Best Buy No More

As you may know from some previous posts, I still enjoy observing and judging marketing campaigns and tactics, having been in the profession of marketing at one time (long, long ago...). That's the way I prefer to look at a recent experience with home town Best Buy Company, a survivor in one of the toughest, most competitive, dog-eat-dog markets out there - consumer electronics retailers. Along with fast changing trends, no-profit zones, intense pricing, comes a battle with online retailers and the need to manage both online and bricks and mortar channels. Tough business, and loaded with enough marketing tactics to make anyone dizzy, including the consumer.

One of the common survival marketing tactics in this industry is the price match guarantee. You've heard the spiel - "We'll match the product prices of key online and local competitors." When I returned home with my new wide screen computer monitor from LG, I was excited to read the manual to learn how to utilize that screen for working with multiple, side by side windows at once. Looking on the manufacturers website to find the pdf file of the manual, I came across their shopping site and saw that the same monitor I had just paid the sale price of $375 for - which I thought was a pretty good price - listed for $330. That was the manufacturers recommended list price. Not only could I find it for less online - $298 at Amazon, $305 at Walmart, and on and on - but the manufacturers list price was less than what Best Buy had it for on sale.

Now irritated, I decided to take the time to call Best Buy for recognition of this clear case of over pricing. A kind gentleman took my information and submitted a case based on the Amazon price, for a credit of about $75. Well that was worth it.

When I called back a month later and provided the case number looking for a follow-up, two weeks after when I was told I could expect that credit, the very kind lady could find no case registered with that number. So we opened a new one. In fact, Best Buy's own price had been reduced below the Amazon price by then, so she used that number, now $107 less than what I paid. Still worth it, though by now I had used close to an hour of my time registering my claim and following up. 

A note was pinned to my monitor all this time with the details. Looking at it today, and having heard nothing and received no credit, I decided to call once again to follow-up. Again, a very nice lady took my recent case number and expressed disappointment that I had not received a note of explanation. She found the case, and stated that my claim was rejected because too much time, more than 30 days, had passed since my purchase. I explained that was because we had resubmitted the claim after not hearing back on the original claim. Could I give her that claim number, please, she asked? Sure. Wallah. She found the original claim number. 

"Do you have the email address for that claim, sir, because it's different than the one you used for the second claim." I repeated all four of our email addresses we use between Bonnie and I, to no avail. 

"Well, it's really too bad you can't tell me that email address, sir. It's the same name, but a different destination - neither gmail or msn" 

"You mean you're going to reject my claim because the original case worker copied down the wrong address?"

"No sir, that claim was rejected because the price on Amazon was from LG, not from Amazon itself. As you can clearly read in our policy, and in the Frequently Asked Questions, we can only accept prices stated on Amazon for products shipped and sold BY Amazon."

"And my second claim is rejected because too much time had passed since my purchase, even though Best Buy never communicated an outcome, and your customer service agent could not find the case."

"Correct, Sir, and you don't have your correct email address."

Wow. A trifecta of outs. That's the way it felt, anyway. Kind of like rebates - throw enough barriers in the way, or enough conditions, or enough time, and the customer will just get frustrated and go away.

In reality, it's probably more the nature of the beast. The purpose of the tactic is to offset the customers fear that he or she could get a better price somewhere else. As I said, I was happy, even delighted with the original price, thinking I had gotten quite a deal for the features and benefits of the monitor. It was a good value to me. It was only later, when seeing the lower published price, that I felt the value was insufficient. Nothing changed about the product, just my perception of the product. 

I feel a little badly for outfits like Best Buy. I'm sure folks abuse the price match guarantee, and the regulations used to deny my claim come as a result of those abuses. There must be tremendous effort on the part of Best Buy in trying to fulfill that promise, yet in the end here is one formerly loyal customer lost as a result of the process and the pricing that initiated it. In the future, I will modify my "get it right now" impulse to instead wait the two days for the UPS truck to deliver the e-commerce order to my door.