After reading about the crap CompUSA makes the Geek Squad guys put up with (to his credit, the Geek Squad CEO says he will do what’s necessary to change things) and all the other negative press about CompUSA, it’s no wonder they closed so many stores with more to come. Yes, this guy should have opened the box no matter where or what he was buying, but who expects this sort of thing when trying to get what he paid for?
If you read the reply letter, clearly no one at the chain realizes everything like this ends up on the web eventually creating the worst kind of publicity. Like this blog post.
“All Sales Final” is not a license for theft
The bottom line is that CompUSA sold me an empty box for $269, one that was supposed to contain a camera. Their spin is it’s my problem, because it technically wasn’t them who sold it to me and that I had a responsibility to check and make sure there was a camera inside the box before I left the store. Never mind that I spent almost $3,500 with them that day. Never mind that I’ve been a long-time customer. Never mind that I’ve bought my last two laptops from them.
What really galls me is their cavalier attitude, both in person and via the mail. I mean, folks, we’re talking about $269! It’s a lot more to me than it is to them.
As you can see from so many links from them, kudos to The Consumerist web site for keeping up with the goings on at CompUSA.
UPDATE: Ooops! As a couple of commenters mentioned, I got CompUSA and Best Buy (the ones who have the Geek Squad) mixed up. Both deserve their share of knocks for the way they’ve been doing business.
Does CompUSA have geek squad too? I thought that was Best Buy.
Interesting that the first article was about Best Buy. I didn’t know they had anything to do with CompUSA, but I haven’t shopped in either store in years. Both stores leave much to be desired. When you buy a computer system at Micro Center, the chief honcho store manager comes out to help and make sure you’ve purchased the right machine for the job. Now that’s service. Never had a problem with their online store or returning items. Just keep that receipt.
Having read this article it appears that the problems come from the top! With few exceptions (in my experience with a half-dozen locations) CompUSA stores are among the worst managed businesses on the planet.
My complaints range from — shelf upon shelf of product with the incorrect product price tags, to being made to wait over twenty minutes for “somebody with keys” to open the glass case and allow me to purchase an external hard drive!
In fact, a few years back I remember telling a CompUSA manager that his store was going to make a great Chuck E. Cheese location someday, and I’ve had no reason to regret that comment since then.
It is not the responsibility of the customer to open the box. That’s just insane.
When I buy a box of Wheaties at the grocery store, I don’t open it to check that it’s not sawdust. When I hand over four bucks for a box of Wheaties, it’s for Wheaties.
If the store sells me anything else in the box, it violates the transaction we just had.
Has nobody given a thought to the possibility that this guy is just generally p***ed off with them and decided to make a scene??
I used to work in the computer/office section of australia’s largest department store chain and we got this type of thing occurring from time to time. These jerks thought that they’d get extra special service or a better deal if they made a lot of noise! (It never worked, at least when I was dealing with them).
We got our fair share of sneaky buggers trying to return items, claiming that we’d sold them empty boxes, especially during sales where we were rushed off our feet.
I bought four (4!) NEC LCD 20″ monitors 1600×1200 from Best Buy.
On one of them, after about a month, the “select” switch malfunctioned. You had to keep your finger on it to prevent it from switching between analogue & digital.
Since it’s for my business and had bought four, I let the sales clerk upsell me their “special warranty”. What a waste of money.
The store refused to exchange the monitor, or send it to the manufacturer, or take care of the cross-ship with the manufacturer.
I even found another BB store that had one in stock, not good.
Seems their extended warranty only starts A F T E R the end of the manufacturer’s warranty. The Consumer Law here in Québec is for seven (7) days. After that, the store / manufacturer’s discretion.
So essentially, 125$ x 4 for an extended 2-year warranty is only for after NEC’s 1 year warranty. Between date-of-purchase and one year, I have to pay to send to NEC Toronto, and NEC does a cross-ship and pays for shipping to me.
Finally I used the original packaging to send to Toronto, lucky I saved a few of them. NEC is wonderful in that they allow cross-shipping (two business days) and pay for half of the shipping cost.
If I had no box, NEC were willing to send me one for free.
Heck, after one year, I’ve seen equivalent LCD screens drop from the 499$ I paid per screen, to 399$. So unless one breaks in the next two years, the extended warranty is worthless.
2006 price 499$
2007 price 399$
2008
2009 price 199$ ? 199$ + 125$
the extended warranty is worthless.
Is there ever a case where this is not true?
I bought a 40GB iPod at Best Buy a few years back when that was the biggest iPod available. Cost about $500 at the time and I paid the extra $50 for the extended warranty. After about a year and a half it started getting weird glitches and spontaneously resetting among other things. I took it back and they sent it to Apple for repair. It came back with a new hard drive and battery (same problem though. Took it back they sent it back again. Came back with the same problem. I took it back to Best Buy the third time they replaced it with a new 60GB Video iPod and refunded me the extra $150 difference as the price of the iPod had gone down. I think Best Buy’s service is far from the best but it like most other companies service is what you make of it. As for the extended service contract not starting until after the manufacturers warranty ends I’m not aware of any extended service that doesn’t work this way including with cars and major appliances.
7. No, not one. I never push the extended warranty, and when asked to sell them one, I look at them and say to the side (dont bother, its not worth it, if the hardware doesnt fail in the first 90 days, chances are excellent it wont fail 5 years from now. Except on a Mac, then I would recommend it ONLY because the designs change so often, the above isnt true.
#5 I totally agree with you. This guy sounds like he has a motive behind him. You should see what kind of things people pull at Sears with the person in charge of returns. People seal stuff up nicely and return it while telling the cashier there is nothing wrong with the item, and not all cashiers check the contents of the item before it goes back on the shelf.
This Christmas I wanted to buy a toaster oven from Sears for my parents. I opened the first box that i saw on the shelf and guess what I see… Food stains on the doors and inside the damn thing. The box was sealed at first too, but I unsealed it and left it there in hope that someone from the store sees it. I found one in perfect condition behind it and got that one instead.
I had the same experience at Best Buy with a Hard Drive!. I bought a 160G Seagate SATA a couple years back, only to get home and find a 2 gig old beat up IDE inside the box. I quickly returned to the store, and they refused all help, and directed me to the manufacturer. Emails to the website customer’s service yielded similar results. Seagate took one year and finally determined that Best Buy has the ability to re-wrap packages as needed (?) and fraud was possible at each local store… I finally got my hard drive… From Seagate
Cripes yet another BAD piece of blogging Blaming CompUSA…
CompUSA SOLD the closing stores (YES THE WHOLE STORE) to a liquidation company. CompUSA then walked AWAY. CompUSA has left the building folks. Gone. No longer in charge of the store. The sign is out front but its a 3rd part liquidation company selling the inventory, shelves, fixtures etc.
Yes the guy if he is legit got shafted. Considering how disheveled the local closing former CompUSA store is I would thoroughly inspect anything I bought. Maybe his wasnt as bad. Dunno, but sometimes you gotta pay a Supid Tax. This would be one of those times.
Chances are CompUSA still has another location in your state.
What you need to do today is go to your local courthouse and sue them in small claims court.
I got screwed by Pep Boys and got my money back + more.
13. “I got screwed by Pep Boys and got my money back + more. ”
Screwed by Manny, Moe, AND Jack, ….musta hurt.
I have never liked CompUSA…high prices and indifferent salesmen.
On another note, I live in the lightning capitol of the world, the Tampa Bay area. It’s a must to buy the extended warranty on TVs as it covers lightning damage. I bought a Sharp Aquos 37″ HD TV from BB and it got zapped by lightning. (I’ve got protection all over the place but it still got zapped.) The one year manufacturer’s warranty was over but I had an extended warranty. They sent a service guy out and he said it needed a new power supply. He ordered it from Sharp. They said they didn’t have any power supplies for their TVs. BB gave me a complete credit on the purchase price to buy any TV in the store that I wanted.
#8 – I think Best Buy’s service is far from the best but it like most other companies service is what you make of it.
Not really. It’s what that location’s management makes of it. In my current capacity I talk to about a dozen Best Buys a day solving service issues for the company I work for (and I hate it, actually, but that isn’t relavent here).
A well managed Best Buy will provide a quality level of service, and a marginally well managed one will handle situations well if you apply a little pressure but stay calm and friendly. However, each store has its own personality based on the quality of the individual management.
Some stores will push back on a customer and do everything they can to avoid giving service after a sale. Best Buy is in the business or unloading trucks and loading trunks. What happens between those two activities isn’t important to some of the more poorly managed stores. What you “need” isn’t nearly as important to them as what you buy, and once you bought it, it is their sincere hope that you never step foot in the store again unless you want to buy more.
Good managers don’t feel this way and I know that corporate doesn’t encourage that attitude, at least not on purpose.
Best Buy is both cannibalistic and nepotistic when it comes to advancing managers. Corporate determines success based entirely on bottom line numbers and has little concern for customer sat numbers. This actually hurts managers because sales numbers are only partly under control of a store. Location, local economy, national and regional trends, and other outside influences impact every store’s performance and if things go south on a well running store, a change in management will happen no matter how good or bad the manager actually is. These guys are always held to account for things they can’t possibly impact.
So, indirectly, Best Buy punishes a store not meeting sales projections and that results in poor service.
On top of that, you have the staff. Good kids mostly, who’d like to serve you well. Kids are like German Shepards. They WANT to help you, but without clear and focused training, they are just dumb lumps of fur incapable of doing anything for you. A month ago they worked at OfficeMax and two months from now they will be at Circuit City. And all the training they do get is about upgrading sales to include “Performance Service Plans” which they aren’t allowed to call Extended Warranties even though that is what they are.
15. Hop- for something as expensive as that, I would use a power conditioner, all power filtered through a transformer. We have huge power problems in the VI and this thing will save your butt. Pricey though.
#16 – pedro – No kidding? I never heard that. But it makes sense, with the job migration now moving in reverse, as covered here:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/47978
#16, pedro,
I didn’t know that and really don’t care too much who owns the store where I shop. If it supports my local economy, I support it.
***
The last time I had an issue and got no where with the Manager, I ended the conversation by asking him what the name of the store’s attorney of record was so I would know where to send the Small Claims Court papers. That got their attention and while still not happy, I left with my replacement.
I will categorically state that of all my purchases, I seldom ever have quality issues and even then, they are usually well handled by the stores.
#12 – CompUSA SOLD the closing stores (YES THE WHOLE STORE) to a liquidation company. CompUSA then walked AWAY. CompUSA has left the building folks. Gone. No longer in charge of the store. The sign is out front but its a 3rd part liquidation company selling the inventory, shelves, fixtures etc.
You are 100% correct.
ALSO, when Comp sold all that stuff to the liquidator (they did this when they bought and raped Tweeter as well) they transfered warranty. There is NO WARRANTY on anything they sell and they are lying when they say there is.
Because I am dealing with this issue daily, I can tell you that the liquidator is selling open box stuff, demo stuff, used stuff, and stuff he knows is broken and saying to just call the manufactuer and they’ll replace it…
Well, sorry… no… we are not replacing it. Warranty does not transfer, the liquidator lied to you, and you need a lawyer.
23. pedro- I have to agree in some respects, even the Latin American Divisions of respected compainies are generally poor, having worked in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean I have experienced this, sadly.
I have never trusted PC Sale shops. In the UK we have a chain of stores called PC World and it is interesting that anyone who knows what a power button is on a PC will avoid them like the plague.
I used to work on a 1st line Tech Support line and I was speaking to one older gentleman who was sold a top of the line PC just to check his email. I advised him in the clearest way that I could without risking my job to go and get his money back and buy something cheaper. It was something like a dual core 64 bit 3GHz processor, 2Gb or RAM and a sexy graphics card I would have killed for.
Seriously, if you know someone who is going to one of these stores either tell them not to bother and advise a better place or go along and show the person how little the sales people often know.
I have been into best buy a couple of times (Was in the US or A for a couple of months in 2005) and was just buying DVDs and Games since I didn’t know where any better stores were and you can’t really be mis-sold a DVD.
Also, in relation to the Geek Squad, I don’t know much about them, but I figured that anyone willing to be called a geek must be pretty good at the job, but from looking at them in more detail, I see that assumption may have been poorly made. (Please, correct me in the likely case that I am wrong)
#17 OFTLO
dang dude a pretty consise approximation of the whole service industry, in 500 words or less. Impressive
#26 – Dude… Who you trying to kid… There is no such thing as a “service” industry 🙂
27#
My mistake…”the people working in big stores Industry?”
I was at a CompUSA the other day looking at their mac selection in curiosity and right when one of the employees is showing off the mac the Manager of the store is using one of the macs to check to see how many she had just flipped on eBay, right in front of the customer and then started bragging about it to other employees. After that she started yelling at customers for trying to pick up the DEMO UNIT. Obviously they have great public relations.
In order for a “sale” to be “final,” some thing would have to be sold. Taking someone’s money, then putting a box in a bag is not a complete sale.
Since the thing wasn’t sold, the TRANSACTION isn’t complete. Selling things is not a risk-adventure in fooling you into thinking something was sold to you, it’s a contract that isn’t consummated until the thing that was sold to you is placed in your control.
Imagine how one would feel if an empty box showed up by FedEX and the company refused to fulfill the order or discuss any remedy.
I think the offended purchaser has every right to sue the parent company for outright egregious, willful theft with attendant punitive damages potentially into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Comp USA was in decline before Carlos Slim bought it.
It used to be outstanding when they had one store in North Dallas.
It was good when they had 2 stores in Dallas.
After that – Prices too high and sales guys who knew nothing.
I think Carlos got taken to the cleaners, but that’s OK, he can afford it.
I didn’t know Comp was still in business….thought they had died a slow death long ago….I have never seen one of their stores.
I’ve also never been in a Best Buy….but was thinking about checking it out, because it has been sending ads in the mail with some great prices for laptops. But you guys have got me afraid to venture into one….lol
I have to admit that CompUSA is my favorite brick-and-mortar computer place. I go there when I don’t have the time or patience for my favorite, NewEgg. Selection is the best in my area, and they have a cool Mac section which I only look at. 🙂