Best Buy — Local services in Covington

I ordered the $1 with a two year contract blue Galaxy S5 online on Sunday 11/22/2014 for store pickup. I was driving in from out of town and picked up the phone about an hour before the store closed. Amy who set up my phone was very helpful and we finished in about half an hour.

When I got in my car, I noticed the new phone would not go to sleep. When I tried, the screen would start playing a video about the phone's capabilities. I figured it was some sort of tutorial and went home. When I got home, I realized the phone was actually a "mock phone" and stuck in Retail Mode. I called the store (now it is 10 minutes before closing), and they said if I can get back there before they closed, they would switch it out for the right phone. There's no way I could get there in 10 minutes, so I waited until the next day. This was super crappy because now my previous phone is deactivated, so I have no phone until the new one gets fixed.

The next day I leave for an early lunch break and get to Best Buy at 11am. I went to Mobile and had to wait 20 minutes just for someone to tell me they couldn't do anything until Geek Squad confirmed my phone was stuck in Retail Mode.

I go to Geek Squad and now have to wait 30 more minutes. I guess the guy didn't believe me that my phone was stuck in Retail Mode and that the only way to undo it was to replace the phone or know the store password to remove the app. My phone had died because you cannot turn it off in Retail Mode, so after finding a charger for it, he turned it on and tried to factory reset it. WELL the phone has to be at least 10% charged to do a factory reset. So here we are now waiting for the phone to charge to 10% to try a factory reset THAT WILL NOT WORK IN RETAIL MODE.

After he figures out that, gasp, you cannot factory reset it, he talks to his manager who tells him he needs to switch out the phone. He goes to Mobile to grab a replacement and then sends me to Customer Service to exchange the phones. Customer Service then sends me to Mobile because the new phone requires activation.

I have to wait again at Mobile for the understaffed section to finish what they're doing to get back to me. They're about to switch me to the replacement phone, but I notice the replacement is black and not blue. I ask if they could get a blue one like I had ordered. It turns out they are out of blue now. I ask if they could then just return the bad phone and ship a blue one to my house. Mobile replaced my old phone's sim card with the new phone's sim card so I could have a functioning phone again and sent me back to Customer Service to return my new phone and order a replacement.

I get to Customer Service again, and they are confused because they see 3 blue phones in stock. Turns out they are on hold and in the back somewhere. I wait about 30 minutes for them to go in the back and give me a blue phone that was on hold for someone else (sorry for that person too). Now I'm sent BACK to Mobile where I wait again for them to finish with their current customer before getting to me.

While I'm waiting, an elderly couple grumbles that they hope I'm not skipping because they've been waiting 20 minutes. The lady in Mobile calls me forward, and the rude old man rushes ahead to sit in the chair before me. The lady professionally and respectfully let the old man know that I've been in the store for hours, and she needs to finish my transaction first. I let her know that I can switch out the sim cards myself and finally exit the store.

So what could have taken 10 minutes to TWO HOURS on what was supposed to be a one hour...

disappointing customer service. Was sold a galaxy note 9, one of the three selling points the salesman made that was compelling to me was the gorilla glass is almost unbreakable. I Dropped it once from hip height the very next day getting up from a chair and it broke in two places. I come back 48 hours later and wait around for 15 minutes, with no one saying hello or that they will be right with me, before being hurriedly and abruptly helped by a mustached manager named jenna. I tell her my issue and say the note 9 was sold to me with a large emphasis on "hard to break" and all I want is to exchange it for the same phone and buy a case. Which i think is understandable given the circumstamce. She give me a small laugh and one sentence "we can't accept a broken phone", then she smiles a smug and abrasive smile and says "is there anything else I can help you with". She didn't listen to my issue or try to remedie the situation, much less offer a solution. Thats not really the customer service I go into a store to get. I also shouldn't know you're one person short because you say it to me as an excuse. I left the store feeling scammed largely because they sold me a hard to break phone, with an emphasis on hard to break. Then were so cut, dry, short and policy oriented not really caring if I come back because they already made the sale. I go Into stores because I like working with someone who is dedicated to getting me the best product. That is not what you get from the customer service at this best buy, instead you get mean abrupt and hurried people trying to get you to leave so they don't have to...

Go to Geek Squad to see about repairing my laptop. Tell the guy to let me know if the cost of repair is greater than replacing it. He tells me to go over and look at the laptops in the store. I go over and they send this young inexperienced guy to tell me about the laptops. I ask the young guy how much for everything, the highest price. Young guy says $1600 total for the most expensive laptop, a SD for storage, and software for the computer. I say cool. Didn't choose the most expensive or the cheapest laptop. Got something in the middle. Walked over to check out where I was told I could open up a credit card account to pay for everything with zero interest for a year. Makes sense. Then I'm told the laptop only has a manufacturer warranty and that I would need to purchase another warranty for the laptop in case it is ever dropped or you spill something on it for an additional almost $200 (actual price $179/year) and it was only for one year. When I got the total after taxes, before the warranty, it was $1343. I told them there was no way I was going to drop $1400 and have to pay an additional $200 just for a one year warranty. That it better come with a warranty already for in case ANYTHING happens to it for that price. I made them put everything back and walked away. The man at Geek Squad was supposed to transfer all my data from the old laptop to the external hard drive for a service fee of $100 and a product fee of $80. Epic fail!!! They only had one document and some downloads from the old computer. I'm very upset with...