I went to the West-side Best Buy in Madison yesterday to pick up a movie, and I felt like I needed to check out the new “Musical Instruments” section. The plan was to find the movie, check out the new section, and get out. I found the movie, but I couldn’t bring myself to just stroll into the Musical Instruments section. It just felt wrong. Anway, nobody was looking, so I made a break for it. As I entered the showroom, I saw someone trying out an Epiphone Les Paul. The guy couldn’t play a note. He just pressed down all of his fingers on his left hand, as if he was playing Guitar Hero, and tapped at the strings with his right hand. Oh yeah, he was plugged into an amp with tons of distortion. I worked in a music store for almost five years, and we just wouldn’t let that happen. We would have said something subtle like, “Hey dumbass! Put the guitar down before you hurt yourself.”

So, I did my loop to check out the merchandise, and just as I was almost out the door, an over-energetic sales person asked if I needed help. “No thanks!”, and I was gone! Never again! No musician in the right mind would waste their time looking at instruments at Best Buy. If you’re going to take the time to walk into a music store, make sure it’s a local music store. FYI: Guitar Center is NOT local, and is commonly known as the evil empire.

Dear Best Buy,

We should have known better than to purchase a large TV through a big box but at the time, needing instant gratification, we did. That has been our biggest regret since. The 36″ Panasonic has now been out of commission since a week before Thanksgiving–07! We called corporate, they set up a service tech, he came out and didn’t know what was wrong with it. He made a guess at a part rescheduled another service time, came out and it was the wrong part. He ordered two more parts and scheduled yet another service call to which he was so late that we had to go back to work. He had the audacity to put a little tag on our door saying that he was sorry he missed us, we were supposed to be there. Well we needed to go back to work to make money to buy a new TV elsewhere. We called corporate that night and I sat on the phone for nearly an hour 3/4 of it on hold waiting for a manager to speak with me about this situation. She could only rectify the situation by scheduling yet another appointment which got canceled due to the parts not all being in–it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the parts weren’t in therefore they would not have been in on the day that the tech stood us up. We were told we would be contacted again when the parts were in……..that was the week before Christmas…..by the way, it is now the middle of February. I called the Best Buy store located near my house. The only shining light of this whole debacle is that Lindsay was exceptionally helpful and got us scheduled for a tech to come out and fix our TV. She had them schedule an appt. for Feb. 23 but if they could come today, Feb. 16, they would call us and let us know. We received a call on Thursday, letting us know that in fact, someone would call us between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. letting us know when a tech could come out. At 9:30 I called and was told that they have an hour grace period before contacting our tech. GREAT. I called back at 10 a.m. only to be told that there is no tech available today and we need to reschedule.

I don’t think I have every received this atrocious service–EVER. I am curious to know if corporate understands that you can put all of this money into your fancy “Corporate Campus” but if you can’t service worth shit than how do you expect to retain customers. I am now to the point where I am planning on reporting you to the Better Business Bureau as well as contacting Panasonic to let them know that their distributor is running their name through the mud. If I was Panasonic, I would think twice before doubling my order with Best Buy.

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