I don't know if I have the umpf to write it all out in all its ugly details, but today was my court date w/Best Buy. First, please hold me to this: I will never buy anything there again. I will, however, march myself back in there as long as this laptop is under warranty, to insist that they provide the services that we so deeply paid for. The laptop is on the blink again -- we are babying it along at this point. Somehow my husband figured out that if you squeeze the computer where the hard drive is, it will power up. Don't ask, it's ugly.
Anyway, here is what happened today: I showed up, BB sent an asst manager. I told my story, the judge asked the BB rep what she had to say. She produced some type of a document (I was not privy to it) that said BB left me a message at some point, notifying me that no data could be recovered from the hard drive and since I did not respond to that message, corporate policy is to destroy the hard drive 4 days after notification!!! Come on! You're kidding me! The judge at that point said, "well, that's bizarre"! I agree, for the record here.
HOWEVER, having said that, the judge stated that it would be difficult to put a dollar amount on my lost data, which I agreed it would be. He said that I would be entitled to the cost of the hard drive (big whoop), however, if the data couldn't be recovered from the hard drive, it wasn't worth anything. I contended that because I was potentially willing to pay over $1000 to have the data retrieved, at a minimum that is what it was worth to me. He didn't really go for that, so he gave me a judgement of $500, plus court costs. Now what will happen, I am not really sure about. The BB rep, in the hallway, told me she would give it to their lawyers and they will contact me. The judge, however, indicated that he thought their lawyers would appeal his decision. Can you even imagine that? Although they have lost me as a customer either way, once the warranty expires, but can you imagine them trying to fight $500? Go for it! The negative publicity is fine with me. The fact that they employed NO serious strategy to find the hard drive and tell me what happened to it is just unacceptable to me. I told the BB rep in the hallway that bottom line, their customer service was pitiful!
3 comments:
Unbelievable!! Mom H.
Your experience will translate into millions of lost dollars for Best Buy. I will not buy a new computer (which we are due to upgrade) from them based on this saga. Everyone you tell about this will think twice about doing business with them. A hard drive is very personal to people. It holds their "life" documents on it quite often. Keep sharing your story everywhere you go and if you have BB stock, sell it now. They are big and may not feel your particular boycott, but if this is their attitude, I would not invest in the company. How do you defeat bad customer service? Leaving one customer at a time. Just a thought...
We hope you get something out of all the frustration you've had and all of the time you spend working on it.
Mom
Post a Comment