This is a real story.
2 amazingly different experiences and a warning shot to all those Best Buy investors. The end is near.
Amazon:
I purchased an oven baking element from Amazon a few weeks ago. Amazon has a nifty feature that highlights products of a similar nature at the bottom of the page. I luckily found a product that was 50% cheaper and clicked through the links and completed the purchase. Product arrived in less than 4 days (UPS). I open the packaging and to my shock find that while it looked the same overall, the ends of the baking element was totally different. This discovery was made after a couple hours of sweating and crouching and making allowances for my stupidity that I could not figure how to insert a baking element into the oven and turn one screw.
Anyway, It turns out that the page relevance on Amazon picked the wrong product because they referenced the same name I was looking for.
I opened a claim with Amazon and in less than a week - received full refund for the product including shipping all amounting to $18 (no biggie).
Rating: Excellent! That is Amazon customer service for you!
Best Buy:
On Father's day, I decided to buy a chromebook for my dad. Off I go to Best Buy. There was this part-time worker, supposedly consultant who hounded me the moment I went in. I told him that I was serious about a purchase and did not wish to use BestBuy for "showboating" so I can go home and order on Amazon. Fine. He explained in great detail about the Samsung Chrome book ($249) and the Acer Chrome Book ($199), the advantages of a faster and ligher chromebook with a 16GB SSD drive, flora, fauna et al. I fell for it. i said I am gonna buy the cheaper acer for $199. I pick up 1 of the 2 products lying on the shelf. Odd thing, nowhere on the brown cardboard carton was any product specs other than the stupid barcode. Argh. Hey, in the past decade nobody sold me the "wrong product". I didnt have to worry much. I pay for it. Bring it home. Start using it. Until 2 weeks later (ie 3 days past their 15 day return policy), I was crushing the box in which the chrome book (now, this is a white cardboard carton with all the specs on the outside...I dont know why this was packaged in a brown carton and kept for sale).
To my horror, I found that I had bought the old product with 320GB HDD and2GB RAM...the consultant at BestBuy brought this product up but we didnt consider it since we wanted something that was fast.
I called BestBuy and all I got was "the 15 day return policy is over" and was instructed to go to the store back and negotiate a trade-in. What the hell does that mean? I was sold a product I didnt want to buy. They obviously mis-advertised, displaying the latest model and selling an older model. Seemed more like a bait and switch to me. Although, the old and new product sell at the same price. Call me naive, I have never had this experience. The product I picked has been pretty much the product I wanted...and due to the brown carton hiding the original packaging, I couldnt verify it was the same product at the time of the purchase.
Bottom line, I will never step foot in Best Buy again. With Amazon, I atleast have a recourse...
Rating: Poor and extremely disappointed.
