Best Buy — Local services in Christiansburg

Honestly the only reason I'm giving them 4 stars is because I know that none of the problems I'm experiencing are really the fault of the Christiansburg Best Buy employees (therefor this review should not be a reflection on them), but rather issues with Best Buy as a company. The employees were helpful and understanding, but there's only so much that they can do with a system that is ultimately broken. Recently took advantage of a promotion to trade in a game console for credit toward a new one.

The first issue is that there doesn't seem to be a comprehensive list of all of the promotions that Best Buy is running that the employees can easily access. In the end I had to go behind the counter and pull up the promotion myself from the Best Buy site to prove that the promotion was legitimate. Maybe it was a glitch in the system, but when I called earlier to check and be sure that the promotion was still running I didn't get a concrete yes or no answer then either so it clearly goes deeper than that.

Then once the promotion was confirmed there was an issue with determining whether or not my trade-in was eligible. Some issue with the naming nomenclature of the system lead them to believe that the system may not have been eligible. Again I blame this on a lack of preparation by Best Buy. A simple reference guide for the employees showing the shape, appearance, or defining characteristics of eligible systems could've prevented the confusion.

Then once that issue was resolved the system wanted to give me half of the credit stated in the promotion. Again the poor employees were forced to work around Best Buy's computer system in order to fix the issue.

Then once I had the credit for the new system I went back to video games to check out new consoles. The console that I wanted in the configuration that I wanted had not been in stock for weeks despite attempts to have them re-stocked according to the young lady on the sales floor. She was very helpful and tried to convince me to buy a different system until I told her that the system I was looking for was the only one that the credit worked for. We went back to customer service where she explained the situation. The customer service reps then placed an order to have the item shipped to the store where I could pick it up in 3-5 days. I was pretty disappointed to walk out of the store without my item (this is the main draw of a brick and mortar location over say, Amazon), but I was happy knowing that in 3-5 days I'd have my item.

It has now been 4 days and at 10pm on the 4th day Best Buy emails me tell me that there would be a delay on my item of ONE TO TWO WEEKS. Needless to say I'm absolutely furious. My expectation was that I would be leaving the store with my item that day and now it's sounding more like it will be almost a month between transaction and delivery of the product. For a nationwide big box retail chain this is simply unacceptable especially for a fairly common item (every store except Best Buy seems to have this item).

Again, I don't blame the Christiansburg Best Buy staff for this experience which has been one hangup after another through literally every step of the process. They were friendly, patient, and apologetic throughout and I could tell that they genuinely wanted me to be satisfied with my experience there. They tried as much as they could to help me, but it felt like the entire way they were battling Best Buy's roadblocks. Considering that start to finish this has probably been the worst retail experience of my life (and considering that it's possibly still not even over yet) I think the staff made every reasonable attempt to ensure my satisfaction. So although I would recommend the extremely friendly and helpful staff at this particular store my overall recommendation is just to avoid the Best Buy...

If only there was something like negative stars. This was one of those experiences where you feel angry and helpless when facing a big company like Bestbuy. I had taken my laptop to get the battery fixed which was not holding charge. My laptop was still under warranty from Lenovo and when I contacted Lenovo service center, I was given the option of Best buy geek squad as this would supposedly take less time. I took my laptop in and the "geek" squad "agent" at the counter said and I quote "you don't need to backup your data as we would not touch the hard disk, so you can leave the box saying, back my data, unchecked". My laptop was taken in with an estimated repair time of 20 days. So 20 days later with no trace of the laptop whatsoever except for a generic message saying "in for repair", I went into the store to inquire and they could not say anything except for a generic reply saying "we have escalated the status of this repair". This kept on going for quite some time before they finally admitting that they may have lost the laptop and when asked if they would replace it, the manager in a very strong voice said that I can buy a new laptop and return it later if my laptop is found because they cannot declare it to be lost before 2 months. This to and fro went on for another 30 days and finally one fine day my laptop was shipped directly to home (not the store as it was supposed to be). I turned it on and voila, the hard disk is wiped clean with windows downgraded to windows 8.1 from 10. The manager of the store was so helpful that he almost convinced me to buy a new version of Windows 10 claiming that they would not provide any support in restoring or even attempting to restore my softwares/data (I am a PhD student and all my work and data was on that laptop). Luckily some of my data was on Google drive. So yeah, they have all this conditions in fine print at the time you hand over your laptop. They are no way responsible for any damage. I know that some one from Best buy would read this and maybe report this post saying nothing like this happened but I have all the proof. So, I STRONGLY URGE PEOPLE TO NOT GO TO THE GEEK SQUAD IN CHRISTIANSBURG. They are super useless and the manager is the rudest and most unhelpful person I have seen even when it is their fault. To give then some credit, the service center in Kentucky could actually repair the laptop but still to this day, I am clueless to why my hard...

If you are trying to replace your apple product through apple, with apple care, stay away from Best Buy/Geek Squad. I brought my phone in on a Monday morning and I was told it would take 2-3 days for the phone to return to me and that when the phone returned, I would receive a call. Still no call on Friday, so I called Best Buy and asked if they could tell me when the phone would return. I was told “no sorry we can’t do that, we call you when the phone is here.” So I drove to Best Buy to ask where my phone was & I was told this time, “it takes 4-5 days for the phone to return” which was different from the initial estimated time. I was told the phone was shipped Thursday, it will be here Saturday. So I came back into the store for the 3rd time on Saturday & this time I was told the phone was just now shipped on Saturday that it would be here Monday or Tuesday now and that it also usually takes 5-10 days. So I came back into the store again, on Monday and my phone had finally arrived. Only to find out that the phone didn’t actually activate & that geek squad was now going to have to order me a whole new phone. I was told the phone was going to be here in 1-2 days, but still no phone 3 days later. I asked if I could have a refund on the $30 I paid them to have apple fix my phone, but I was told “no, you have to take that up with apple” and I was quickly dismissed. Not to mention, when you call, you have to listen to a ridiculously long menu to get to what you need, and then you sit on hold for a 10 minutes minimum before anyone speaks to you. P

Geek squad nor Best Buy has offered to help me through all of this confusion. No one has reached out to apple to see what is going on & why the phone was taking so long to return. None of the employees had their story straight & I even spoke to the same employees majority of the time. My family uses Best Buy for almost everything, go buying phones, computers, refrigerators or phone cases, but I will never step foot in the store again, due to TERRIBLE customer service & Lack of knowledge of the employees. Also, why would I go through the never ending, frustrating process with Best Buy, When I can just send my phone to apple and ACTUALLY get my phone back...