Jeff Billimek’s Journal

It’s been very busy at work the last two days this week. I have some aggressive work assignments and the new guy has some work assignments too.

I ordered the Oblivion Strategy Guide online on bestbuy.com for an in-store pickup. I used a $25 gift card to pay for it. The game just came out and I wanted to pick up the guide tonight on our way to the gym. This was my way of making sure that I would still be able to get it.

A little while after I got home, Jen and I headed out for the gym. We stopped by Best Buy first so we could ‘run in and run out’ to pick up the game guide that they set aside for me.

Well the way ‘in-store pickup’ works at Best Buy is that you need to go over the customer service desk. This is the same place you go if you have a problem, want to return/exchange something, or apply for a best buy credit card.

As usual, there was a very long line of non-English-speaking people trying to return something or argue with the manager about something in a non-English language.

After patiently waiting in line for my turn, I gave the guy the order number for the book and he went over the cage where they put held items and brought over….. The Oblivion PC game!

The problem is I didn’t order the Oblivion PC game, I Ordered the Oblivion Strategy Guide. One item is a piece of software and the other is a book. The guy said that they must have pulled the wrong item. I’m still trying to figure out how it is so hard to tell the difference between a book and a box of software. I guess the people at Best Buy have reading comprehension issues (among other things).

So the guy at the counter told me to wait while he sent some guy (who didn’t look very sharp) to go find the book since they had so much trouble doing that earlier.

I had to wait about twenty minutes while the guy was doing who-knows-what in the store ‘looking’ for the book. He finally came back and said that they don’t have anymore. Well isn’t that great!

Naturally I was quite upset. I ordered the item for in-store pickup specifically because I didn’t want to deal with it being out of stock. I had to waste away about 45 minutes of my life WAITING for Best Buy to realize and admit their incompetence and mistake.

The guy offered to refund my gift card since they didn’t actually have the item that I purchased. Since this was taking so long, Jen went off to go look for some headphones.

After I finished up with the stupid people in customer service I met up with Jen in the check-out line. She found some Sony headphones which were around $15. When she tried to use the gift card to check out, the cashier said that there wasn’t enough balance on it and we would have to pay cash. Say what? The gift card had $25 on it initially and the $20 I spent on the book was supposed to have been refunded.

We threw a fit and were shuffled over to the not-so-helpful customer service desk again. This time we had to wait for THIRTY minutes while a bunch of Best Buy employees were huddled in the back trying to figure out the situation.

The finally said that we had to wait a day or two for the money I was just refunded to show back up on the card.

So I tried to buy something that wasn’t even there (due to their fault) and now that money for the non-existent item is tied up for a couple of days before I have access to it again. Something doesn’t seem right about that.

Jen and I were very upset with the whole situation and we’ve been stuck in this accursed store for almost two hours now. We complained and requested to speak to a manager and then they were somehow able to credit the gift card immediately. I wonder how that happened.

We got the headphones and got out of there. I really, really hate Best Buy.

I still wanted that game guide so we stopped by CompUSA down the street. They have several copies in stock. We bought one and finally headed to the gym.