Best Buy Has Stupid Policies
I just got back from Best Buy getting my copy of The Sims 2 Pets Expansion Pack which was a bigger pain in the behind than it should have been. See, I was planning on using my Best Buy reward gift certificates to buy it. I had one for $20 and one for $5.
So we get to the checkout and the clerk rang up the game and told us that there was a deal with the game that gave us a $10 gift certificate just for buying the game. I was really happy to hear that! (I love free gifts!) Then she scanned the gift certificates I had from my Best Buy rewards. The $5 one worked just fine but when she tried to the $20 one it wouldn’t work. She called her superior who tried to manually put in the code for the $20 but nothing was working. They tried this for about 10 minutes to no avail until they realized the problem.
They explained that because I was getting a free gift certificate for buying the game I couldn’t use a gift certificate to buy the game even though it was different type of certificate altogether. GRR! I thought this answer was dumb though because it took off the $5 without a problem, it just didn’t want to take off the $20 one. My husband was totally pissed off and said, "Ok, we’ll skip the free gift certificate promo then and just use our coupons (because we didn’t want to have more store credit we had to use at Best Buy in the next week because we don’t need anything else form the store. They said that wasn’t possible and they had to give us the gift certificate. ARGH!
AT this point we had been standing by the cash register for 20 minutes and we were both tired and annoyed. We were planning on almost getting the game for free because of our $25 of reward points and now because of their bonus "gift" we’d have to pay up front for the game minus $5 and then have to figure out what to do with $30 worth of gift certificate money at Best Buy before it expires even though we didn’t NEED or want anything else.
Finally my husband suggested that we’d give in and look around the store for something else to buy. We found a mini SD card that I thought would work with my fancy new cellphone and it cost $19.99 and brought it back to the cashier. She scanned it and then our $20 coupon and started laughing. "What is it now!", we asked. Apparently with the reward coupons you have to spend the full amount or more or you can’t use it and we were 1 penny short! We almost lost it we were so annoyed, but my husband grabbed a coke out of desperation and thrust it towards her.
We had to pay $2 out of pockets for an overpriced Coke bottle in order to use our reward gift certificate! My husband then handed the woman our $10 "free gift" certificate and asked if we could pay for the coke with that. We could. We left the store feeling cheated, confused and excited to get home.
If this wasn’t enough craziness for one day, when we get home it turned out my cell doesn’t use mini SD cards, it only takes micro SD cards! So now we have to go back and exchange it tomorrow. Not looking forward to what extra things they might make us buy in order to exchange the card. Best Buy has DUMB policies! At least my game is awesome though! I love The Sims 2 Pets!
Tags: best buy, best buy is dumb, dumb, the sims 2
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POSTED IN: Lame
1 opinion for Best Buy Has Stupid Policies
Johnathan Fii
Jan 17, 2008 at 12:06 pm
As a Best Buy employee, I’ll be frank with you.
It’s not our policy, but a matter of regulations regarding taxes.
Your total amount before taxes has to be more than the reward zone certificates you’re trying to use. We think it’s freakin’ stupid too, but there’s nothing that can be done about it.
Corporate’s tried all ways of getting around it - but we can thank the federal government for wanting their cut their way.
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