I recently bought a cheapo DVD player at Best Buy for a spare room in my house. (I already had a high-end setup in my family room.) When I got it home, it didn't work properly. You could actually hear something loose inside the case. It had been an "open box" item at the store. I asked what that meant before I bought it and was assured that it just meant it had been opened in the store and not that it was a customer return. The "open box" price, in this case, was $5 less than than the normal price.
When I returned the DVD, I asked to exchange it. They said fine, but they'd have to charge me the extra $5 because they didn't have any more open box items! This could not have been a more stupid customer relations move! I pointed out:
1. The inconvenience of attempting to setup and then having to return the defective machine was worth more than $5 to me.
2. The irritation of waiting in the return line and then having to have an argument when all I wanted was straight exchange was worth more than $5.
The moron store manager then tried to give me some "pat" line they, no doubt, taught him to say in manager school that "he didn't have to do a straight exchange, but he was going to do it for me, but it was really costing the store money to do it". Rather than making me feel grateful for his $5 generosity, it just irritated me more that he was prepared to insult my intelligence with such a stupid gambit. They did the straight exchange, but totally convinced me that I should never buy anything that was actually valuable at that store.
The moral is - you might save some money at these stores if you know exactly what you want, they have it in stock, and it works perfectly when you get it home. However, God help you if you need some advice to make your purchase, or something is wrong with what you bought.
