Complaint Review: Bestbuy.com - Minneapolis Minnesota

Bought a Whirlpool dishwasher online on 08/12/04 which was delivered on time as promised on 08/17. Well, thats where the good ends.

It says on bestbuy's site that if one wants to get a Dishwasher or other appliance installed, then one would have to call a 1-800 number to schedule it through their special services. Here is the link to that:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?type=page&id=cat12098&contentId=1043363604207&categoryId=cat10008

"To purchase professional appliance installation:

1) Proceed to Checkout and complete transaction

2) Upon confirmation of your order, schedule installation by calling 1-888-597-2249 between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Central time."

Well, i go on and follow the above directions and they scheduled the installation service on the following day, 08/18. So, we waited and waited on that day. No one showed up, so around 3:00pm EST (not sure about exact time), i decided to call this "special services" department. They tell me that somone in their department messed up and put in the wrong phone number instead of my home phone number. The phone number they put in, was completly different from my home phone number too. In other words, it wasn't off by just one digit, but all digits were different, up to and including the area code. Obviosly the installer couldn't contact us on a wrong phone number, so he/she skipped our house. After talking to them throughout the day (many more calls were made), it ended up that we wanted to return the dishwasher and get the money back. Why? Well, we had guests staying at our house for the weekend, and we didn't want the big dishwasher box in the middle. This is where things got ugly. The so called "customer service bad representatives" wanted us to pay $35 to pick up the dishwasher. Well, you know how that went with us....man, i think our entire family was on the phone at one time on the phone with these bad-reps. What happened? They told us that their so called "supervisor" would call us the next day 08/19 to "resolve" this issue.

The next day, a supervisor with only a first name (since she doesn't have a last name or a employee id, and works for batman) calls us in the afternoon (around 1 ish, if i remember correctly). The conversation starts out fine, but then, she drops the bomb. She says and admits that its their fault that they messed up with the phone number (or their so called "special services department" messed up), but to take the dishwasher back, we have to pay them $35. That really didn't go well with us as you can imagine. I think she was called every single bad name in our vocabulary on the phone by us. Still, she did not budge. She wants us to pay $35 for taking the dishwasher back even though its their fault. Am i like missing something here? What kind of a person asks you to pay for their mistake? We did our part: ordered it, got it delivered, and now you want us to pay $35 for taking it back because YOU messed up??? Oh, by the way, we did NOT get this dishwasher delivered for free. Yes, i know worstbuy has free shipping, but the week i ordered this, they took this promo out. So, we did pay $35 (pretty sure it was $35) for shipping to our house. Now, they want $35 to take it back. What are they smoking? I have not seen such bad customer service in a looong time. Heck even tigerdirect.com beats bestbuy in that regard...

Towards the end, wasting tons of time, explaining to a trillion reps about the situation, the best they could do was take it back for $35. So i said, well, see you in small claims court.

The small claims court thing didn't happen or couldn't happen because the dishwasher is on a credit card of a person in my house who was moving away to new jersey for good. I didn't want to bother them with papers and a court date, so we settled for a reschedule for the install. I know, i know, it might seem that i wimped out, but i had no choice since i didn't want to bug the person who bought it. Well, the next install date ended up being Tuesday 08/24. Keep in mind that this supposed to be installed on 08/18, so much time has been lost. We wait on Tuesday 08/24, wondering if something else will go wrong, and you know what, it did!! woohoo, bestbuy strikes another one! what a surprise! What they do? I was given a time frame from 9am to 1pm est in which the installer would show up. Well, 12:30pm came, and no one had arrived, so i called. They said that since i was given a 9 to 1 bracket, i should call after 1pm for such things. I said ok, and waited. 1pm came and went, no one came. Called again, was told that the installer will be there since they are running a little late. Fine, so i wait more. Next thing i know, some kind of van parked outside. Now, i was a little under-dressed, so i had to put on some better clothes. By the time i got downstairs, i heard the van leaving. The person downstairs (who did know about the van arriving as well, but was busy on the phone with some relative) had opened the door, and there was a tag saying 'sorry we missed you'. What bugs me about this is that, i did not hear a door bell or any banging on the door. Yes, i was upstairs, but there was a person downstairs too, surely they must have heard it...I mean couldn't they at least call us before putting a tag on and leaving? What? They don't carry cellphones?...but all was lost, the installer was gone and i was back to square 1 : on the phone with some bestbuy rep or chump. Ofcourse, they said that the best they could do was reschedule. To when? Get ready for this: Monday, August 30th. Now, this started on the 17th and now i am at the 30th.

So we wait until the 30th. Installer calls on the 30th around 4:00pm and says that he quit working for bestbuy. Tells us to call bestbuy again. After calling again, we are told that they would call us back again to find out whats going on. We get called back and are told that someone will contact us with installation info soon. This never happens, no calls, nothing. We end up calling back on the following day, Tuesday, August 31st. The bestbuy rep says that they will look into it and call back. A few minutes later we get a call from a installer who wanted to come right away, so we told them yes. They came, and now the dishwasher is FINALLY installed. The installer himself was laughing when he heard the story. Really sad.

This has to be the single most poor customer service i have ever received in the history of shopping. From being late, to making us pay $35 for their own mistake, to not calling back, to making us frustrated week after week, and not compensating us even a penny for the trouble, but rather asking us $35 extra. Really good bestbuy, hope you go out of business, which i think you most likely will with this kind of service, since these things do catch up to you sooner or later.

Has to be an example of corporate America at its worst.

Khurram

Waltham, Massachusetts
U.S.A.

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