Shortly after, a manager appeared at the register. I quickly noted that her name tag stated she had been a "Team Member Since 1996", much longer than any other present employee. She told me the X-Box would "break" and to not come back to the store if it happened outside of their 30 day return period. Now, many people do feel Microsoft is an awful company and a huge monopoly, but in my experiences they generally produce a good product that lives up to a reputation of high quality, which led me to question her claim.
I would have left right there except I had used a significantly sized gift card to purchase the unit. By now, I was actually surrounded by 7 employees. My friend even yelled, "Why are they cornering you in here?" Doing my best to sound dramatic, since they had completely encircled me, I yelled loudly, "Can I please leave your fucking store?" I made sure to attract to attention to the matter. We finally were able to leave.
My next course of action was to call their corporate offices, something I know from personal experience will ruin a general manager's day. When I explained what happened, the first thing I was told was, "That's impossible, it was New Year's Day, and our stores were closed". Great, incompetence from the get go. After explaining that the retail world functions on New Year's Day, it was still clear I'd have to show her the receipt to make a believer of her, but I moved on. She stated to me that it was company policy to inform its customers of the protection plans, so they had the option to purchase them. I asked if was policy to "Harass the shit out of their customers" and she stated that they usually reiterate their first point to gain clarification. Unsatisfied, I got in contact with the store's general manager. He said that the manager that harassed me would be dealt with but he offered me no real apology or compensation for the terrorizing I had suffered.
Next, I called Microsoft. Surely they would be upset that a major retailer was claiming that their product would catastrophically fail after 30 days. Unfortunately, all the Microsoft rep did was assure me that my X-Box was built to the highest standard.
It's 3 years later and my X-Box performs flawlessly and has never hinted at failure. To this day, I stay away from Best Buy unless they have an unbeatable sale. I give the majority of my business to Circuit City. As a side note, I've worked in a similar retail environment. From August 1999 to April 2000, I was an employee of the business machines department of Staples. We were encouraged to push "Product Replacement Plans" and "Extended Protection Plans" on the premise that they were pure profit. If the product never broke, the store made a pure profit on the sale. For a 40 dollar protection plan, I would get a bonus of 2 dollars. My cut increased proportionally with plan size. As I had read the plans and knew they covered only manufacturing defects and not misuse, neglect, and general wear and tear, I could never bring myself push them on a customer.
You may say that 40 dollars is not a lot of money for a store. But a 1350 dollar computer that we would sell would have a cost of 1300 dollars to the company, so there is only 50 dollars of profit. So with the plan, Staples would make nearly twice as much. The need for Best Buy to push these plans should be obvious. Without them, the company could not survive.
