Testimonial #21: The Garbage Computer Fiasco

Hi Folks,

About a year ago they opened the first Best Buy store in our area (Spokane Washington). When I first visited the store I was very impressed with the variety of electronics and gadgets they stocked. You could see every item out the box and play with it. It was awesome. I really didn't have a great purchase in mind till about September of last year when I needed a new computer. Now I consider myself a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to buying large dollar items and I tend to shop around for the best price. As it turned out, Best Buy had a super deal on a computer that would fit my budget and my needs especially since they had the six months with no interest special. I bought the computer, LCD monitor and printer in one bundle so I could get the package deal discounts. I also purchased their extended warranty for an additional $200 which covered the whole system. I was very happy with the purchase, having bought a good name brand computer. About two months later is when the nightmare started.

I started having problems with the computer. Slow startups, loss of data, general bogging down when running applications that came preinstalled on the system. I called the store and they asked me to bring the computer down to their tech department even though I had purchased the in-home extended warranty service. They told me it would be quicker turnaround that way. Make sense to me so I took the system down to the store. Did I mention that it is a 40 minute drive to the store?

A day later they called me back and told me that they had not found anything wrong with the system, they'd done a full system restore and everything seemed to be working fine.

After picking up the computer everything was fine for about two weeks. Then all the bugs started to show up again. I called the store and the same deal, "bring it down and we'll look at it". A day later and another system restore and the computer was working. Again they said they couldn't find anything wrong with the system.

Now see the paragraph above? The same thing happened two more times after this!

Now I'm getting a bit annoyed at the whole thing.

I called up "Household" which is the company that supplies the Best Buy credit cards and had them place the account in dispute. I was hoping that this way someone other than the local store managers would have a chance to look over the situation and help me out, since the store managers and technicians seemed to think that I was imagining a problem and that it was ok to have to do a system reinstall on the computer every few weeks. Well, they sounded really sweet on the phone, promising me that they would look into the matter, they would take care of it, they would make sure that I had a working system....etc. Well, guess what? About 8 weeks later I get a letter from them saying that according to the store where I purchased the system there is no problem with it and I should take it to the manufacturer since they cannot find any problems. This is about the time when I add about a dozen exclamation points to the end of the sentence. But wait, there's more.

Up till this point I had been making $200 a month payments on the system. That's 6 months of payments for a total of $1200. My original purchase was for $2600. So this is the way I saw it, the computer and the extended warranty cost me $1400 which is exactly what I owed them. I called up Household and explained to them that I was tired of being dragged around. I was not going to pay them the rest and they could just pick up the computer, cancel my account and go away. I know this is not the best way to do business and I know that I was a bit rude. But they came back stating that if I do no make my payments even though the product they sold me may be defective that they could send me to collection and effect my credit rating. At this point I am getting really ticked off (I should be using another word other than ticked but I am being polite here). I called Household again and again asking for some sort of alternative, they never gave me one.

Now here is the part where I made my mistake. They sent me the bill for the 7th month. Now my six month no interest thing is over. They had charged me almost $200 in interest on that bill for what I still owed them ($1400). I called again going over the whole story and finally during the conversation I decided that I could not deal with them anymore. I asked the lady that I talked to if they would drop the interest charges and refund me the full amount for the extended warranty if I just paid the balance of my account immediately. I was told that there would be no problems with that. Send a letter with the payment, send another letter to the Best Buy extended warranty service and it would be over. Again I say here is where I made the mistake. I paid them in full. I never should have done this. Now I feel that I have absolutely no say in anything. I just wanted them to go away. Today I received a letter from Best Buy stating that they will not be refunding my warranty in full as promised. They are keeping a portion of it to cover the costs of the four visits to the store. Having dealt with these shysters, I am expecting to get a notice asking me to pay for the interest that they had "waived" too.

For anyone out there who is thinking of dealing with Best Buy, please hear me. DONT! I can't put it any other way. You would not believe the amount of time that I spend being transferred from department to department. From supervisor to supervisor. All the phone calls and letters were totally useless. I'm not even sure that anyone read any of three letters that I sent them. Not a single person in the company will even attempt to resolve a complaint that has gone beyond the local store manager. If you really want to know what the Best Buy customer service is like, just pretend that you bought something from them and call their customer service line. Make something up, doesn't have to be super technical, just has to be a complaint. You will be surprised at how quickly you come to a dead end. I was wrong to pay off my purchase with them. I just wanted the aggravation and headaches to go away. I pretty much gave up on the computer system, its sitting here in a box till I sell it for parts or something.

I really hope that my true story reaches as many people as possible out there. You all need to be aware of this companies policies and practices. I am so fed up of dealing with them that I have just given up. But I would really love to see someone out there take some legal action against them since what they are doing has to be breaking some laws.

Romean B Hayden, ID

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