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Oh, Best Buy! You and your wacky, Gestapo tactics!

why are people still shopping at best buy?

Best Buy's org chart, which places the store manager on the throne of all jack *****, is probably the cause of this and other completely unacceptable company behavior.

Big mistake by Best Buy manager. He should have called Homeland Security & JTTF and proclaimed that the tipper was "terrorizing" customers. You have to use the words, "terror", "terrorist", "terrorizing" and variants thereof. Forget your loacal para-military cops; they are the bottom of the barrel in the Homeland Security power structure.

As stupid as it the manager's reasons might be, when he (or she) asks you to leave and you don't, you're trespassing.

LOL, I work at the Princeton, NJ store part-time, and Tom used to be our manager. He was a cool guy, and I wouldn't expect this from him at ALL. He never did anything irrational like this towards customers, and I never saw him ever treat a customer with anything less then respect. It makes me wonder if the full story is being told. Just putting it out there...

Inaccurate, Alex refused to leave the store when asked. That is trespassing.

FTA: "A sales associate overheard this and told the manager, who asked Alex to leave the store, then threatened to call the police, then did."

This story is suspicious. I'm not sure I buy it. The guy was probably ranting and raving loudly (so loud, in fact, that a service clerk hear him). He also probably made some comment to the clerk before walking away or refusing the leave the store. People have a hard time "remembering" all the facts.

Not to be a downer here, but Best Buy is private property, and moreover, private property aimed at making its owner money. If you cost them business and they ask you to leave, it is completely within their right to do so. Bad for customer service? Yes, for sure. Out of line? Not really.

The headline is incorrect. They didn't call the police because the customer pointed out the headset is overpriced. They called the police because the customer wouldn't leave when requested. That's comparable to a headline of "Walk into Best Buy? Best Buy calls police!".

What's the big deal? Chick was running off customers and "loitering".

Consumerist strikes again trying to blow things out of proportion. When he refused to leave the store at the store managers request, he was then Trespassing, which you can call the police for. Besides complaining to the BBB about shady practices of over charging, BestBuy did exactly what any person would do at their own household.

I'll admit that I didn't read the whole thing because I know that on consumerist we only get one side of the story, but I just need to add that this person says they walked in to bestbuy at 9pm on March 5 2008. That's a Wednesday and bestbuy actually closes at 9pm during the week. So you have a customer who is there after close (likely long after by the time he has struck up a conversation with another shopper blah blah) and probably starts to make a scene. At this point most employees have left the store and there were probably only 2-3 people including the manager. Maybe they felt threatened? That guy is an asshole for walking in at closing time anyways, I hate people who do that.

BestBuy will be the next CompUSA.... RIP

Regardless of if he was asked to leave or not, this is not the kind of publicity Best Buy needs in a semi-recessive economy. There's nothing any of us NEED at Best Buy, it's rows and rows of stuff you can get cheaper on Amazon anyway.

They should have found a way to handle it better is all I am saying.

What amazes me is the fact that a Best Buy rep actually cared to hear what a customer was saying.

Usually those blue shirted place holders are too busy ***** with each other.

They asked him to leave and he refused. Most businesses will call the police if a customer is being disruptive and refusing to leave the business when asked.

We've only got the "victim's" side here, and god forbid he'd ever admit to being unruly or anything but utterly polite. Non-story, especially with no mention of even attempting to contact the store in question. I like quite a few articles from the Consumerist, but even I admit that they have a raging hard-on for bashing Best Buy any chance they get.

I'm beginning to hate The Consumerist more and more each day.

Havent shopped there in years, but I take advantage of all credit card offers. Let them work for me for a change.

I feel like there's more to this story that this guy isn't telling us.

Ah, good old digg sensationalism and inaccuracy.

What are we up to, 5, 6 stories that are marked as inaccurate a day? Someone should plot the proportion of inaccurate stories per day versus the time since digg started (or at least after implementing the "bury as inaccurate" feature). I would bet my life savings it would have a VERY positive slope.

Wacky Best Buy... but all the guy is after is a "huge gift card". I'd make a formal complaint about the manager and never shop there again. But like most consumerist articles it never ends there, the person wants revenge... in free stuff.

I definitely agree something is missing too, Best buy is bad... but that seems a little much even for them.

You know, Best Buy is hardly a perfect store, but in 10 years of going to the two in Columbia, SC, I've never once witnessed anything even remotely similar to 90% of the stories I read about people's bad experiences there. Sure, it's a big box and it's hard to find a sales associate to help you sometimes, and occasionally those sales associates don't know wtf they're talking about, but other than that (which is no worse than any other store I've ever been to), I've had no issues at BB. This leads me to believe that either the manager of Best Buy #370 (Harbison Blvd, where I shop) is either a good manager, or most of these people with "I was treated like garbage at best buy" are a bunch of ***** crybabies with attitude problems and an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.

It doesn't make any difference what the cusotmer was doing or what store policy is. Manager asks him to leave, he's now trespassing. That's it.

Ok, is it just me or did anyone else notice the first sentence of the article refer to Alex as a he and the description of the post as a she?? So which is it? Maybe it was the seemingly crazy, trans-gender shopper that prompted them to call the police, or maybe at Best Buy they are all just a bunch of helmets.

The consumerist is unbelievable in how they'll take a small, store-based situation and exaggerate it to be some corporate scheme to squash the little guys. I work at Best Buy and while I'm not exactly in love with the company, I have NEVER seen any of the things these articles say happen.
There are no "demon" customers, we don't change websites when people come in, we don't carry limited product around in our hands to generate demand, and we sure don't call the cops on people for giving us insight into product.

Am I the only one that realizes sharing a poor product experience with a fellow consumer does not necessarily equate to a loss of sales? Was the jawbone the only headset best buy was selling? I very much doubt they only carry one particular headset. The customer could even choose a nicer, more expensive headset... I don't understand the commotion to be honest.

It's probably pretty stupid customer service, but a company, so long as they don;t run afoul of discrimination laws dealing with public accommodations, can pretty much kick whoever they want out a of store. Don't like shorts, ban them. Think customers should not talk at all, kick them out if they do. Hell you can probably even make fat people pay a surcharge for extra strain on the floor.

Is any of this good business, not in the slightest, but shopping at Best Buy is not a constitutionally protected right.

I have convo's like this when at bestbuy often, mostly started by other people on the same isle as me discussing a product. (not that i actually buy things from there, maybe a movie every now and then) I believe this story is true, bestbuy has horrible tactics, they deserve the bad press that will come from this.

I'm sorry, I hate Best Buy as much as the next guy. But it sounds like there's a side of the story we're not hearing.

The manager asked the guy to leave, him being the manager, he has that right. I don't think it is company policy to do such a thing and I am sure that corporate will take action.
His rights were violated?!?!?!? His rights were not violated. The manager is an agent of the company, the company has the right to kick people out of the store.
I think what the manager did is stupid and should be fired, but calling this a rights violation is stupid.

DON'T SHOP AT A STORE THAT YOU DON'T LIKE, that is a far more effective tactic than calling customer service.
"I'm calling my mom!"

Assuming the story is true...
It would have been smarter for the associate to use it as an opportunity to talk up and sell a different headset to both of them. That could possibly have turned into two sales credited to that associate. However, I'm not so sure we're hearing the entire story either.

While this was completely bogus, and I already dislike Best Buy for my own personal reasons, I don't think the entire company can be blamed for what one manager from one store did. The situation itself however, is outrageous.

inaccurate *****. they didn't call the police for "pointing out" but for the general conflict.

were they asses? sure. but is the story of digg a complete lying scum? definitely.

"I felt like my First Amendment rights were violated" Really? Do you?

I almost hate to point it out, but one of the jawbone models DOES retail at $129.99, $30 above the other models.

Heh, are you kidding me... I always strike up conversations like that when I'm in there... stop some sucker from buying the 150 dollar HDMI cable. No one has ever stopped me.

Gestapo tactics aside...

Doesn't Best Buy price comp just like Wal-Mart? If the headset was cheaper elsewhere, he should have been able to get it for that price. At least I think this is their policy...

Alex spells out his or her real reason for writing this drivel near the end of the article.

"What I really want is a massive gift card because of Tom's flagrant abuse of "policy" and for embarrassing the hell out of me in front of the whole store."

Why does that lady who accused Wendy's of putting a finger in her chili come to mind?

So she wants a "massive gift card" to shop at the same store even after such an experience? WTF

Next time i go to Best Buy I am going to stand in the Monster Cable section and tell everyone that a straightened clothes hanger works just as good