"We Tried Our Best"Buy

This is an unembellished saga detailing the worst customer service experience of my life. Not only will I not shop at Best Buy anymore, I no longer will wear blue polo shits – out of private, unheard protest.

Years ago my dad gave me a Gateway laptop to take abroad with me – it served it purposes, and as it was my first computer with a DVD drive, lulled me to sleep several nights with the incessant whirring of it’s built-in fan as I watched my only DVD—The Royal Tennenbaums—again and again.

Fast forward a few years to about a month ago, when I returned home from work and entered my room to hear—not the white noise of a computer fan—but the most grating and discordant chord audible to the human ear. If I can describe it to you, I’d say it was as if, to cover-up the noise of a lobster being boiled alive, 4 or 5 terrible Borat impressionists joined in a chorus of “I like sex!.” That, but condensed into just one sustained, whirring, egregious note. And a black screen repeatedly saying "MEDIA TEST FAILED" and "NO OPERATING SYSTEM FOUND." Anyway: as I long suspected, time for a new computer!

So, the good news is I got a Mac and I love it, and I’m never going back to PC. But that’s another story.

I decided to take my old computer to BEST BUY – a store I have long admired for its reasonably priced CDs, abundant selection, and relative acceptance of people who want to play Nintendo Wii but clearly have no intention of buying anything. They have a service there through their endemic service/repair company, the self-abnegatingly titled GEEK SQUAD, where they will attempt to back-up your computer’s files. The cost of such service: $60 dollars for them to even take a look at the computer, and if they can access the files, another $100 dollars for them to back everything up.

Well, I’m not in the Financial Straits these days to willy-nillily spend $160 dollars, but as that computer has some of my only copies of beloved photographs and documents I’ve gleaned over the last three years, I thought it was worth it. I signed a contract, was assured I’d receive a call regarding my files in 2-3 days, and happily swiped my credit card.

This transpired on Saturday, January 26th. I figured I’d have my computer back by the 28th or 29th. Certainly by February. Certainly at some point in the future...

Five days pass, and, eager to know if I’ll ever be able to see the photos I took in India again, I call them. It takes some time to get through to the GEEK SQUAD, their phones just keep ringing, so when I settle for a “customer service representative” I am told the Geek Squad’s phones are broken. Shouldn’t the geek’s squads tech issues be relatively easy to address, given the presumptive knowledge of their personnel? This perhaps should have been my first clue something was awry, but in any case, I asked to get someone on the phone.

When I did I was told their were still “five projects before mine,” so even though it had now been twice the time they told me it would take, I still needed to wait another day. “No problem” I chimed, amicably.

Another five days, now it is Wednesday February 6th. Still no word from the Geeks. I call them when I get out of work, finally able to get through, but am asked to hold. Fine. (still amicable, but a quiver of “here we go again”). Twenty minutes of Debussy’s Clair de Lune later (with period interludes to hear about Best Buy Employment Opportunities and Special Product Offers) a rep comes on the line:

“This is Antonio”
“Hi Antonio. I’ve been waiting to speak with someone about my computer. Are you from the Geek Squad?”
“Uhh…yeah. “
“You don’t’ sound so sure. Anyway -- – I dropped it off about eleven days ago to get backed up, and haven’t heard anything.. Is it ready?”
“Yeah hold on.”

Back on hold for five minutes.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s all done and ready. You can come pick it up.”
Surprised, because good news surprises me, “Great! I’ll be there tonight. How late are you open?”
“We close at nine. Thank you for calling Best Buy.”

No Best Buy, thank you. You may take a long time to repair things, but at least you provide affordable CDs.

I schlep up to Columbus Circle’s Best Buy. “I’m here for my Geek Squad job”

I’m asked to wait by a manicured girl whom Josh Kesner succinctly described as a “G.E.D. Candidate” when I told him this story. Ten minutes later: “It’s not here, but may be in the storage room. Let me go check.”

May be?

Thirty minutes pass. I try to play a little Wii but am too anxious. I pace a little; look at Bravia TVs (they are nice). Where’s my geek squad rep?

Finally I track down a manager and explain my story – displaying the equanimity of Mother fucking Theresa amidst the leprous hordes. “Let me go see where your computer is, sir. Give me two minutes”

More like twenty. I can’t even believe it. When I go look for her, back downstairs, she is talking to another customer about speakers.

What’s going on, miss? Where’s my computer?

“Oh we are just doing another check: there was some confusion.”

Now it’s about 90 minutes+ since I first entered Best Buy. Finally another sales rep comes and finds me, and brings me up to the manager I had spoken with. Then they tell me the, by then obvious, truth:

“Sorry sir. We can’t find your computer. We tried our best.”

We-Tried-Our-Best-Buy: your Best isn’t good enough.

Obviously I’m upset; “this is ridiculous”; “the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had” and “considerably more of a Kafkaesque experience than my usual Best Buy shopping trip” are some of the phrases I used.

They refund my money, and tell me they’ll call me by the end of the day today to let me know if they are able to find it. “Maybe it was filed wrong”

This isn’t a document. It’s silicon. It’s circuitry. It doesn’t fit in your typical hanging file. This is totally absurd: you can’t provide a repair service and just “lose” what you are repairing. When you get your car parked, the valet can’t be like: whoops sorry, forgot where I parked! Or to use a more extreme example, when you bring your kids to day care, they can’t just misplace what you drop off. “Oh sorry—they aren’t here anymore” That’s not how it works.

Just what I need.