Shopping Disaster

While I normally only deal with clothing and accessory shopping, when i saw this article I had to comment on it:

A woman took her laptop to best Buy to repair it because she had purchased their $300 three-year warranty. Rather than repairing it they "lost" it - most likely an employee stole it is what it looks like, and then gave her the run-around for months as different customer service people with the report in front of them that the computer was "missing" continued to tell her it was in the process and would be ready for return shortly.

So, now she is suing Best Buy for $54 million. She says she doesn't expect to get that, but when the store finally admitted the computer was gone and only offered her a $500 gift card she was understandably upset. That doesn't cover the computer, software or music she lost, it's hardly more than the freaking warranty. She chose the dollar amount because of the story last year where a guy sued a dry cleaners for $54 million when they lost his pants. You might recognize that story from the recent Law and Order about it, of course they made it much juicier - related to a corporate cover up of the distribution of poisonous chinese-made toothpaste. Gotta love Law and Order. I could watch it all day, in fact i have done that on many occasions.

Anyway... back to the matter at hand, awful shopping experiences. It's true, interest in customer service has taken a nosedive in many places but from the comments attached to the story, it seems that it is actually a corporate strategy to screw people this way. I had hoped that was more of a wacko conspiracy theory, but apparently not.

So take that all of you with a Y chromosome that visit and can't believe how small my TV is. I prefer to buy things that don't require a warranty - like shoes.