Hi all,
Like Matthew I'm new to the boards. I was curious. Here's my .02 on this on some of the things I see.
Returns and Exchanges: This is the department I work in. I've seen some weird things. People get mad because they've had it for two years and don't understand why I won't take it back, even if it hasn't been opened. I once had a really funny guy yelling at me and it was all I could do not to laugh. He purchased a DS Travel kit to charge his Nintendo DS. It does have a charger in it, but he was mad that the round plug wouldn't fit any of his house sockets. I swear this is true. I tried to explain that it was a car charger, that's why it said "Travel Kit" on it. He didn't believe me. Then I get the people that purchase hard drive or external drives, install them, put their old hard drive, in the box and expect me to return it. WE CHECK SERIAL #'s and external sizes! So I'm not sure why someone would try to do that, it is stealing.
But as many stories as I can come up with about odd people, I've had just as many very nice people that I now see regularly. Someone who is nice I go out of my way to help. Someone who is not, honestly I don't. That's human nature. I think what I see here is a lot of upset people of the boards, or at least their messages seem that way since it's hard to tell emotions through text. The key here is BBY employees need to be nice all the time. I was reading a thread where a guy wanted $1300 for no reason. The emails from the GM were nice all the time.
Black Tie Protection: Even with the new format this still confuses me. Everything that is said in the information part that it says it covers, you read the white terms and conditions it says the exact opposite. I do offer them, I use them myself. So when we say employees are not telling the truth about what they do and don't do. I sometimes don't think it's the employee, I think it's what we've been told about them. Example: Xbox360. I, personally, would never buy one without a protection plan. They fail .... ALOT. On an average day I'll exchange 2 or 3 a day because of the red rings of death. That's it's number 1 failure. If you read the T&C, it says specifically we do not cover the red rings of death. It even uses that term. We just went through a BTP training module that talked about how for camera we cover heat and humidity, but in the T&C it says it doesn't cover extreme heat and humidity. What is extreme? For me extreme humidity is anything over 2%. But that's not the case for folks in Indiana that have 200+% all the time. For me extreme heat is 90 degrees, people in Phoenix it's different. For appliances our repairs for our LGs was great and very fast. Then things changes without us knowing, and now it's very slow. We knew we had great fast service, so we'd tell people that. Then it changed and we've had a few upset people.
Geek Squad: Love these guys. But when you have really smart people they can't relate to people who don't know what they do. It's almost like they have Aspergers Syndrome (I know obscure reference
). Do what we is when they start to have problems they call one of us, generally me since I can interpret Geek, to help with a customer. We find that most of the problems we use to have was because of mis-communication. Because Geek Squad has to ring up all computer sales/refunds, deal with black tie protection services (not exchanges), and do all the repairs, I personally think they need a person to do all their ring up and customer service. They are trying to fix/opt several computer at once, plus deal with several people at their counter. No wonder they are cranky sometimes.
OS/Phones: We have 4 people that do ours. 1 that speaks Geek, 1 that speaks Spanish, 1 that is a jack-of-all-trades, and one that tries very hard but hasn't been trained to know very much. All the overflow comes to Returns. I spend a lot of time on the phone while I'm trying to run credit apps or do returns. I think corp needs to look at this department a little closer. There will be 3 or 4 people answering phones and we will still miss 30 to 60 calls a day. My point of view is the customer that took the time to come visit me is more important then the person shopping at home over the phone. That's what .com is for. So while I don't care if I miss a phone call, my managers get very upset over it.
More help: It's really hard to know when you need more and less help. Our slowest day is Wednesday. But sometimes we will have a bunch of people come in at the same time on Wed. We don't have enough help. People from other department try to help, but are not trained as well as those that work the department. I'm called to help in Games, Camera and Computers often. What some customers don't understand is we don't have the labor budget to just have 20 people waiting there for you in case you come in. Buying a computer, camera, tv or appliance is a long process because it's a major decision. We need to train "Stadium" selling more instead of one on one (when it's busy). I thought I was going to be drug tested this Xmas because I stood on a display and told customers to group in. Gamers over here, Biz/students over there, Macs there. Then I went from group to group helping. After a bit the costumers started to talk to each talking about what they needed. You turn the costumer into the sales person. Sure they still had to wait, but at least they were able to talk to people while they did. If you entertain them while they are waiting, they don't notice the wait.
Anyway this is getting really long 
While I think Best Buy is a great company, some things still need to change and they always will. You can't be the Best if you stay the same all the time 
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LeAnna
Returns and Exchanges
BBY - Utah
You'd be amazed at what some people will pull for a quick buck, that just ends up making everyone else's life inconvenient!
