Best Buy Lied To Make a Sale

Best Buy is a terrific store that sells various products at reasonable prices. However, when they make errors, they usually sidestep accountability. And while I haven’t had many bad scenarios with them over the years, when they do happen, they are high-end ‘f#ck you’ situations that they never even attempt to resolve. So beware.

I flew into Florida on a business trip and took my laptop to the Geek desk at Best Buy (Doral store on NW 17th, Miami). The desk fellow told me they’d have to send it out to “see” if they had the parts, but he didn’t think they would, and therefore, he thought it would be a waste of money for me to do so. I appreciated the canter. I decided to browse laptops, perhaps even pick up a cheap Chromebook to hold me over.

The salesmen and I viewed the Chromebooks and the options for mid-level laptops and narrowed them down to a select few. I was traveling for three weeks, so I didn’t want to spend $1,000 out of pocket during the trip. The salesman told me, “If you have a Best Buy credit card, you buy it in interest-free installments.”

We walked to the checkout counter, and he calculated it would be $43 monthly for 24 months. It was a done deal; it was a no-brainer.

Imagine my surprise when I checked my credit card account, and $962 was charged to it and deducted from my availability.

The next day, I put my business affairs on hold and drove back to the store. I went to customer service and explained that I had bought a computer and was told it would be paid in 24 interest-free installments, but I was charged the full amount. He told me I should call the card underwriter (Citibank).

I did. Citibank informed me that the promotion was without interest for 24 months on the full purchase.

I wasted another day and returned to the store, speaking with customer service again. “Yeah, that is the way it works,” he said.

“So I asked him, “How does that align with the salesmen telling me 24 monthly payments of $43?”

He looked at me blankly, then repeated his previous statement, “Yeah, that is how it works.”

I tried several times to reach out to higher-ups at Best Buy, and Best Buy did what they typically do—steer you into a circle-jerk maze, throw in “protocol” and “it’s not my job” or “I don’t have the authority” until you’re exhausted and quit.

With the [almost certain] reduction of consumer protections expected over the next year or so, companies like Best Buy will only be emboldened to continue taking consumers' money and casting them aside.

It’s been 10 years since my last bad experience with them, but I fear that if they haven’t changed yet, they’re never going to.