The Very Cranky Consumer

I know my family will tell me I'm wasting my time and energy blasting Best Buy, but after they held my laptop hostage for 6 weeks while they repeatedly screwed up my order, canceled it, sent me alarming e-mails ("Status: Picked up by Customer" when it was still in their shop), and finally told me I could pick it up only to find it covered with adhesive tape, dirt, and scratches, I sent them a nasty message on their "Contact us" section of the website. (This was after they sent me a customer satisfaction survey that didn't work - it refused to accept my order number). After a couple more weeks, I got a reply from "Pete." My goodness gosh, Pete is one regular fellow trying his very utmost to make me feel better. When I complained that my computer was scratched and nicked, he urged me to take it back to the store where the same diffident staff gave me the old eye roll before when I pointed it out. So here's my reply to "Pete":

Dear Pete:
Thank you for your reply; I was beginning to think that there was not going to be a response from the company.

At this point, as I may have already said, I am not in a position to return the computer for further repairs, because it contains my work-related programs such as the VPN login, and I have already been without access to it for much too long.

The additional damage that occurred during its stay with Geek Squad was cosmetic; I have cleaned the computer up and will just have to live with the nicks on the edge of the case. I only wanted to make the point that the poor condition of the computer, together with the lengthy six-week delay and multiple errors in handling the warranty service, all showed a complete disregard for customer satisfaction.

By way of contrast, let me share with you my customer experience with the Acer computer company. My wife accidentally dropped her Acer laptop, and the LCD was cracked - a similar repair to the one my HP computer needed. Although the computer was still under warranty, we knew that this accidental damage would not be covered. Nevertheless, we sent the computer to Acer for repairs. Their website made the process of getting a repair order number quite simple, and the only effort on our part was packing and shipping the computer to them. Within five business days, they gave us a quote of $199 to repair the computer. We approved the repair and made our payment over the phone in under five minutes (which was less time than I spent just waiting on hold on all of my calls to Best Buy/Geek Squad). We had the computer back in excellent condition within two weeks of sending it.

Now, I paid well over the cost of the repairs to my wife's computer for the extension to my service plan with Best Buy last June. For that expenditure, we got nothing but aggravation and poor service. Granted, I still have "protection" if something else goes wrong, but I am not sure I can tolerate the thought of putting the computer in the hands of your slacker staff again.

I hope that you share this customer experience with your supervisors and management, because all the customer surveys in the world (even if they can be made to work properly) cannot give you the real world experience of one customer who was treated as I was. The value proposition for your company is pretty much zero, as far as I am concerned.

What I would hope for, rather than being subjected to another invitation to hand my computer over to Best Buy's incompetent employees, is some financial recompense for all my aggravation and being deprived of my computer for so long. A Best Buy gift card might at least help assure that I will set foot in one of your stores at least once more in my life. Otherwise, I don't expect to do so.

Sincerely, Paul Fitzgerald
From: Best Buy Consumer Relations To: drfitz@yahoo.comSent: Tue, December 15, 2009 12:54:28 PMSubject: Re: Repairs & Parts (KMM11512023I15977L0KM)Good Afternoon Paul,How are you doing today? I just received the email that you sent to our Best Buy corporate office in regards to this issues you ran into with your computer repair and wanted to follow up with you.I do apologize for the hassle that this has created for you and can?t image how frustrating it must have been to see numerous mistakes take place. I?ll be creating a case file that will be made available for store and district management to review so that we can get these issues addressed and corrected for you. I noticed that this message was sent to us on 12/04/09 and am sorry for the delay in response but wanted to see where we stand with the computer. While I?m not in a position to create a service tag for the order I can help with how it is handled. Have you returned to the store so that they can fix the unit up for you? If not, I would start with doing that so this gets resolved as soon as possible for you. If you have could you provide me with the service order number?Again I apologize for what took place and would like to know how I can best help you. If you could reply to this message I?d be happy to work with you.Have a great day,PeteBest Buy Consumer RelationsCase # 67422507

Recipe blogs - now there's a great idea

Tonight I got home early because it's my Professor Fitzy day, and was supposed to use the chicken breasts we mistakenly thawed and hastily cooked a few days ago when we thought we were thawing ground beef, and the zucchinis we bought last week, to make a healthy pasta dish from a recipe Chrissy found online. But when I went into the fridge, the zucchinis had turned into something like a bucket of grass clippings left out in the rain. So I had to think fast. Hm, we had an acorn squash we bought this weekend and planned to do something or other with (I just liked the idea of acorn squash for a December dinner and they were cheap at Da Jewel's).

That's even in spite of the fact that Fox News might hold me up for ridicule if I say I'm in favor of ACORN (squash).

So I did a search and hey presto, a fellow blogger here had a recipe where she roasted the acorn squash after cutting it into chunks, along with onion, so it all caramelized, and then added it to the pasta with tomatoes and cheese and chicken. What a concept. Roasting acorn squash with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and sage (!) and sliced onion makes a great combination. And it goes amazingly well with tomatoes and chicken. So hats off to Deborah at http://www.whatsinmykitchen.blogspot.com/ - her recipes are fun and a little unusual and her comments are funny. And she's married to a Professor too.

However, I agree with her that cutting and peeling an acorn squash is a challenging task. It's more like whittling. But at least you don't have baked squash with that awful melted wax in the pan. And the squash gets really sweet and soft with the onion. 450 degrees, 20-30 minutes, stir often. It got the house warm too, and boiling water for the penne pasta got the humidity up with the temperature outside bottoming our near zero and the sun sets at 3:30 as I ride the train home.

Here's her recipe: http://whatsinmykitchen.blogspot.com/2007/12/roasted-acorn-squash-pasta.html

Now I'll get back to grading Theories of Psychotherapy papers.