Promises, Promises

For some reason I have let Best Buy lie to me multiple times before calling it quits. I actually had stopped going there for a while, but decided to give them another chance when my laptop went out on me. They performed well so why not give them my business again? I called up our local store yesterday to see if they had the Canon 7D Mark II in stock. I really think that the camera will shine during the Big Ten Soccer Tournament next week. I am shooting the tourney for the Big Ten, and the long days will be perfect to test out the camera. I reached someone on the phone in customer service who told me that they had one in stock. I asked him if he physically saw the camera, and he told me that he did. Once again I made sure that he had it in hand which he said that he did. I purchased the camera over the phone, and cancelled my Best Buy pre-order that had an open ended date on it still. I made my way to the store to pick up the camera. When it was not in the pickup area I wondered what had happened to it. How could it disappear so quickly. I found out that the sales rep that put me on hold to ‘go and look for it’ only punched it up on the computer. A search of the store led the crack team at Best Buy to just shrug that a $1900 camera was missing. No talk of where it could have went just that it was gone.

The rep who I talked to on the phone told me that he would make it right. I was told that it was a good news bad news situation. The good news was that they found out that some stock was missing. The bad news was that they didn’t have the camera in stock. None of that sounded good to me, and I am an optimist. He performed a quick search on the computer to find one ‘in Illinois.’ Again I was excited that I would have the camera, but just a day later. I asked if they would ship it to the store. He said yes, and that it would take about two weeks to get there. Two weeks to ship something in 2014? He said that it was the policy of the company to do this. I asked why the item could not be shipped via UPS or FedEx, and he acted like that was crazy. Why do something that would be faster? Against my better judgement I even offered to pay for the shipping. That was still greeted with a statement that they can’t do that? How do they ship things to your house?

I left the store not very happy. I packed up my one year old to take her there, and of course she was not pleased with waiting for the item. It was on the way home that I thought more about the shipping option. Why wasn’t this possible? When you have lied to me it would seem as if you would try and make it right. Why let a customer spending $1900 in your store walk away empty handed when you do not have to?

When I got home I called Best Buy customer support after a try at getting a solution via Twitter failed. From this point on everyone that I dealt with was super nice, but powerless to do anything. I talked to a nice lady that found a camera for me in Downers Grove, Illinois, but told me that my only option was to drive and pick it up myself. She said that there wasn’t an option in the computer to ship it to me. She did go out of her way to try and help me though, but the system was holding her back. The manager at the Downers Grove store also had a camera missing, but did have one on hand. She said that she could hold it for me, but that I would have to pick it up. Once again I offered to pay for shipping to get it here so that I could use it prior to the tournament. Shipping would be far cheaper than the time and money that it would cost to drive to the Chicago suburbs to pick it up. Once again that is not in the plan so I could not have this happen.

In the last month I bought a $2500 MacBook and was prepared to buy this $1900 camera. We are looking to upgrade my wife’s iPad, but I can tell you one place that we will avoid. It is a shame that people can’t help me think out of the box. I kept thinking of that car commercial where everyone is walking around with a script in their hands going through everyday life. Finally the one guy dumps the script to move on. I think that Best Buy needs to dump the script and do what is right.

Good News in the End

There is a happy ending to the story. I kept calling, and found a cancellation at Adorama out of New York. They could ship me a camera next day via UPS! What a concept. I can now test it out this weekend before shooting the tournament this week. I plan on shooting it a little today at Purdue to test it out during the tennis matches indoors. I will post a photo of that as my photo of the day. Tomorrow night I will shoot the final Purdue soccer game of the season with the camera to really shake it down. Setting it up so that I have it just the way that I want it will make a long weekend of shooting go much smoother. In the coming days I am sure that I will have some samples for you to look at and see if it is the camera for you. Just don’t go out and buy it at Best Buy.