Best Buy broke my son’s heart on Valentine’s Day

Warning this blog post runs a bit long but I felt it necessary to tell the complete story.

I may never shop at Best Buy again.

Just when I thought Best Buy couldn’t top this horrible experience, they did. Last week, my son told me he had saved up enough Mr. Goodbar points to earn a reward. Mr. Goodbar points are something my wife and I give to our children when they help around the house, do something without being told or just perform a random act of kindness. When they earn enough points, we let them trade them in, usually for a CD or DVD.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I would normally purchase said CD or DVD online at Amazon.com. But in this rare situation, I had some Best Buy Reward Zone points that were set to expire in a couple days. Much to my surprise, I was thrilled to find out that the Reward Zone points can be redeemed online.

So on I went to bestbuy.com, with my son looking over my shoulder, in search of the new Madagascar 2 DVD. I found it right away and noticed Best Buy was running a special offer where you were eligible for a free Madagascar plush penguin with the purchase of the Madagascar DVD.

Kids and cute penguins

Before I even had time to think what to do next my son belted out, “Ooh, I want the plush penguin. Dad, can I get the plush penguin?”

I figured why not, so I read the instructions to get the free plush penguin. It said to add the Madagascar 2 DVD to your cart and then select the plush penguin. Sounds easy, right? Wrong. There was no option to add a free plush penguin anywhere on the bestbuy.com web site. I finally gave up looking for it and just did a search on their site for “madagascar plush penguin.” The search results returned what looked like the penguin but it was priced at $2.99. I thought maybe the web site would figure out the discount if I just added it to the cart so I did. And when I looked at my cart, I noticed that it had indeed credited back $2.99 to the order thus making the plush penguin free.

If it sounds like things are going well at this point, stick with me. Since I had $20 of Reward Zone points, I decided to throw a Jeremy Camp CD into my cart as well so I could use up all of my reward zone points. Then I proceeded to check out. This is where it got ugly.

What happened to free shipping?

Best Buy wanted to charge me over $6.00 to ship the DVD, CD and plush penguin. That seemed extravagant to me since my local Best Buy store is only a couple miles away so I changed the order to in-store pickup to avoid shipping charges. This is when I was told that the DVD and CD were in stock at my local store but the plush penguin was not. It also told me that the plush penguin was in stock at the Castleton store, which for those that don’t know where I live, is about a 40 minute drive from my house.

Now, those of you with kids will understand that I had no choice but to continue with my order split between two stores like this. In fact, by this point, my son was more excited about getting the plush penguin toy than he was the DVD. Luckily, I checked my calendar and I was going to be in the area of the Castleton store later in the week.

Local store experience ok; Castleton store not so much

The next day I went to my local store to pick up the DVD and CD. Things went without a hitch. They had it waiting for me and I was in and out of the store in less than 5 minutes. It’s a few days later when I went to the Castleton store that things got ugly.

I walked in to the Castleton store and handed a customer service guy my online receipt and he went off in search of my purchase. While waiting for him to return, I looked over at some shelves and noticed a sign that said “bestbuy.com in-store pickups”. And there on the top shelf was the plush penguin! I couldn’t believe this was actually going to work.

That doesn’t look like my penguin

Well, it wasn’t. The guy didn’t grab the penguin. He grabbed something else. When he returned and set it on the counter in front of me I noticed it was a Madagascar double-DVD pack. I said, “What’s this?” to which he replied, “It’s what you ordered.”

“Ummm, no it isn’t.” And pointing to the plush penguin on the shelf, I said, “I ordered that plush penguin over there.”

Simple mistake I thought to myself. The guy just grabbed the wrong item. I waited while the guy punched a bunch of keys on the computer like an airline employee at the check-in desk. When he was done, he grabbed his walkie talkie and said asked another guy if they had any more plush penguins. The voice on the other end came back quickly with a “No, we’re all out of those.”

And so I was told that they were out of the penguins. I started my pleas immediately. I explained to the guy that I ordered this online and it should have been pulled from the shelves and waiting for me that day. I told him how my 7 year-old son was dying to get through the school day because I told him today was the day I was getting his penguin. I told him I drove 40 minutes to get here. I even pointed again to the penguin on the shelf.

That’s when he said, “That penguin is for someone else and he’ll be upset if I give it to you.”

Ummmm, hello? I understand that (and wouldn’t really take someone else’s penguin) but what about the upset customer standing right in front of you?

Unacceptable options

He told me I would come back every few days to see if any more came in. I once again explained that I had driven 40 minutes to get to the store. He said I could check the other stores even though none of them show on the computer that they have any in stock. Ummm, no thanks.

In a final desperation attempt, I asked what my options were. Ready for this? He said, “None. I’m sorry.”

In utter frustration, I turned around to walk out of the store when he stopped me and told me to come back because I needed to sign a return slip. Trying to maintain my composure I asked “What return?”

He said, “The return for the double-DVD pack.”

“What?!?! But I didn’t buy that!”

“But since we pulled it out of inventory for you, you need to sign this showing you returned it.”

“But I never bought it in the first place!!”

“Sir, we have to have you sign this.”

For the record, if anyone is wondering if I may have accidentally added the wrong item to my cart when I ordered online, the double-DVD pack alone is over $20 which would have more than stood out to me when I went to pay. The single DVD that I ordered was $16, the CD was $14 for a total of $30. I used $20 in Reward Zone points and my total bill was $10 and some change to cover sales tax.