Best Buy Fail

The title of my blog entry is redundant, but anyway...

A few weeks back, the plastic molded housing to my LCD TV's optical out fell out of the TV. We've had the connector basically just sitting loose in a square opening (fortunately the sound still works). I took the great Clark Howard's advice and bought the Best Buy service protection plan when I got the TV, and this is the kind of thing that's covered, so I gave them a call on Monday to get a tech out to fix the TV.

I get a very nice, polite woman who speaks with me about my problem and potential scheduling dates. I describe the problem ("The plastic opening fell out yada yada"), and tell her that we can only have a tech visit on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday between 8 am and 12 pm. "No problem Mr. Codemunkee, we'll have the scheduling department call you to confirm the date." Thinking that was the end of it, I hung up.

No call yesterday, but the agent said it would be 1 - 2 days before I'd get a call so I thought nothing of it.

The nanny came by this morning and I left for work... and I get a call from the nanny, who proceeds to tell me that Best Buy called and the tech is on his way. Now, I didn't want the tech over when our new nanny, who is only 21, was looking after my son, who isn't feeling 100% today anyway... and possibly making for a stressful situation; my son is shy and I didn't want him to get stressed out over all the strange people in the house and neither Mommy or Daddy around to make him feel better. Cut me some slack before you laugh at that - he's only 15 months old...

So i call Warranty Services. Amber apologizes then lies to me and says that someone from the scheduling department called yesterday. This is not true. I don't mention the lie, but she did rattle off the times I said I was available. At which point I said, "Well, even if scheduling left a message, why would they send a tech out without confirming the appointment with a live body AND on the date I specifically said he could NOT visit?" She didn't have anything to say to that.. and I know its not the tech's fault and I wanted to talk to him directly so I ask for his number. She volunteers to connect me directly and I wait on hold again.

She comes back on the line and says "I just spoke with the tech and he said he will be there at 8:15." At this point I just ask her to please connect me with the tech (irritation obvious in my voice). She does, and I get Andy. I ask Andy if he has information on the reason for his visit, and he tells me, and I quote, "Optical out ain't workin'". I know the call center people just screwed this whole thing up so I tell him exactly what I told the first person... and he laughs like this is SOP when dealing with Best Buy and I find out that in his opinion the main board needs to be replaced.

All this over a tiny piece of plastic.