Now I Wish I Had Dropped it in a Glass of Water...

Three Words (bonus edition)

Best. Buy. Sucks.

Let's just say that I'm having some cell phone related issues, so if you've tried to reach me in the last 24 hrs or so and haven't been able to, I'm sorry, I just haven't been able to get it working. Both of my displays on my phone are gone, so I can't tell who I'm calling, or who's calling me. Good times.

But that's not why Best Buy pissed me off.

I took the phone there (since that's where I bought it) I was armed with my phone and my service plan (which I paid 40$ for last year). I had a planned time table of being able to take care of all of this. It looked a bit like this.

4:00 Drive to Best Buy
4:15 Arrive at Best Buy, stand in line
4:30 Turn over worthless phone, get new phone, proceed to check out.
4:45 Leave Best Buy with new phone, feel good about my 40$ being spent on a service plan that works
5:00 Arrive home

To say that this wasn't even close to what happened would be an understatement. Apparently Best Buy is the worst place ever to shop for anything.

So I go to the store, get right up to the counter (which NEVER happens at this location) and explain the situation to the girl. She then informs me that they don't do cell phone exchanges in store anymore. You have to call the 800 number, and they will send you a replacement and you send the old phone back to them. My conversation w/ the girl went something like this once I found this out--

Me: Why can't I just do it in store, you have the phones right over there...
Her: Because it's store policy now, that they are only done by mail
Me: But this is my only phone, I'm pretty much screwed without it.....
Her: I'm sorry about that, but that's the policy....
Me: But I have a service plan, isn't that what I paid for the plan for, for convienence??
Her: Well yes, and you should have a replacement within a few days.
Me: Okay, but that's the total opposite of convienent.....not having a phone for 3 days? That's not good.......I mean really, I can walk over there and have a phone within 5 minutes...

The conversation rolled like this for a few more minutes, and ended w/me walking out of the store to call the 800#. Once I called that, I found out that my phone is STILL UNDER WARRANTY, and I need to call Cingular, b/c they will be the ones replacing it. Then, I end up on hold with Cingular for 30 minutes. That's right.. a half hour. Upon a lengthy discussion with the representative on what was wrong with my phone (what's wrong with it? It doesn't f'ing work, how about that?) I get informed that it could take 5 days for them to get me a new one. Are you friggin kidding me? Finally, I get him to express ship it to my office, at a cost of 7.50$ to me. I finally resolved this at about 6:15pm yesterday, meaning that something that should have taken a half hour including driving time and cost me nothing but gas money cost me 100 minutes on my phone, 7.50$ for shipping, and a massive headache to get this resolved. Oh, did I mention that I paid 40$ for a service plan through Best Buy that offered me no service? Awesome. (PS, I was able to use my phone to dial out, as long as I have a # to dial, but b/c I don't have a display, all the numbers saved on my phone are worthless)

I hate that store. So. Much.

On the bright side, we won our game on Saturday, and moved to a spectacular record of 4-2 on the season. Also, many thanks again to the Eastsiders who hosted us on Saturday, good times all around, even if I was hungover all day yesterday.