Best Buy Says ‘Goodbye To Christmas’ - Hello To Bankruptcy

By Guest Blogger, Abraxas

“Talk about karma.  Last year I seethed to hear Best Buy was refusing to celebrate Christmas - they were calling it the 'holidays' with the feeble excuse they didn't want to offend non-Christians.  At the time I did a slow burn, but I've since come to realize that what I was really witnessing was not just the lack of Christ but of common sense in that company.  No company can survive if it shows contempt for its customers and BB was doing precisely that by spitting on Christmas.  

Well, now they're paying for it.  As Forbes now warns, it's only a matter of time before BB collapses in a pile of stinking bankruptcy.

Larry Downe's article gives a personal illustration of the reason for BB's collapse - their customer 'service' stinks.  He witnessed this first hand when he accompanied his friend into one of their stores in Pinole, CA to help the friend purchase a 3D blu-ray of “How to Train Your Dragon,” which BB sells exclusively.  Not surprisingly, the store didn't have it in stock (it was 'back-ordered'); nonetheless, the friend decided to shop for another blu-ray.  And here's where things got ugly.  

"One young, poorly groomed sales clerk from the TV department...wandered over to interrogate us."  "Interrogate" is the proper word because the young man wasn't the least interested in helping the friend find the disc he wanted but instead trying to bully the man into buying either a tv or cable service.  When the friend refused, the clerk skulked off.  But it got worse.  Because of the lack of help, the friend ended up buying the wrong blu-ray disc, one he already had.  When the writer and his friend returned the next day to the store to return it, BB flatly refused to exchange, citing their policy of not redeeming software (which the blu-ray disc qualified as).  

The instant the writer heard that, he thought at once of Amazon's exchange policy.  In contrast to BB, Amazon will (almost literally) do back-flips to please their customers.  The writer recounted how he'd had problems with a TV he'd bought from them, only to hear Amazon not only breathlessly offer to instantly switch a new TV for the old one but also send someone over to the writer's home to install the replacement.  This type of customer care definitely beats a pimply-faced geek refusing to exchange your disc.

And BB gets worse - as proven by their debacle of last year.  As the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported it, only days before Christmas (excuse me, 'the holidays') the store blithely informed its shocked customers that their orders for TVs, iPads, tablets, cameras, laptops, PS3 games, and Nintendo Wii (which many of those people had ordered the day after Thanksgiving) couldn’t be filled and thus were being cancelled.  But it was the nasty way in which BB tried to weasel out of blame that struck the writer most.  

The company issued a statement that read:  “Due to overwhelming demand of hot product offerings on BestBuy.com during the November and December time period, we have encountered a situation that has affected redemption of some of our customers’ online orders.”  In short, BB was blaming the customers for the foul-up.  If those buying idiots hadn't made an 'overwhelming demand' during the last two months of the year, BB wouldn't have encountered the 'situation' of not being able to fill their orders.  Because, as we all know, stores hate an upsurge of business in the holidays.  Oh, brother!

So Best Buy is collapsing.   Well, karma is a b*tch, guys.  Which, come to think of it, is exactly how best to describe your customer relations.”

Dell’s Bottom Line:

I’ve tried.  Really, I have.  I’d love to have Abraxas say what she really means, rather than hold it all in.  That’s not good for the woman’s psyche.  I’ll try harder....