Bad Moment at Best Buy

Last Friday I had ordered an Ipod Nano from Amazon.  Yesterday I checked to see if it had shipped yet - nope.  In fact it was not expected to ship until sometime today.  Ugh.  So I checked out Best Buy to see if my local store had the one I wanted in stock.  They did, so I cancelled my order with Amazon and drove over to Best Buy.  Years ago, when I purchased my first Nano, all Ipods and MP3 players were located in the same department, not so today.  All Apple products are segregated away from everything else; "beneath the Apple sign," is where I was told to look.

There were 4 sales associates in the department, one was attempting to sell an AirMac to some customers, the other 3 were with customers at the registers.  So, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the time.  I work in retail.  Timely Customer Service is important.  A Sales Associate came walking past me on his way to Small Appliances.  I said "excuse me," and he walked right on by. At 2.5 minutes an associate named Zach left his customer at the register and came over to pick up some paperwork setting near the Ipads.  I asked him if he could get someone to help me and he said he would.  A couple minutes after that another customer entered the department, a man wearing a dirty white T-shirt.  We looked at each other and shrugged, both of us figuring we were both going to have to wait.

How can the be so happy when their customer service sucks?

Four and a half minutes after I had initially talked to Zach, he closed his sale and came walking over.  However, instead of asking me what I wanted, he went to the guy with the dirty white T-shirt. I said "excuse me, I was here first."  His reply was "I called someone to help you."  Did he really expect me to wait until the associate he called showed up?  So I said "excuse me, you're expecting me to wait?"  And he made a face and said, in a snippy tone "well, do you have a question or do you know what you want?"  I told him what I wanted "a space gray Nano."  Of course, no one had the keys for the cabinet.  In fact, Zach had to leave the sales floor to get the keys, most likely from the person he called when I first asked him for assistance.

Best Buy's biggest competitor is Amazon.  They know this.  As such you would think they would demand exemplary customer service skills from their sales associates.  This is an example of rotten customer service.  It didn't ruin my day.  This was just a moment at Best Buy.  Sadly, I wouldn't be surprised if this experience is repeating itself today, for someone else.

Steal this

Lucky me, I'm getting a new Ipod Nano... well, only kind of lucky... well, actually not lucky at all.  You see I had a very nice silver Ipod, 32G, and it got a lot of use.  The operative word here is 'had.'  It was always in either one of two places: my car or on the Bose Ipod player in the living room.  Thursday, when I had my first day off in quite some time, I went to visit my Mom.  As is always the case, when I got in the car I turned on some tunes... or tried to.  I got an error message which notified me that the Ipod was not connected.  Not connected?  I opened up the cubby where it normally sits and... it was gone.  Vanished!  I thought "well, maybe I left it at home," though I was fairly sure this was not the case.  It wasn't.  At that point I pretty well knew what had happened, but I wasn't going to rush to any conclusions, so I did a search.  Everywhere.  I even went so far as to pull the sofa front, and check behind all the cushions, just to make sure one of the dogs hadn't thought they'd gotten a brand, new shiny toy.  No Ipod.

At that point certainty set in.

Shipping Monday

You see on Monday morning, when I went to work, I shoved the Ipod into my pocket to take out to the car, however, don't ask me why, I didn't leave it in the car.  In fact, I'd forgotten it was in my pocket until I was in the building.  No problem, I thought, I can leave it in my locker.  So I put it in my locker, putting it right at the front so I'd remember to take it with me.  Now my locker has lock but I never lock it because I never keep anything of value there, (you know where this is going, don't you?).  And at the end of the day, I threw my apron in my locker and went home, without the Ipod... because it was no longer there.  Now I know I should have locker my locker, but I'll be honest, it never occurred to me one of my fellow associates would be a thief.  And, since I do have a lock and it wasn't locked, I don't have any legal recourse.

My only option was to buy a new Ipod.  This one's a Nano, 7th generation, the case is space gray.  

As for the old one, it has a lot of German stuff on it, and even more French stuff (M. Pokora), the last 4 Kaiser Chief albums, and a lot of Linkin Park.  Nothing Pop.  Nothing Top 10.  And nothing you can really dance to, well I might be able to but most people wouldn't.  Hopefully it will broadening someone's horizo