No Exchange: Best Buy Manager Tries To Void XBOX Warranty

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Astronutty

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I was at the local Bestbuy here in Springfield, MO and was third in the line to exchange a product. I looked ahead and saw a gentleman with an Xbox360 with a faulty DVD drive trying to get an exchange. The clerk told the customer that Microsoft handles all warranties on the Xbox360 and that Microsoft would not allow BestBuy to exchange the device.

The customer asked again to exchange the product because he only had it for less than three months. The clerk then called the department manager over and he promptly removed the front bezel to view the anti-tamper sticker, and declared that they could do nothing for him because the Xbox360 anti-tamper sticker had been tampered with. The customer denied ever opening the case of his Xbox360.

I got quite interested and stepped to the side of the lady in front of me and looked at it from about 3 foot away (arms reach). The sticker was in place and had not been removed! The manager then picked at the sticker to my horror and I then quickly approached the counter and told customer, quite loudly, to not let the manager pick at the sticker.

I was prepared to throw a fit on the behalf of the timid customer right then and there and declare to all those that were around that the manager had voided the warranty himself, but the manager realized he was busted and quickly allowed the exchange.

http://www.digg.com/tech_news/No_Exchange_Best_Buy_Manager_Tries_To_Void_XBOX_Warranty

Has BestBuy corporate let it be known that the stores need to limit the amount of Xbox360s being exchanged and to do whatever it takes, including lying to customers and voiding warranties?

Smack BestBuy's hand!

Steve
 
That's messed up...he didn't even need to void the warranty to prevent the return, as it was out of the 30-day warranty anyway. This cements it; I am never buying at Best Buy again.
 
Astronutty said:
I was at the local Bestbuy here in Springfield, MO and was third in the line to exchange a product. I looked ahead and saw a gentleman with an Xbox360 with a faulty DVD drive trying to get an exchange. The clerk told the customer that Microsoft handles all warranties on the Xbox360 and that Microsoft would not allow BestBuy to exchange the device.

The customer asked again to exchange the product because he only had it for less than three months. The clerk then called the department manager over and he promptly removed the front bezel to view the anti-tamper sticker, and declared that they could do nothing for him because the Xbox360 anti-tamper sticker had been tampered with. The customer denied ever opening the case of his Xbox360.

I got quite interested and stepped to the side of the lady in front of me and looked at it from about 3 foot away (arms reach). The sticker was in place and had not been removed! The manager then picked at the sticker to my horror and I then quickly approached the counter and told customer, quite loudly, to not let the manager pick at the sticker.

I was prepared to throw a fit on the behalf of the timid customer right then and there and declare to all those that were around that the manager had voided the warranty himself, but the manager realized he was busted and quickly allowed the exchange.

http://www.digg.com/tech_news/No_Exchange_Best_Buy_Manager_Tries_To_Void_XBOX_Warranty

Has BestBuy corporate let it be known that the stores need to limit the amount of Xbox360s being exchanged and to do whatever it takes, including lying to customers and voiding warranties?

Smack BestBuy's hand!

Steve
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Good for you man and stepping up, I would of done the same thing. I hate seeing people get taken advantage of...
 
gotta give you props man...

and i was the customer i would have slogged the damn manager.... what an asshole..

at least i'm thankful i dont have any or hopefully not any in my area...
 
Best Buy is well known for these kind of shenanigans...not just at the store level but much of it comes from the top. The store employee only "intraweb" that looks exactly like the consumer website is the worst one...followed closely by the customer profiling they got busted for a while back.
 
He should be fired for that. Of course he probably wouldn't be if it the order came from HQ and it probably did. I haven't shopped there in at least 3 years and I don't plan on going back. Not only do their prices suck, you're better off dealing with a chimp then with the employees.
 
I'm bold, persistent, patient, and have money. All that is required. If I felt strongly enough about it, the manager would be done, no if ands or buts.

Good job on sticking up for someone else, it's never a bad thing.
 
I have no idea what has happened to that company but they have been on a steady decline since the turn of the century. I have had countless issues with them and even had them shaft me and then change the posted public policy. I think my run at shopping there is coming to an end. But I also hate boring ass circuit city. New Egg needs to open a retail store in Seattle.
 
squishy said:
I'm bold, persistent, patient, and have money. All that is required. If I felt strongly enough about it, the manager would be done, no if ands or buts.

Good job on sticking up for someone else, it's never a bad thing.
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Sadly I don't think you'd have much luck due to the fact that they just don't care, displayed clearly through the actions taken by the manager. When it comes down to it, it's just the manager trying to satisfy the higher-ups by any means necessary, even if it means treating their customers like crap. Why do they do this? So they don't have to spend the time packing up the defective piece of crap to ship it back to Microsoft, it's not like they are even financially responsible.
 
holybonkers said:
Sadly I don't think you'd have much luck due to the fact that they just don't care, displayed clearly through the actions taken by the manager. When it comes down to it, it's just the manager trying to satisfy the higher-ups by any means necessary, even if it means treating their customers like crap. Why do they do this? So they don't have to spend the time packing up the defective piece of crap to ship it back to Microsoft, it's not like they are even financially responsible.
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I about figures, everything boils down to figures in the retail industry. But there is no excuse for giving customers the shaft.
 
First of all, good job OP. Taking the initiative helped someone. It's always good to see that.

But I WOULD like to bring up that I think you guys are overreacting. Where are you getting that this manager was told by higher-ups to do this? I'm guessing he just didn't know what he was doing, and wasn't intentionally trying to void the warranty. Of course, I wasn't there, so who knows.

All I'm saying is that it's purely speculation on whether he was doing it because of orders, and IMO it seems like a stretch.
 
I'm also in Springpatch MO and our Best Buy sucks mad ass. Got a friend that worked there and so it's not hard to believe that the corporate would tell managers to reduce the number of exchanges after hearing some of the stories he tells. Props to OP for sticking up to those asshats.

Bru
 
Hah, Best Buy sucks here too. It used to be like the main place for electronics but they're dead to me. I only go there as a last resort. And I wish NewEgg opened a store in VA, around where I live. They'd freaking rule!
 
Yes Best Buy is known to do things like these. These guys are worse than the scammers who tries to scam them. I stay away from them as far as I can.
 
Dude, if I saw you do that, I would take you out for a beer. I'm always proud of those who intervene when peons with power try to screw good customers. I would have reported that asshat to corporate, but it wouldn't matter much.

To recall, this is coming from the company that has:

- Made memorandums categorizing people who take advantage of sales, redeem their rebates, and bring back defective merchandise as "devils"

- Had a customer arrested and led out in cuffs for using two dollar bills, claiming they were "counterfeit"

- Maintained an altered version of BestBuy.com on their stores' intranets in order to convince customers on-the-spot that they were wrong about a sale and make them pay full price for something that is actually discounted

Not to mention that the bastards still refuse to admit customers who legally carry firearms.
 
Aelfgeft said:
Dude, if I saw you do that, I would take you out for a beer. I'm always proud of those who intervene when peons with power try to screw good customers. I would have reported that asshat to corporate, but it wouldn't matter much.

To recall, this is coming from the company that has:

- Made memorandums categorizing people who take advantage of sales, redeem their rebates, and bring back defective merchandise as "devils"

- Had a customer arrested and led out in cuffs for using two dollar bills, claiming they were "counterfeit"

- Maintained an altered version of BestBuy.com on their stores' intranets in order to convince customers on-the-spot that they were wrong about a sale and make them pay full price for something that is actually discounted

Not to mention that the bastards still refuse to admit customers who legally carry firearms.
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Not that I necessarily agree with what the manager did but as an ex-employee of BB from some years back this stuff is hard for me to imagine. Now in my time there I was in three positions; Cashier, CSR/Returns and a Tech (before GeekSquad). As part of the tech dept. we were to oversee ALL electronics returns and deem them worthy of return or not due to customer tampering. I have a hard seeing things like this actually happen, but then again I realise that attitude changes from store to store and crew to crew. This manager should have definitely been dealt with and I applaud the OP for stepping up. 90% of the time they bank on the customer not reading that "extended warranty" guidelines thus screwing themselves royally. Now one things that could have happened (just me playing devils advocate) is that they customer HAD bought the extended warranty and they were outside the 14 day return policy, you will notice that the warranty covers the product AFTER the manufacturers warranty. So for the first year he has to deal with MS, then after that the BB warranty would cover it. Oh well, it was taken care of and I rarely buy from there anymore, I can find 90% of my stuff cheaper over the internet.
 
duce3 said:
I have no idea what has happened to that company but they have been on a steady decline since the turn of the century. I have had countless issues with them and even had them shaft me and then change the posted public policy. I think my run at shopping there is coming to an end. But I also hate boring ass circuit city. New Egg needs to open a retail store in Seattle.
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Dude seriously, newegg really needs to open up retail stores across US.

Well anyways I came very close of buying my ps3 from bestbuy but I bought it at Fry's instead. Wheh. Im glad I didn''t now.
 
nvidiapwnsati said:
Dude seriously, newegg really needs to open up retail stores across US.

Well anyways I came very close of buying my ps3 from bestbuy but I bought it at Fry's instead. Wheh. Im glad I didn''t now.
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Uh...no. Did I mention NO? If you take away my no sales tax advantage then Newegg's prices wouldn't be that much cheaper than some other places. If that happened then ZZF, Mwave and others would get most of my business.
 
joemama said:
Uh...no. Did I mention NO? If you take away my no sales tax advantage then Newegg's prices wouldn't be that much cheaper than some other places. If that happened then ZZF, Mwave and others would get most of my business.
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Hey I agree with you we want cheap! But hell wrong buy has prices always high than everyone except for No Comp USA! They always have the highest prices hands down, that is why they are going out of business. They customer service sucks and their knowledge base is subpar. No wonder when you have Comp next door to Wrong buy, wrong buy always looks better.
 
l3ender said:
First of all, good job OP. Taking the initiative helped someone. It's always good to see that.

But I WOULD like to bring up that I think you guys are overreacting. Where are you getting that this manager was told by higher-ups to do this? I'm guessing he just didn't know what he was doing, and wasn't intentionally trying to void the warranty. Of course, I wasn't there, so who knows.

All I'm saying is that it's purely speculation on whether he was doing it because of orders, and IMO it seems like a stretch.
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I just have a hard time believing that managers working for big corporations such as Best Buy do anything unless they were directed to do so.
 
Best Buy's one of the places I've had the best luck with returns. I'd guess that store manager was just being a rogue asshole.
I've returned everything from a hard drive I didn't need (I had a bad IDE cable, not a drive) to open boxed remote controls and a stereo receiver. I wish I could say the same about Circuit City. I like their help more (commission or not, they know their stuff and don't hassle you), but MAN is it a pain to make returns there.
I've always found Best Buy's policy of bragging about commission free employees to be funny. Every time I walk into one I get bugged by every department in the whole store, EXCEPT the ones where I might possibly spend big money. When I wanted to buy a TV, I couldn't get help to save my life, but I get asked if they can help me find a CD (which are in alphabetical order...) 5 times a minute.
Still, props to you for stepping in. That's horrible.
 
that's really fucked up, and something similar happened in my store too.


I work in Annapolis, and a while back, a customer came in with a PS2 with the add-in HDD. One manager thought the customer had 'hacked' the PS2 and would not allow it to be exchanged (the DVD drive broke).

The customer through a fit, and our store manager fired the other manager on the spot, in front of everyone (this manager had a bad track record, and this put it over the edge). Thankfully, the PS2 was exchanged.



Just thought you all should know that not every Best Buy is that bad ;)
 
The customer was one of the "devil" customer's... remember that good ol speech? BB doesn't want rebate shoppers/bargain hunters/exchangers coming back to their store.
 
I've found the secret to getting on BB's "good" customer list!

Very simple...just spend a couple grand in the computer, tv, or audio departments every couple of months (making sure to buy the extended warranty and plenty of Monster cables/surge protectors) and never EVER attempt to bring anything back. See how simple that is!:p
 
Both of them can suck it... the manager for being a douche, and the guy for trying to exchange a product not within the BB exchange/warranty period.
 
I know it's fun to ride the Best Buy internet hate train.... but I'm not convinced the manager had the intention of actually removing the sticker. The manager had thought the sticker had been tampered with prior, so maybe he was just picking at it to see if it had been reattached?

What would he have to gain from voiding this guys warranty?

And since when does any retail outlet honor the manufacturers warranty? Outlets typically have a 30-day exchange policy, outside of which defects are covered by the manufacturer. If I were that manager, I wouldn't even have given that kids Xbox a second look. All he had to say was "30 days, sorry".

The only reason he probably did the exchange was to get rid of a belligerent customer from further causing a scene. Or.... maybe he was a total dick and trying to remove it. I guess my point is that everyone seems to assume the worse because it's fun to hate. =/
 
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