Best Buy, Why Does Your Support Person Sound Terrified? | Hacker News Reader

Best Buy, Why Does Your Support Person Sound Terrified?

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25 pointsdbingham28 comments

Best Buy is a dying company. They laid off 5,000 people in February, stopped taking calls in the stores (rerouting to call centers) and the CEO said their aim is to close 3-4 stores a year. Those do not sound like the metrics of a healthy company. I guess maybe they are trying to position themselves as an online electronics retailer, but that just steals the magic of Best Buy. The magic being I can see and preview a product before buying. I refuse to purchase a high dollar electronic device product without the chance to lay eyes on it. I made that mistake ordering a TV from Amazon.

That is hilarious, because BBY IT is basically two different IT departments (brick/mortar and dotcom) and they HATE EACH OTHER.

At the C-level, the brick/mortar IT group was more influential/ingrained/in-power, despite their absolutely idiotic outmoded IT management policies.

Since I've left, they still are doing financially ok, but it just seems like a company where suddenly the floor will fall out. Their stores just sell floor space to vendors who staff it with their own people IIRC.

That said, they're the last electronics retailer you can drive to, and we need _some_ competition to Amazon.

I had a similar experience back in February when they shipped an RTX 3090 using a carrier called LSO. you ever heard of LSO? me neither. anyway. after spending a week with LSO for them to figure out my package was lost, Best Buy told me they'd ship me another. fast forward through another month of lies from best buy. every single one of them sounded scared of losing their job if they escalated. several hung up on me. one best buy "supervisor" told me that I could trust him because he sent his troops to die in Iraq...like...wtf?! to close up, it took 7 weeks from LSO saying they lost the package to getting my refund from best buy. fuck best buy.

I worked at Best Buy for a while. They would literally threaten our jobs over anything. Your hours were based on how many people you signed up for their warranty/Geek Squad bullshit. They expected you to push it on people (especially old people/non-tech people). I was also expected to sell their credit cards. On Black Friday, I was forced to work 18 hours. They literally made me feel like working there was as serious as doing brain surgery.

It is a shitty retail job. It was a horrible environment.

It's good you wrote this up to bring attention to this, but did you really have to torment the CSR by saying you'd go to social media about it as some kind of bargaining chip? You're right it's not on them, it's on the company. But that CSR is probably going to be thinking about this for the rest of the week, fearing that he'll be out of a job soon for something out of his control and be unable to pay the bills and stuff.

EDIT: I'd be terrified too if some big shot on the phone starts threatening a social media campaign against me, some unfortunate soul forced to work in a call center to deal with people like this

I was hoping he could use it as a bargaining chip with his supervisor and tried to make clear we'd leave him out of it.

This was only after we were getting stonewalled and he was saying he wasn't allowed to escalate us.

Edit: To be clear, he was scared about us asking to escalate well before we mentioned anything about social media. That was a last ditch attempt to break through. The fear preceded any mention of social media.

Fair enough

It was a good point and valid concern.

I was really hoping, they could use it to break both of us out of the trap. It didn't work. It's possible they didn't understand that's what I was trying to do. They were already pretty agitated and I was pretty frustrated. But I tried to make it clear I wasn't aiming it at them.

And each time their seeming fear and agitation preceded it by quite a bit. It was linked to us being unsatisfied with what they could offer us and asking to be escalated. And their inability to escalate at all.

They're left with the inability to solve the problems they're faced with, and no one of higher authority to pass those problems on to.

is it the customer or the company that we should hold responsible for the customer having no avenue for support after a loss of a multiple thousand dollar item?

what alternative would you have recommended?

CSR was probably terrified because 'metrics' are the god-king of call centers.

Going over on Call Times, having too many escalations, hell I worked at a place where the CSRs would get written up for taking a bathroom break too long.

Frankly, the environment of some Call Centers easily trade blows with Amazon Warehouses for worker conditions; main difference is instead of the rigors of physical labor you get to be sedentary instead.

This sucks, but it’s also not the OP’s problem. They needed a fridge.

Delivery companies are the scam of the century. If you're ordering something over 50lbs, just EXPECT it to fall into the bermuda triangle, and YOU WILL have to call both the seller and the delivery company and wait on hold for hours to get them to deliver it. Sometimes you'll have to call a few days in a row, because the delivery company handed it off to another "door delivery" company which is 2 guys and a uhaul and they're on a bender. The "delivery window" is at their convenience. You don't think the company will go out of their way to deliver it do you? If they aren't coincidentally delivering 800 tonnes of ping pong balls to Boeing next door, they won't deliver to you on that day. Sorry.

Did anyone else read the full Twitter thread?

Companies have problems occasionally, it sucks for sure, but trying to place all the blame on Best Buy for you not being able to take delivery because you are in a hospital is nonsense.

The author has his entitlement bar set to the max and needs to come back down to earth.

Can we change the title to something like:

Random guy and Best Buy both contribute to delays of a shipment.

How the Amazon instant delivery model is causing people to set unrealistic expectations.

I was just through the same shit with Priceline.

I don't have Twitter but I really want to warm the person... I had the exact same problem with Lowes about four days ago.

Unrelated, but Carvana too. Logistics everywhere seems to be cracking

Honestly, if you need it, take matters into your hands. I'm jaded at four sequential problematic deliveries in a month

This is bizarre, I can get that people get accidentality stuck in these situations, but willingly staying there is just straight up dumb.

Cancel the order, go the store, get a new fridge. It's honestly not that difficult.

We did, we are. We kept being offered tantalizing hope that they would resolve it. At least up until the last 36 hours when they started stonewalling.

We also don't have an easy way to pick up a fridge (it won't fit in our car) and delivery dates at other companies are just as far out.

So, having cancelled we're now just kind of SOL.

We may end up getting bailed out by a friend with a trailer, we'll see.

But I'm honestly as concerned about the fact that their support reps seemed legitimately scared when they couldn't help us and it was clear we were unsatisfied with what they could offer us as I am about our lack of a fridge.

Support people shouldn't be scared like that. It's not on them. It's on the company.

You can rent a truck hourly from big box hardware stores.

Oh, good point. Completely forgot about that option. Thanks for that :)

Or U-Haul

Local appliance stores usually have models in stock. And offer delivery for a fee. See if you can find one instead if going to a big box store.

Have you considered getting a mini fridge, or even a couple of mini fridges? It’s not ideal of course, but at least you’ll have a fridge and you won’t need to worry about it for a while if you don’t want to.

Ask around for quotes on delivering a fridge comparable to the one bb was supposed to deliver, within the same timeframe. Keep documentation, which can include just your notes on who you called and when. Presumably you won't get many quotes, that's fine. Do it until you get one, and execute it.

Later, but not too much later, sue BB in small claims for the difference between the price they charged and what you ended up paying. It doesn't hurt to ask for some compensation for your time, though you're less likely to get that. The point is, you are most likely entitled to be made whole for any increased expense you incurred to get a fridge on your required timeframe, as a result of BB's breach of contract (yes, you had a contract with them - you have a contract every single time you purchase something, whether it's written or no).

Does buying a new fridge guarantee faster delivery?

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