Recently I went to Best Buy to pick up a much needed charger for my MacBook Pro. I was in a hurry so when I looked online I was pleased the charger I needed was in-stock nearby.
After a brief in-store search, I was able to locate the charger I needed and proceeded to the counter to check out. That was when the trouble began. My card was declined for whatever reason. This normally would not be an issue, but I recently got rid of all of my other cards and I didn’t have enough cash on hand to complete the purchase. I was in a huge hurry! Plan C…I call my dad, who can give me a card number over the phone that Best Buy can manually enter. Nope. They removed the technology that allows you to manually enter a card number. Geez…hope everyone’s card swipes properly or else they are sol. Plan D…I’ll buy the charger on bestbuy.com with the card my dad gave me (pay him back later of course), select the store I was in for pickup, show the receipt and be on my way…great! Not so fast…while I was able to buy it online…I still have to wait an average of 45min-1hr for customer service to process the order, go get the charger, tag it and then confirm it is ready…even though I’m holding it in my hand and I have a receipt of purchase. Finally after about an hour and a half, I was able to leave with the charger, which is working great I might add.
The moral of this story is this…nothing about my experience at Best Buy had anything to do with the product I was purchasing. The product works great and I am very happy to have it. The issue was the experience of purchasing the product. While some of these things could have been prevented on my end…much of the negative process I had was due to the purchase experience itself.
I read recently that more than 70% of customer satisfaction is due to the experience they have.
“Customer experience is the next competitive battleground. It’s where business is going to be won or lost” – Tom Knighton
So to sum it up…I won’t be returning to Best Buy to make an in-store purchase anytime soon, and their products have nothing to do with it.
Ben Broadwater