I’m like that wife on Jerry Springer… I keep getting the crap kicked out of me and I keep coming back!

BestBuy (bricks and mortar and dotCa) have terrible service. There is no denying it. Quite possibly the worst service I have ever encountered, especially when you consider the general price of the items. As bad as the customer service is at the store it is even worse online.

This is the latest situation. Two weeks ago BestBuy -both in store and online- had Black Hawk Down on Blu-Ray -my favourite movie- on sale for $19.99. Of course as the -somewhat- proud owner of a now victorious Blu-Ray player, I went out to get it. Hmmm… Sold out. No problem, I went home to check the remaining stock in other stores. Sold out at both the Kanata store and Ottawa East store. After checking around it was sold out at every store.

No problem, I will order it online and just mark it for store pick-up, to get the price. No dice, for store pick-up it must be in stock. No problem, I will just have it delivered, surely like Amazon.ca it must be free. Nope. $2.98. No problem, that isn’t a huge amount to pay. So I ordered it as well as T-2 on Blu-Ray.

So last week I go to check the order, T-2 is in stock, but BHD is still not. I check the website, Kanata has it in stock, the other stores do not. No problem, I wait patiently.

This week I check, all stores have it in stock, online shopping still marked as not in stock. Hmmm… not only that but the price has increased to $28.99. I start to check other stores in Ontario and other provinces. They all have it in stock!

I start to get angry, as only someone as anal retentive as myself can. I email customer service. They respond:

Currently, Black Hawk Down (Bilingual) (2001) (Blu-ray) is on special order at our central warehouse. As our store inventory is separate from the inventory at our web store, sometimes a product may be in stock in your local Best Buy Canada retail store, and out of stock on our web store, or vice versa. We understand your frustration, and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

This doesn’t sound right to me, so I ask about converting the order to a store pick-up, since its now in stock. The response:

Once an order is placed for shipment, it cannot be changed to in-store pickup. For an in-store pickup, the product must be in-stock and available in the retail store at the time the order was placed. If you place an in-store pickup order now for this product, it will not be for the sale price. We do not match prices on any past sales, however, the price on your online order number 7073635 will remain at the discounted price when it ships.

I get ever more angry. I question whether it will ship, and point out that I have had other bad experiences, including waiting 3 months for a DVD to ship. I mention that I believe that they are holding up the online orders in hopes that customers who purchased the item at the lower price would get frustrated and cancel their orders. This is not what I believe, but I figured it was the best way to get someone with more authority into the situation.

Cory is replaced with Kris:

We apologize for any inconvenience that you may have experienced and we thank you for your e-mail.

The item in question, Black Hawk Down on Blu-ray DVD, is currently Out of Stock. We are awaiting a shipment of this item from the manufacturer, once we’ve received this shipment your item will be shipped.

Delivery is subject to warehouse availability. Out of stock items will be shipped as soon as possible, upon arrival from the manufacturer/publisher. Please take shipping time into consideration.

For more information please view the following:

http://www.bestbuy.ca/helpsection/EN/online_policies.asp?onlinepoliciesID=1&logon=&langid=EN#delivery

At this point I angrily point out that I am taking availability into account. The exact item is available at every single store in Canada and it should not be a problem to either have one shipped to me, or made available for me to pick it up. I suspect that they can not accommodate this as the online store is operated separately from the bricks and mortar locations. Regardless the fact that their ordering service would let things get into such a situation is simply appalling. I will keep pursuing this to see if I can get something out of the situation. Regardless, I would sincerely advise against shopping at BestBuy.ca