Best Buy Misleads Customers with Secret Web Site

According to this story from the Hartford Courant, Best Buy has used an intranet-hosted shadow version of its consumer web site to sometimes deny customers advertised prices. When someone would ask for a given Internet-advertised price, employees would see the same site on their computers, showing only the higher usual cost. As George Gombossy, author of the article, writes:

"Although Best Buy also refused to talk with me on specifics of the intranet site or its use, it insisted that its policy is to give customers the best price."

I guess the question is best for whom? This story puts a new light on a previous experience I had, both trying to purchase something from Best Buy and documenting it as part of an article for CMO Magazine. I don't think it's available online, so I'm posting it here:

Best Buy Customer Retention

Sometimes customers stop being statistics and poor systems drive customers away. Shortly before Christmas, I was trying to purchase an electronics gift for a kid. Having good experience with Best Buy stores in the past, I tried them online.

The company’s e-commerce system lets customers specify a pick-up store. As time was getting tight, I took that option. Three stores near me were out of stock, but one in Boston had the item. I placed the order and everything was fine – for about half an hour. Then I receive an email explaining that the store actually didn’t have the product. So I called customer service - my only choice for resolving the issue. The product is now in a store right outside of Boston. My order confirmation comes through – then the out of stock notice.

I’m back on the phone, a service representative apologizing because their systems only think that there’s stock, and a real human at the particular store checks, then sends the email in case of trouble. But I’m in luck, as a store me has a unit. But … wait. Wasn’t that one of the stores that didn’t have inventory this morning?

Technically, yes, but the system says that it is there. Perhaps someone made a return. No matter: the order is changed and the confirmation comes. And then the out of stock notice.

I’m starting to understand how a customer can go from pleased to pissed in a New York minute. Back to the phone, back to someone telling me that one of the other local stores has what I need. At this point, I trust nothing and no one at the company, so I cancel my order.

In comes the confirmation. And then another note: “Have you ever thought of getting a Best Buy Gift Card? It can be the perfect gift for that impossible to shop for person.” There was probably one at a store near me. Or not.

The point of this story is not to complain, but to see how a series of mistakes can lose a customer and create bad word of mouth. Best Buy obviously had some sort of retention system in place. Unfortunately, it was focusing on the order, not the customer.

We tried to reach Best Buy for a comment and got as far as a corporate PR type who had someone call me: not an authoritative source for the story, but someone who handles customer complaints, and that only turned into a series of traded voice mails.

The moral of the story? When a retention program is really for the money, and not the customer, a company is likely to lose both.