Best Buy should be applying appropriate pressure to the TV repair center or jerk their contract. The home warranty company that I had when I first bought my house did that when I received poor repair service on a covered appliance. It should be the same thing for Best Buy.

This is yet another example of why outsourcing is inherently bad. The cost savings aren’t worth the hit to your reputation, in most cases. That’s also why Dell went from #1 to #4 in PC sales in a year, not so long ago.

If you think that you have taken the time to give me advice and that I’m ignoring it, think again. I am reading every single thing you’re saying, and believe me, I’m grateful.

I will be sure to let you know if I actually get any kind of service on SAturday… and if everything works out, then I will let you know.

If it doesn’t, then right now I’m leaning towards trying to contact the District Manager, as Lassirra suggests.

I WILL keep you up to date!

Think he would leave you hanging?

Think he would be disrespectful?

Think he would charge anywhere near $100?

Think that he would benefit more than others from your business?

In-home service plans, while offered by BB, are not actually executed by BB. (I’ve actually got a 52″ DLP myself that I’ve had to have serviced a couple times, also from BB) They do hire (local) contractors to field the calls.

In my experience, BB usually ends up working like this: in-store services and services covered directly by BB themselves are usually pretty good. At the very least, people are pleasant, respectful and as helpful as they are able to be within the limits of their jobs and authority. Services that BB sells, but does not have total control over (such as in the case of home theater service calls, like yours) usually suck rocks. For some reason, the contractors they use are almost invariably unreliable. (Although, I’ve actually had pretty good luck with mine.)

My suggestion:
If you continue to have problems with this service call, when you call BB back, ask for a number to contact their district manager. Chances are, if you call the store, anyone you get will have practically 0 authority to do anything at all. Even if you get a manager, chances are you’re not talking to their GM (General Manager), who would really be the only person that could do anything for you. (Note: “could” is not the same as “will”.) By contacting their district staff, you would actually get in touch with someone that is more likely, and able, to actually do something about the problem. (Also, BB peons get scared when you start talking about district staff.)

If you manage to get ahold of district staff, explain everything. (Also note that the folks you’ve talked to have at least been polite. No sense raining shit down on people that couldn’t do anything about it, whether they wanted to or not.) Chances are, if district gets enough complaints about their service calls, they’ll change contractors or something so the same thing doesn’t happen to others. They’ll also likely provide some perk for your trouble (likely extend your service plan, a gift card, or something bogus like that).

BB’s services are what get them into trouble. Sales staff are FORCED to offer these services on EVERY purchase, whether they believe in what they’re selling or not. (They’re also trained, quite well in fact, to make all the services sound as awesome as sliced bread.) It would be fine (great, in fact) if BB could carry the reputation for quality that they’ve built in the stores over to the in-home services, but so far they’ve done a piss-poor job of it.

Sorry to hear about your troubles, BBB. Hope you get things sorted out quickly. :(

I’ll second the recommendation of the first poster to send it in to the Consumerist. Great site – daily reading material for me.

If you poke around there a bit, you might be able to find some email addrs of their executives (yes, corporate executives) to send your story to. (They call that the EECB – Executive Email Carpet Bomb). Worth a shot, especially if you have no luck on Saturday.

I think customer service is either great or horrible. Recently we’ve got some home work done by home depot (who outsources everything). The microwave install went pretty well, but the carpet install was a huge hassle, they never bothered to call, we had to chase down people, etc. Its even worse with outsourcing because you would a) have to find the person from home depot who worked with you, b) get from them the outsource company info c) actually connect with outsource company. All this stuff is just a huge hassle, i don’t think its specific to BB or electronics at all.

Please dont blame Bestbuy as a store, blame the poor customer service T.V. repair centers. The people at the “store level” didnt chose who repairs their stuff.

Sympathetically yours,

Brandon

Best Buy has a horrible reputation. They’ve had problems with Geek Squad becoming trading hubs for pr0n, not doing repairs, losing computers, etc. A few years ago, 100% of the profit at Best Buy came from selling extended warranties, BTW.

Oh, and cable TV service is even worse. The only reason I have viewable HDTV at home is that I emailed the entire management chain at Comcast (up to the CEO) with a detailing of all the broken promises from the local service staff. I ended up with the cell phone number of the local service manager.

An ineffectual organization that does nothing. One of the biggest consumer misperceptions is that the BBB wields some type of power over companies. It’s as-if people believe they can just swoop in and revoke someone’s business license. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. The BBB is about complaints, but they don’t have any power over complaints other than the words they decide to put on their website. Ironically, 99.9% of the people who look up a company on the BBB is doing so because they have a complaint themselves.