Best Buy — Local services in Newington

I would like to share with you the awful experience I just had at Best Buy in Newington, NH, their mobile phone section. Last Saturday I've purchased an iPhone 6 there, but upon arrival home I've noticed that the phone has a defect, an extremely small scratch near the home button, about 3-4 millimeters in length and extremely hard to notice due to it's small size. Since this is a very expensive phone that I'm going to be using for the next few years I decided to go back and exchange it. I sent my my wife to Best Buy but the store didn't have any phones in stock. Finally today we decided to go back and try our luck again. There were no phones in stock but we didn't want to take any chances and miss the 14 day window and decided to return it. We've explained that we want to return our defective phone to the lady that was keeping track of the cue and she told us that someone will process our return right away. She inspected the phone and did not express any concerns and didn't have any objections. After about 20 minutes of waiting the department manager asked to look at the phone and paperwork, he could not find the defect for a few minutes and I showed him that the phone has to be held at a certain angle to see it. I repeat the phone is less than a week old and is in new condition. When he was finally able to see the defect he said that he can not accept this return regardless that the phone was sold to us like that and it was less than a week ago. He was very hostile and kept saying that this is not his store's problem and we need to contact Apple. I told him that I purchased a defective phone from here and am clearly within the return period. I was once again told that this is clearly the manufacturer's issue and he refuses to assist me with this problem. Another employee for some reason started questioning me and my wife about our negligence and leaving the store without inspecting the phone thoroughly enough, his questions didn't seem very appropriate or helpful. Best Buy isn't a flea market and if I buy a brand new item I have faith that it's new and free of defects. I asked if he would like to inspect the phone himself, which he agreed and couldn't find the defect either. At that point I asked if I could speak with the manager to which he replied that he is the manager. I then specified that I would like to speak with the store manager and was told that he wasn't in and the best they could do for me is his email address. It seems rather odd that the store manager is not in on a busy shopping day like Saturday. After all that transpired the atmosphere felt very hostile and unfriendly. Consumers have a choice of where to buy their electronics and Best Buy until now seemed like a friendly neighborhood store. But today I was greatly disappointed and disillusioned. I understand that defects happen but not only did we not get help or basic human understanding, but we were also treated like an annoyance and an inconvenience. This experience completely ruined my day and my faith in...

I called to discuss what appeared to be a mismatch between an ad displayed on google noting a particularly low sales cost. I clicked the link. It took me to the stores website. I added the item to the cart and the prices did not match. I tried an frustrating chatbot conversation on the site (does anyone ever have any luck with those and why do they NEVER offer the opportunity to talk to customer service?!)

Then I called the store. All I was seeking was a price match for an ad associated with Best Buy, which took me to the Best Buy website and did not honor the noted price from the ad. I called the local Best Buy in Portsmouth. I got routed to a customer service that was NOT at the Portsmouth store (NOTE: Call the store did not actually achieve having a conversation with someone who actually worked at the store!)

The CSR (customer service representative) who was working with me experienced the same issue that I did when I walked him through it. He then explained that only the prices at the website are valid. He says that he has no idea how or who posts those prices and suspects that their website is being spoofed. I opine that Best Buy and Google are in conspiracy to commit bait and switch fraud on the public. Offer a low price, get them to your website, refuse to honor the low price, hope they pay the higher price.

I asked what the process was for the CSR to report this to assist with preventing it and he said that all he could do is flag our conversation and hope that someone reads the issue. I asked if he could take my contact information and have the person who could relate the process to me contact me for that purpose. Then he said, "Look, you're never going to get a price match." and hung up.

At some point in the conversation, I noted that Best Buy's inability to address my concern and lack of desire to maintain customer satisfaction would likely result in a negative review and was told "You do what you got to do."

To the CSR - It's a shame that Best Buy ties your hands. Had you been empowered to work to make Best Buy Customer Service the best in the industry, I'm sure you would have done the job you wanted to do.

Now, rather than match the price. Best Buy will spend far more chasing down the opportunity to either discredit my grievance as publicly as the disgrace this review should garner or to appease my desire for knowledge (the process in place to prevent this from occurring again), and if they were super nice, they would...

Recently had been looking for a specific smartwatch, a silver Fossil 4th Gen, it's been almost impossible to find one in stock locally. In preparation for my honeymoon (wanted to load music onto the internal storage while at the beach and not have my phone on me 24/7) this coming weekend I started going to every nearby store that carries smartwatches to see if anyone had something comparable in stock. From Portland, to Salem, I spent the last 2 weeks looking all over for something that fit my needs.

Finally I decided to try the Newington Best Buy location, even though it said they did not have any Fossil smart watches in stock. I looked around and was shocked to find one, and just one brand new silver Fossil watch unopened in the display case. I asked an associate if I could purchase it and he was nice enough to set it aside at the register while I went to check out some Bluetooth headphones to pair with the watch. He set it aside at the checkout island by the smart phones. I was gone maybe.. 3 minutes, snd came back to check out. Standing in front of the checkout were 3 associates, having a conversation about something, totally oblivious of my intent to finalize my purchase.

One of them had opened the box with the smartwatch I had hunted all over for and was messing around with it. I stood there for a good 5 minutes before a 4th associate finally walked up and recognized I was looking to checkout. The 3 then turned around and realized I was just standing there watching the associate who had, for whatever reason, broken the seal on the watch and decided to play with it, and she hurried to put the watch back in the packaging.

I just walked out the door at that point from combination of being totally ignored and defeat that I was about to spend almost $300 on a smartwatch that was just moments ago unopened, new and essentially now an openbox item covered in fingerprints and that I felt robbed of the experience of getting to open for the first time. The latter my seem like a silly thing to get upset about, but if I wanted a molested smartwatch I could've picked from any of the dozens for sale used locally on Facebook or Craigslist, trust me there's a ton out there that have barely been worn and have everything still included.

It's a shame, I was really looking forward to finally getting myself that smartwatch, but some people just don't want you to have nice...