Why BestBuy, isn’t
Either “best” or a “buy”.
I hate BestBuy. Why? Because their sloppy web design cost me several hours of my life. In fact, I’m so irritated with their malfunctioning website that I will not ever buy anything from them again, if I can help it. I would have given up after the first try last night, but my favorite nephew and godson (yes, that means I am a Godfather), said that all he wanted for his birthday, which was yesterday, was a gift card from BestBuy. Though, “WorstSale” is probably a better name for them.
It all started quite simply, as these things usually do, with me going to their cursed website to purchase a simple $25 gift card for my nephew. Sounds simple enough, right? Fifteen minutes worth of transaction and off to bed, I figured. WRONG! After getting through the transaction the first time, I noticed in the side-bar, in small print, something about needed to have pop-up windows enabled to complete the transaction. What? WHY? What sort of crazy e-commerce website would require me to open a potential security hole in my browser just to spend money on their website? And what kind of moron would let that roll out to the public?
So, I check my Account and see that there are no orders. Just to make sure, I do a search on the order number. Nothing. So, I call and verify with the very polite customer service person that my credit card has not, in fact, been charged. She then tells me to go ahead and try it again now that I have pop-ups enabled for their site and it should all be good. Fine. Only, it wasn’t. I tried this three times only to have NONE of the attempts show up. Not even the one I did through the hated Internet Explorer, which I generally don’t use for security reasons.
So, I call Customer Service again, cursing the idiot who thought up this moronic system. The second very polite Customer Service rep confirms again that no charges have gone through to my card and offers to take care of the transaction for me. Okay, great. All done. And, he tells me that I will be e-mailed a confirmation. Wonderful.
This morning when I check my e-mail, guess what I found? FOUR confirmations, each for a $25 gift card. All of which were processed at around 1:00AM, which was more than TWO HOURS after I was done on the phone with BestBuy’s Customer Service. So, I get to waste even MORE time trying to ge this straightened out today.
I have never, ever in more than ten years of on-line purchasing had a worse experience than I did with the BestBuy website. I have bought from little “mom-and-pop” stores and even game companies from the United Kingdom and never had problems like I’ve had with BestBuy. Gee, aren’t they supposed to be a technology company? Don’t they sell high-tech gear? You sure wouldn’t know it from their non-functional website!
So, what has all this taught me? Don’t ever use BestBuy again. In fact, I’m going to tell everyone I know about this experience and encourage them not to use BestBuy, either. If you live in Houston, I recommend that you try MicroCenter or Fry’s. If you want to get something from the internet try CDW. Personally, I will go to extreme lengths now to avoid spending even one more cent inside a BestBuy. All because one stupid web development team couldn’t get their shit together. (Crap, I almost made it through that entire rant without making any excretory remarks. Oh, well, shit happens.)
