Best Buy

Reviews 3

GR

Greg Mays

Honestly the only reason Im giving them 4 stars is because I know that none of the problems Im experiencing are really the fault of the Christiansburg Best Buy employees (therefor this review should not be a reflection on them), but rather issues with Best Buy as a company. The employees were helpful and understanding, but theres only so much that they can do with a system that is ultimately broken. Recently took advantage of a promotion to trade in a game console for credit toward a new one. The first issue is that there doesnt seem to be a comprehensive list of all of the promotions that Best Buy is running that the employees can easily access. In the end I had to go behind the counter and pull up the promotion myself from the Best Buy site to prove that the promotion was legitimate. Maybe it was a glitch in the system, but when I called earlier to check and be sure that the promotion was still running I didnt get a concrete yes or no answer then either so it clearly goes deeper than that. Then once the promotion was confirmed there was an issue with determining whether or not my trade-in was eligible. Some issue with the naming nomenclature of the system lead them to believe that the system may not have been eligible. Again I blame this on a lack of preparation by Best Buy. A simple reference guide for the employees showing the shape, appearance, or defining characteristics of eligible systems couldve prevented the confusion. Then once that issue was resolved the system wanted to give me half of the credit stated in the promotion. Again the poor employees were forced to work around Best Buys computer system in order to fix the issue. Then once I had the credit for the new system I went back to video games to check out new consoles. The console that I wanted in the configuration that I wanted had not been in stock for weeks despite attempts to have them re-stocked according to the young lady on the sales floor. She was very helpful and tried to convince me to buy a different system until I told her that the system I was looking for was the only one that the credit worked for. We went back to customer service where she explained the situation. The customer service reps then placed an order to have the item shipped to the store where I could pick it up in 3-5 days. I was pretty disappointed to walk out of the store without my item (this is the main draw of a brick and mortar location over say, Amazon), but I was happy knowing that in 3-5 days Id have my item. It has now been 4 days and at 10pm on the 4th day Best Buy emails me tell me that there would be a delay on my item of ONE TO TWO WEEKS. Needless to say Im absolutely furious. My expectation was that I would be leaving the store with my item that day and now its sounding more like it will be almost a month between transaction and delivery of the product. For a nationwide big box retail chain this is simply unacceptable especially for a fairly common item (every store except Best Buy seems to have this item). Again, I dont blame the Christiansburg Best Buy staff for this experience which has been one hangup after another through literally every step of the process. They were friendly, patient, and apologetic throughout and I could tell that they genuinely wanted me to be satisfied with my experience there. They tried as much as they could to help me, but it felt like the entire way they were battling Best Buys roadblocks. Considering that start to finish this has probably been the worst retail experience of my life (and considering that its possibly still not even over yet) I think the staff made every reasonable attempt to ensure my satisfaction. So although I would recommend the extremely friendly and helpful staff at this particular store my overall recommendation is just to avoid the Best Buy chain altogether.

A

A Private User

Best Buy has one thing going for it - every store is as consistently, equally bad as the other - kind of like how you can go to a McDonalds in Timbuktu and get the same cheeseburger youd get from a McDonalds anywhere else on the planet. Difference is, Best Buy offers an equally Danteesque shopping experience in every store. The new store in Christiansburg, despite my hopes, lives down to the reputation "Best" Buy has earned for itself as the most ironically named electronics chain in existence. The store itself is dark, overwhelmingly noisy, full of overpriced garbage and overhyped "sale" items that are just the opening gambit for one of the expert sales team (who would fit in perfectly on a used car lot or a community theater production of "Glengarry Glen Ross") to shove a pile of Monster Cable and $200 surge protectors and extended warranties that are either worthless (the item doesnt break in the term of the warranty) or else impossible to collect on (read the fine print). The combination of high-pressure sales tactics, the disorienting, deliberately confusing floor layout, loud music, epileptic-fit inducing "demonstration" video playing in sync on every television in the store, the sheer scale of the place -- not to mention the utter number of items on display (especially big-ticket items), which, with the exception of a tiny handful of store-brand/no-name cheap "bargain" items, are overpriced, overhyped, and very expensive marquee brand items. One thing they all have in common is that theyre all way more machine than anyone who doesnt already know exactly what theyre looking for (and therefore isnt at Best Buy in the first place unless they found a real bargain -- and it does happen once in a while) actually needs. I routinely intercede when I see someone getting hustled especially badly; usually for naught. Ive got my conscience, the salesmans got a commission at stake. Every time I go to a Best Buy, I swear "Im never going into one of these G-dforsaken stores ever again". And then, Ill find a remarkable deal online and opt to pick it up in store. Thankfully, the line to pick up items prepaid for online is a fraction of the Soviet Bloc-length queues for the regular checkout (the path to which forces shoppers to proceed single-file past walls on either side of them covered with impulse-buy junk, and candy and soda (which, after getting hustled into spending twice as much on superfluous accessories for an overpriced TV or home theater or computer of whose functions youll use about 1%, or just spending an hour and a half in a daze from all the disorienting noise and flash and darkness, must seem awful tempting). I base my remarks on my experiences at several stores, but the one in Christiansburg is just like any other. Save yourself a lot of pain. Go online. Compare stuff there. Ask friends, friends of friends, whoever you know who doesnt have a direct financial interest in selling you the most expensive junk they can. If you cant find it in 15 minutes, leave. And dont come back ever again.

AR

Arka Chattopadhyay

If only there was something like negative stars. This was one of those experiences where you feel angry and helpless when facing a big company like Bestbuy. I had taken my laptop to get the battery fixed which was not holding charge. My laptop was still under warranty from Lenovo and when I contacted Lenovo service center, I was given the option of Best buy geek squad as this would supposedly take less time. I took my laptop in and the "geek" squad "agent" at the counter said and I quote "you dont need to backup your data as we would not touch the hard disk, so you can leave the box saying, back my data, unchecked". My laptop was taken in with an estimated repair time of 20 days. So 20 days later with no trace of the laptop whatsoever except for a generic message saying "in for repair", I went into the store to inquire and they could not say anything except for a generic reply saying "we have escalated the status of this repair". This kept on going for quite some time before they finally admitting that they may have lost the laptop and when asked if they would replace it, the manager in a very strong voice said that I can buy a new laptop and return it later if my laptop is found because they cannot declare it to be lost before 2 months. This to and fro went on for another 30 days and finally one fine day my laptop was shipped directly to home (not the store as it was supposed to be). I turned it on and voila, the hard disk is wiped clean with windows downgraded to windows 8.1 from 10. The manager of the store was so helpful that he almost convinced me to buy a new version of Windows 10 claiming that they would not provide any support in restoring or even attempting to restore my softwares/data (I am a PhD student and all my work and data was on that laptop). Luckily some of my data was on Google drive. So yeah, they have all this conditions in fine print at the time you hand over your laptop. They are no way responsible for any damage. I know that some one from Best buy would read this and maybe report this post saying nothing like this happened but I have all the proof. So, I STRONGLY URGE PEOPLE TO NOT GO TO THE GEEK SQUAD IN CHRISTIANSBURG. They are super useless and the manager is the rudest and most unhelpful person I have seen even when it is their fault. To give then some credit, the service center in Kentucky could actually repair the laptop but still to this day, I am clueless to why my hard disk was wiped.