appropriate to "reserve" the space on my card for an item that's on backorder. Basically, it means: that amount is used, you just don't have to worry about paying for it yet.

The gas example maybe wasn't a good one: the main difference there is they don't know how much gas you're going to purchase, and if they did, they would hold that amount.

The full amount of a purchase is the norm. At the time of purchase the hold is placed and remains until the batch of purchases for that company for that day is turned in and settled with the credit card company. In the case of you cancelling, they remove your purchase from the batch. When the batch settles, the credit card company sees not to actually charge your card, and then releases the hold.

Most purchases are done this way; it just doesn't affect you b/c the amounts are usually much less.

That's my understanding of it all anyway.

I've had similar experiences with Best Buy, especially when attemting to get a price "as advertised." Of course, the "deal" was sold out and they would get another shipment in soon... they just forgot to tell me that not only would they bill me while I was waiting, but when the product came, I had to pay full price because the sale was over. Needless to say, it's obvious why their prices are lower than other stores...

mttatkns -

That's called "bait pricing" and it's largely illegal when it's done that way. Normally, they'll try to sell some piece of junk really cheap, then use the fact that they cheap piece of crap is a cheap piece of crap to try and sell you something more expensive - which is certainly NOT illegal... just annoying..

Speaking of which.. I bought my lappytop... how long can I leave this sucker running? It seems so delicate... I don't want to hurt it....

Amazingly enough... Windoze XP managed to piss me off within 20 minutes of getting the thing running...

here's another oddball one for you... the system info reports that the processer is an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ which is correct, but it says it's running at 665MHz??? WTF? It's supposedly a 1.53GHz processor, and it certainly doesn't appear to be running so slow, but what's with that odd number doze is reporting for my proc speed?

Well the whole affair was for a hard drive, and they had one with no box or warranty that they tried to sell me for the sale price. Of course, I refused, and they told me I could drive to another store (the nearest just happens to be a few hours away). I said no, and they told me they would be getting it in within a day anyways. A week later it came and I got charged the full amount (the sale was over). Lucky me. They're not getting my business anymore.

I have seen merchants who only need $250 from your card
reserve at $500. They usually do more than the price for some
reason.

I went to BestBuy yesterday for a 32" TV that I spent 20 minutes
telling the guy "..No, I don't want the Extended Warranty..."

Our gripe for our area is that the closest BestBuy, always sends
you to the second closest to pick up something they should have
because it just went on sale.

And, yeah right to the "We don't work on commision.." bit. There
is some type of incentive there.

I just had the BestBuy gripe with a friend of mine tonight about this.
It might be time to go back to CircuitCity.

ugg. If anything like the last (also the first) time I went there, salesmen just prey on you (like whenever you make any major purchase, like a car, etc) IS that their MO?

I haven't had the chance to read the whole post - but I just thought I should insert this in:

Circuit City is a lot better than Best Buy. First, they pretty much have the same price, taking that Lowest Price Guranteed thing. A plus for Circuit City though is that they dont' have 15% restocking fee unlike Best Buy.

less than 12 months after signing up for a 25 year loan for a property, the bank has decided to raise the monthly fee.....


by 50%

Wonder if they plan to do this each year.

The bank also tells me I can't withdraw more than $1000 per day from my savings account.

So if I want to buy a system for a customer I have to use a credit card and get hit with the merchants 3% fee

or

pay $3 to withdraw cash over the counter (and carry around large amounts of cash).

Least it is not as bad as my sisters experience. Her replacement cash card was stolen on-route to her in Thailand. The next card issued would not work as the bank had decided it better change the PIN number (as the first was stolen).

All she has to do is return to Australia and visit the bank to enter a new PIN. No one else can do this for her.

Of course to do that she would need money............

Circuit City is a joke. They sell crap.... crap crap crap. Best Buy does too, but the two lappytops (I gotta quit saying that...) I found there were actually pretty decent deals, even considering the somewhat lower quality components that probably went into them (and, besides, who the hell builds their own laptop? I don't have the patience for it and my fingers are too big.. took me 15 minutes just to get the damn RAM stick into the thing...).

Best Buy and Circuit City have bargain PCs, but they'll perform just like bargain PCs - they use cheap motherboards, slow, high latency RAM, usually aren't very expandable, usually use slower, higher seek HDDs, low quality monitors, and don't have their own audio/video/lan. I found a "bargain" PC at Best Buy, and, out of curiosity, pitted it against a computer that I had built peice by peice (on paper). It turned out that my PC would cost just under $1450 and the bargain PC, once it was upgraded to match my peicemeal one, would cost over $1700. Good deal... they're ok if all you want to do is get your grandma on the 'net, but forget gaming or heavy applications (adobe, dreamweaver, etc.).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I though companies conducting business online or through the mail could only bill you once an item is shipped? I used to work for a major catalog company and we only billed for backorders when the items where shipped out.