Best Buy Ripoff fraudulent sale refused return poor customer service Princeton New Jersey

Ben, you are a good example of how to resolve a conflict to your satisfaction. Like you said, you were polite but persistent. By remaining professional, calm, and non-confrontational, the employees were happy to help resolve the problem in your favor. Excellent job!

Yeah, I've been reading a lot about Best Buy as a result of this experience, and there's no shortage of complaints about their sometimes deceitful business practices. In this case, though, I'm quite sure that I was not the victim of an intentional bait and switch scam on their part. This was due to some dishonest employee who stole from the store (i.e. took a couple RAM upgrades and replaced them with stock RAM) followed by the failure of Best Buy's loss prevention management to detect the theft and prevent the sale of the fraudulent product.

Thankfully, there's a happy resolution to this frustrating series of events. Credit is due to the manager, Chris, who took me seriously and was responsive to my complaint. He talked to the salesperson who sold me the RAM, and this gentleman remembered noticing that something was amiss.

I'm lucky that he remembered the sale and was honest enough to speak up for my case. So finally, the store has agreed to accept the return, and the manufacturer, KByte Memory, has agreed to replace the RAM. I think KByte will be absorbing the loss here, so credit is due to them as well. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get my money back as I would prefer, but I can make an exchange for the REAL product, or I can take store credit instead.

Again, the take-home message here is to be careful when shopping at Best Buy, or any mega-store for that matter. Check your purchases before leaving the store. If you feel you've been ripped off, be pleasant but persistent in dealing with Customer Service. In the end, a lot depends on the quality and integrity of the store's management, and this obviously varies with every store. Once I got past the obstinate, adversarial Customer Service staff and spoke to an actual manager, I was treated fairly and got results.

Ben,

Reading your post reminded me of the person who went into a Best Buy to do comparison shopping. He went in with a keyboard and when the Manager saw this, called the police and had him arrested.

The man was convicted for Trespassing!

Google, Trespassing at Best Buy' and you can read all about Best Buy customer service!

Also, while reading your post, I remembered an incident that occurred when I purchased a Digital Camera from Best Buy two years ago. I placed an order on the Internet and chose the In Store' pickup option.

When I went into the store to pay for the camera, the store tried to charge me a higher price. They even took me to their In House' internet connected computer and asked me to show them the price I couldn't because they logged into the In House' webpage that was not connected to the internet I made them use Google and connected to the site that way only then did the correct price show.

Best Buy has been pulling that bait and switch scam on consumers for years and recently got busted for it!

Andrew, thanks for the tip. The ID sticker says Samsung. I looked up the product online, and it is indeed for sale through OEM dealers. Here's a picture of the product that I ended up with:

http://www.geeks.com/imageshare/S/300x300/SAM-256DDRNB2700-N-unit.jpg

The sticker is identical except for the top line, which reads KR 0441 instead of CN 0422 as pictured.

On the other side of the RAM, there's a sticker that says "REPLACE WITH HP SPARE" above a bar code, along with the codes 371774-001 and 7F04A4. A Google search reveals that these are part codes used by HP/Compaq.

The manager who spoke with me yesterday said that if somebody had switched the RAM, it would have to have been an employee, because Best Buy sends all returned RAM straight back to the manufacturer. It's pretty clear that I ended up with the stock memory from some employee's HP/Compaq notebook, and it looks like there's nothing I can do about it. At least this manager is treating me with far more respect than I got from that Senior Customer Service rep.

When you say that the brand of the RAM was Samsung, does it say "Samsung" on the memory modules on the stick of RAM or does it say "Samsung" on the ID sticker taped over some of the memory modules? I ask this because Samsung DOES NOT sell RAM. Samsung manufactures the memory modules where manufacturing companies such as KByte, Kingston, Corsair, etc. buy those modules and make their own RAM.

If the little memory modules say "Samsung" but the sticker says KByte, then you got the correct memory. If the sticker says "Samsung" then you may have been a victim (or Best Buy was the victim depending) of a swapped product. There are RAM out there with Samsung stickers on it but you can only buy those through OEM dealers (i.e. Newegg) or from manufacturer computers. Samsung usually does not sell to the public, only manufacturing companies.

Since the package was NOT factory sealed, then that is the problem right there. Such lack of seal would have been just cause to thoroughly examine the product before leaving the store with it. Your story is going to be very difficult to prove.

As I noted in my original report, the packaging was not factory sealed. The RAM was in a plastic package that could be popped open and resealed without evidence of tampering.

I spoke with a store manager on the phone today, and he agreed to talk to the employees who were present when I purchased the RAM. I will update again when I hear from him tomorrow.

Are you saying that when you inspected the product before leaving the store, the product was contained within its original packaging, was completely shrinkwrapped by the manufacturer, and showed no signs of tampering and/or mischievious activity? Yet still contained the wrong product??

If so - then perhaps you can resolve this with the manufacturer, as they must be the ones responsible for putting the incorrect product in the box in the first place. Have you tried this?

Let me clarify here. I DID thoroughly check the second RAM before leaving the counter, and the packaging indicated that it was the RAM that I needed. I did not, however, open up the packaging and inspect the memory modules themselves. I assumed that the packages contained the correct product (a reasonable assumption, I would argue). Only when I opened the packages to install the RAM did I notice that the product had been switched. The only way to tell was by looking at the small manufacturer's sticker on one side of each module. This was not easy to spot without a close inspection of the product itself.

Anyway, you've hit the nail on the head here; I have no way to prove to the store that I'm not trying to "pull a fast one" as you say. Maybe an employee did precisely what you suggested, or maybe another customer did this and got away with it, I don't know. The fact remains, though, that this is what the store sold me. Clearly, they are at fault, and I got screwed over. What stings most is not their policy, which is common business sense, but rather their refusal to investigate the matter further when confronted by an honest customer, the victim of somebody else's fraudulent return and the store's negligent (and illegal) resale. If they cared about customer satisfaction, then they might consider letting me speak to the salespeople who sold me the RAM. Some businesses still believe that the customer is always right, would not question my honesty, and would refund my money or replace the product. I understand that Best Buy probably gets a lot of attempted fraudulent returns, so they can't do this... but they can do SOMETHING in the name of customer relations, no?

If you noticed the RAM was incorrect the first go-round, why didn't you thoroughly check the second RAM before leaving the counter let alone the store???? You're stating that the RAM wasn't even the correct BRAND let alone type ... and something like that should be very easy to spot, dontcha think?

How is the store to know that this is the RAM that they actually sold to you, not some old RAM that you took out of your computer and tried to return for much more than it is worth?