dead sun's Journal: Best Buy Service Update

Late this afternoon I got a call, rather unexpectedly, from Best Buy. It's one week before their expected date of repair for my monitor, so I was wondering what was going on. Well, I'll tell you.

As it turns out, apparently they did find something wrong with the monitor, but seeing as the monitor is 2.5 years old, a size no longer made, and so on, did not have the parts required to actually fix it. I guess they're better able to put the thing through tests than just hooking it up to a random machine. At any rate, I was informed it could not be fixed, so come on in and it was time to do the replacement thing.

Naturally, I was kind of excited, as the replacement plan states the new item has to be at least equal in features, and there just aren't 18" LCD monitors anymore, so it would have to bump to a 19". And after working on a CRT for a while, I've been itching to get back to an LCD. I figured they'd just bump me up to a 19" of the same manufacturer. That'd give me an extra inch, the same VGA input options, and take away the integrated speakers, which were nice for saving space but terrible speakers really only used for IM alerts and such. I was fine with the idea, I mean, an extra inch is nice and who really cares about the speakers. What's not to like?

Instead, I get to the store and go to the service desk, then the Geek Squad desk, wait a few minutes, and explain why I'm there. The guy said that they normally do things by feature, but since they carry no 18" LCDs and very few LCDs with integrated speakers, they'd just let me pick whatever monitor, and that if it cost more I could pay the difference. Hey, did you know that 2.5 years ago an 18" analog only LCD cost $450 on sale? That's a lot to play with in today's world of LCDs. Wow, totally different experience this time around and I didn't even have to ask.

I picked out a nice LG which cost about $20 more. We've already got one of the same model in the apartment, so I know the quality and quite like it. Nice and bright, has both DVI and VGA inputs, good color, and crisp text. It really is a superior monitor in all ways compared to the one I had prior.

The icing on the cake, though, is this. The monitor had a $40 mail in rebate this week. The girl at the customer service desk that I had to go to for the final swap printed me out a rebate receipt and the rebate form. $20 down right now for the new monitor and I'll get $40 later. I couldn't believe it.

So, now I have to write a letter off to the corporate offices, but at least it isn't all bad. They need to know there was a problem with how the initial return was handled, but once things were in motion I can't say I've been treated poorly in the least. Quite the opposite. Who'd have thought?

Hah!

[artifex2004]

So I guess it wasn't the cable, after all :)

Better than anyone else

[Jamuraa]

I've been surprised at the good customer service that Best Buy has given lately. When my friend went there on Black friday, showing up at 5:50 (10 minutes before opening on the busiest day of the year), he got in to the store, got what he wanted, and was checked out and in his car by 6:10. That's amazing compared to what other retailers are like on that day. Also I found out recently that Best Buy is one of the companies who is against rebates, which are a pain and prefer sales. I also just bought a TV

Just like support...

[FortKnox]

First level (techie) and second level (manager) support are full of morons, but once you get to that third level and have intelligent people looking over things, everything falls together nicely, eh?

Thats the first time I've heard Best Buy actually

[lab16]

honoring its service agreement. Weird.

I'm still going to stay away from them like the plague though. I got treated incredibly rude last time I went there (the only time I ever went, IIRC).

Re:Thats the first time I've heard Best Buy actual

[dead sun]

I don't think they really wanted to, but persistance paid off initially to the point where they said they'd send it off to get looked at probably just to get me out of their hair. I fully expected to receive it back in pieces and be told that it was fine, but I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure why exactly I got the silly service agreement, except that the monitor was way too cheap at the time, and something said to gamble that it was going to die before 3 years time. Guess it worked out.

Re:Thats the first time I've heard Best Buy actual

[lab16]

Do you know who is really good at honoring extended warranties? Radio Shack.

A couple of years ago, I bought some earphones from them with an extended warranty, and over the course of about 3 years I turned in over 6 broken earphones back to them to get it replaced. The earphones themselves were great, but they had some real cheap wiring that got stiff and broke after a while. RS never really gave me any crap about it, even upgrading it to a newer version after they stopped selling the old one.

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