My son and I went to Best Buy to purchase a computer for his room. We stood there and listened to a sales person speaking to a married couple and, after a while, he also started addressing himself to my son and I also. He said, "Don't worry" when they said they would have to come back later, "we have plenty of these." What we were talking about was a lower end Gateway that had 2GB of memory and a 300 gig hard drive. Since that was the machine that had a special to upgrade the monitor package to a 19" monitor, and I would be locking down his hard drive anyway, it was a perfect computer for a 10 year old. When I went up to the counter, the girl working there walked off and came back 1 minute later and said, "Nope, we don't have this model, but you can order it." I asked her is they could sell me the one they had out there and was told "no." Then I asked her if she could give me a better deal on the more expensive model one step up as the only "upgrade" it had was more emory (the kid sufs the internet) and a bigger hard drive (extra 100 gig locked down) she said "nope." She restated that I could "order one." When I told her that I could "order" a computer from my place of employment with an employee didcount, I was told by her, "Well then, go do that." in a very sarcastic kind of way. I asked to speak to a store manager. The girl turned to a short black man and asked him to call the store manager, "unless you want to deal with this" he said "no" and called someone on a walkie.
A nice, younger white man appeared and appologized for the employee's lack of knowledge that that model was discontinued and said that they would sell me the one on the shelf with the 19" upgrade for a "discounted price" because it was a floor model. OK, problem solved right? O-so-wrong... The short black man starts spewing to me that it was NOT the employee's fault, that they should not have to know "every computer in this department" and would not let me speak. So as his voice got louder mine did too... Finally I said, whatever, just give me the computer and let me get out of here... It was at this point that he told me that HE was the "store manager" (which is REALLY odd seeing as he was working in the department that wasn't all that busy, and that he passed me off to the white man and never bothered to get involved till after the nice man left.) He informed that he "Do not WANT to sell you this computer" and that I sould "leave"... He then told me that I could "talk to myself" and walked away saying "lalalalala" like a complete fool. He yelled at me across the isles and told me to "leave" again...
I contend that Best Buy did this on purpose and when he knew that the store manager wanted to sell me the floor model he wanted it for himself or one of his freinds and contrived this rediculous arguement to prevent my buying the computer. I contend that Best Buy is racist and that this man who claimed to be the Store manager was nothing more than a department supervisor (his badge did NOT say manager) and if Best Buy is stupid enough to hire people of this quality they should be going out of business any day now.
I went to and purchased a better computer but had to pay more money. They were polite and had a logical explaination for why they were out of an item and told me that from the start. They knew their product, stock and knew about computers.
Shame on Best Buy...
Nancyj
Taylor, Michigan
U.S.A.
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