I realized that I never said what I got myself for my birthday! (Actually, I was reminded that voting isn't any fun if you don't find out the results...)
And the winner was . . .
None of the above. The occasion arose where I needed a new cell phone so I ended up with this beauty:
It's so pretty...
On the way out to the parking lot after work, I decided that 3 weeks was long enough to fix the fan on a laptop... So I gave Best Buy a call to find out exactly what happened to my computer.
I dialed the phone, pressed 5 for the department list, pressed 3 for customer service, and pressed 2 for the Geek Squad. Then I proceeded to listen to the phone ring ... and ring ... and ring. For 2 minutes. Why would I wait that long, you might ask? Because for most companies if someone doesn't answer the phone after a certain length of time you get passed back to the operator! Best Buy? Apparently not.
So I called 1-800-Best-Buy and proceeded to press 2 for customer service, then pressed 5 for whatever else, followed by an obscene number of button presses to get to a live person. Once I finally got to a live body the operator proceeded to inform me that I had to speak to the people at the store where I got the service. Where I was just sitting on ring for 2 minutes...
Once I got to my car I decided that it was time to give Best Buy another call - maybe I just hit them at a bad moment. So I call, press 5, then 3, then 2 (of course) and FINALLY got a live body! Woohoo! And what did that live body say? "Thank you for calling the Best Buy Geek Squad! Can you please hold for a moment?" He didn't even let me get out my "no" before he put me on hold. So I held... and I held... and I held some more. Since the drive home is almost the same as the drive to Best Buy I decided that I would start to drive home and if I hadn't heard anything by the time the routes diverged that I would just go to Best Buy and try to talk to someone in person.
So I drove... and I held... and I continued to hold the whole way to Best Buy. Now one might ask "Erin, how did you know that they hadn't just hung up on you?" Aside from the TERRIBLE jazz-ish-wannabe music, my cell phone continued to tick up the minutes as I sat on hold.
Once I parked, got out of the car, and got in line for the Geek Squad service line I decided it was time to run a social experiment on lower end retail service. So I kept the phone on hold, walked up to the counter and was immediately served by a nice gentleman who was messing with a computer that another customer had clearly left to be backed up.
Now, don't get me wrong. The guy was doing something. The issue I took with the situation was that he was helping the customer who was nowhere in sight - all while leaving another live customer hanging on the phone. I could see my little light blinking on their phone and actually saw one of the service guys walk by, look at the phone blinking, and continue walking straight by. He didn't help another customer... He just walked up to his buddy and started chatting about the day and the other customers they had seen so far.
So I continued to hold on the phone, proceeded to pick up my laptop from the nice gentleman, and walked back out to my car. I held... drove home... and continued to stay on hold. Amazing. They finally answered the phone - 45 minutes later!
The only words out of my mouth? "Thanks for letting me hold, may I speak to a manager, please?"
Jerk heads. I realize that they aren't paid anything and that the majority of the time all they catch is flack, but COME ON!!! 45 minutes on hold without any indication that I'll be helped at all??? No thanks. I'll just take my business elsewhere next time.
Grr.
