Boycott - a refusal to have dealings with an organization in order to express disapproval

I have a boycott policy against Best Buy

Best Buy was added to my boycott list due to extremely poor customer service.

Many times I have purchased items at Best Buy store in Huntsville, AL, only to find that the packages had previously be opened and component parts were damaged or missing.

When an item is returned by a customer, the contents are supposed to be inspected and the package should be marked OPEN-BOX ITEM to indicate the item is not new and should be sold at a discount.

The most pitiful example of poor customer service and incompetent management we have ever encountered came from the management of the Best Buy store located in Florence, AL.

A relative had purchased a huge (and very expensive) digital television as a present to her husband. Once the television was installed, they started experiencing numerous technical difficulties and the television would only stay on for a few minutes at a time, then it would go out again.

I asked if it had been taken back to Best Buy for an exchange or refund. At that point, she told me that yes, it had been sent back to the store on several occasions. The TV would be gone for weeks at a time only to come back home to die again. On one occasion, they witnessed the delivery driver actually drop the TV on the ground from a height of over three feet.

When I visited their home a few months later, I noticed that the shelf was still empty where the television used to be. I asked about the status of the repairs and she told me that it had been back in the store for repairs and it had been there for several weeks.

After over a year of ownership, the TV had stayed in the shop for several months. The whole time they never got to watch the television.

I offered to ride to the store and speak with the manager to help resolve the issue. When I finally reached the customer service desk, I could not believe their display of ignorance!

The entire staff we encountered were rude and not very helpful, so I finally just demanded a refund. I was shocked again when the management said, "No way!"

After catching the manager in several lies, I insisted that they give a refund but they still refused. The price of new equipment always goes down once a product has been on the market for a while. I asked them to replace it with the same model - they still said No. I asked them to give her a different model and refund the difference, they again said No.

The customer had purchased an extended warranty service agreement, but Best Buy not only refused to honor it - they even told her that if she gets a replacement, that would be considered as use of the extended warranty benefits. I argued that since it never worked, she should get a new TV and the extended warranty should start all over - not disappear by using it to replace a defective item.

I could not believe the managers that I spoke with were so rude, they repeatedly told lies to the customer while they seemed to be trying their best to rip the customer off.

I immediately filed a complaint with their corporate office, but after speaking with numerous executives (some were high level executives) they still never made things right. They acted like we were bothering them and they were totally uninterested in listening to their customer.

Best Buy spends millions of dollars on software to deliver quality customer service, but by putting the wrong people in charge of the store - their money is completely wasted! The most sophisticated software is totally useless when the employees you hire don't care about the customer.

To this day, the Best Buy in Florence, AL still hold the title of the worst customer service that I have ever seen. To make the situation worse, the entire management team in place at the store and at their corporate offices were completely tactless, inept, and uninterested!

April 2008 - Best Buy was fined $280,000 by the Federal Trade Commission for not properly labeling analog-only televisions that would become obsolete when the digital switch occurs in 2009.

2008 - Raelyn Campbell files a $54,000,000 lawsuit against Best Buy for losing her laptop computer she gave to them for repairs. This amount sounds outrageous, but Campbell faced many of the issues we faced with our defective digital television. Best Buy forced the customer to go through months of back-and-forth communications while the company refused to take any responsibility for the incident. They lost the computer through their negligence, while for months they refused to even acknowledge the loss.

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