Argh! I swear that Best Buy must have a requirement to employ liberals.
How else could someone explain the absolute lack of customer service and personal responsbility among the employees?
Oh, I suppose that someone could probably convince me that the employees were a bunch of wishy-washy sell-out moderates, or RINOs in the John McCain, John Warner, etc., mold. Given the actions of the un-magnificent seven sell-outs that decided to help the liberals/Democrats make liars out of themselves ("Priscilla Owens should not be confirmed" "Janice Rogers Brown is out of the mainstream", and other similar statements that they are now eating, while watching their constitutents that they misled into believing these nominees were anti-civil-rights, potentially racist, despicable human beings that must be stopped at all cost squirm because of this 'compromise' that sold out both liberals and conservatives to appease a few grand-standers), it's easy enough for me to compare the level of competence at Best Buy with these knuckleheads.
Pick your target of hatred, and I could compare the Best Buy people to it.
Now, please, don't call up all your friends that work at Best Buy and have them start gathering up the pitchforks and such to come get ready to lynch me. I'm not trying to aim this rant at the general employee population at Best Buy. Most of the people there are fine, but their policies suck rocks, blow chunks, and generally are as anti-consumer friendly as they can be.
As an example, some folks may have read of my mis-adventures at Best Buy trying to get a problem with their reward zone program resolved. They credited me with a big pile of NEGATIVE bonus points instead of the big pile of POSITIVE bonus points they were supposed to give me according to the printed offer. Ok, I can just call up and get that fixed, right? NOPE. I called up and noted the error, they confirmed it looked like things were wrong, and said they'd fix it, but it would take approximately 10 biz days to get it fixed. Ok, wait patiently, and find that it was well more than 10 business days, and when things were finally "adjusted" the adjustment simply undid the negative amount to get me back to a zero-sum state. Great, instead of the points I was promised, I get nothing!?!? WTH?
Since it was taking as long as it did to get that problem solved, I resorted to a letter writing campaign aimed at the highest levels of mount Best Buy. I did the research, found the Corporate Campus mailing address -- never mind trying to phone them, the phone system is designed to discourage you and make you feel like one of Bush's judicial nominees that is waiting for a confirmation vote while the liberals maintain the filibuster vigil. Nope, phones will not work, or at least not without going crazy to get a real person to answer the phone. So instead, I wrote a letter. Business style. Sent that sucker off to the CEO himself, as well as to the appropriate customer service area at Best Buy noting that the letter had been cc:'d over to the CEO's office.
Well, that letter got a little attention. It got me a promise to make things right, but alas, still not so. It got me a promise of a gift card to come in the mail after 10 - 14 business days (passed over 2 weeks back, still nada) to cover the missing reward zone points. Ah, that could just be slow mail, no worries. Just keep hoping for it to come, like a vote on the judges that are getting tossed overboard thanks to the malevolent 7 and their partners from the liberal side. Yeah, it'll get here sometime soon. (Who knows, it might actually get here soon, but by then, well, too much bad blood, and muddy water between me and the Best Buy automatons in the customer service area at the local store....)
Meanwhile, heck, I try to be nice, try to assume the best, and be an optimist. I also try to be my normal cheapskate money-grubbin, greedy Republican minded self. I see a bargain, I go for it. Knowing that Best Buy advertises that they'll meet competitor's pricing, I figure I'll go to the local store on new release Tuesday and pick up a few DVDs that are on sale for a few $$ less at Circuit City. Now, Circuit City doesn't have the Reward Zone program, so I figure better to take the business to Best Buy and give them an opportunity to do things right for a change. Ha!! As if.
I took in a printed (as in printed on a computer, from the Circuit City site on the internet) copy of the weekly ad flyer page that showed the sale price DVDs from Circuit City. The cash register operator tells me I have to go to Customer dis-service to get the price match done. Ok, head there. Almost the first words out of the liberal, I mean employee, there is "sorry, can't match to dot-com prices." Never mind that my print-out clearly said "weekly ad" at the top of the page, and clearly showed a page from the weekly ad along with other clearly identifiable information. Nope, can't take that. Well then, to you Ms. Liberal, blow it out your ....
Seriously, I think I've finally had enough to put Best Buy into the "Best Buy is evil" category, right along with some folks feelings about Wal-mart and a few other stores.
Actually, that wasn't quite the end of things though. I left the store fuming. My ears were probably about as red as my neck is supposed to be. I got back to the office, hit the Best Buy web-site and found the phone number and called and tried to navigate through the phone system for the local store until I could get a manager. Good luck on that task. If you want a sucker bet, bet someone that they won't be able to get a manager on the phone from Best Buy within 10 minutes. It's pretty much a guaranteed win for you.
After waiting for the phone in the "customer service" area to ring for about 30 - 40 rings, someone did finally answer. Politely, but firmly, I asked for a manager. Manager on duty, general manager for the store, highest level manager I could get please. With that, I'm on hold for a few minutes, and then "Deborah" picks up the phone.
"Hello, I'm Deborah, how can I help you?"
"What is your last name please Deborah"
"I'm sorry, we don't give out that information"
"What is your employee number or other identifying information please Deborah?"
"I'm sorry, what do you mean?"
From there, the call escalated into a several minute discussion on why I couldn't get an Employee number, last name, or other identifying information from the manager -- "policy" (Ha!). I explained that was gonna be problem number one, since it was pretty clear that not providing identifying information would make it damned easy for everyone in the store to tell me that they had no idea who I talked to, but there was no "Deborah" employed there. (Been down that road in the past, it's a common ploy to deal with a possibly beligerent customer that you have no intention of helping).
That argument went on for about 5 minutes or so, but the best I could get was a "You are not giving me a chance to help solve your problem, you've not told me what the problem is"....
I did go on to detail the problem, but the best I could get in response was a "come to the store in the next 1 hour, 15 mins, and I will take care of this for you". Never mind that I had something called "work" to get done, and couldn't get there until much later.
So, back to the original premise. Best Buy must be employing a bunch of liberals that can all spot my red neck from a mile away. It must be some smell that conservatives give off. Maybe pheromones or something. The opposite of the ones that attract gay men (see recent news stories on that issue, saying that apparently gay men respond differently to pheromones than do straight men). Something that just sends a non-vocalized signal to the Best Buy employees to tell them that another sucker is in the store and needs to be taken advantage of.
Anyway, I believe I need to stop frequenting the big, evil, greedy, Corporate Best Buy, and maybe switch to the alternatives at Wal*Mart or Circuit city. At least at Wal*Mart they dig through the competitor's ads for you and already post the lowest possible prices so you don't have to. Almost like the President submitting well-qualified and vetted judicial nominees in advance for the Senate to choose from.
