Dear Mr. Joly,
I've been a loyal Best Buy customer throughout my life, spending easily over $15,000 at your stores, including over $5,000 in this past year. I'd like to relay to you the story of my latest appliance purchase, which devolved into a maze of disappointments, unfulfilled promises, and, ultimately, damage to my home.
On December 1, 2015, I placed an order online for a custom panel ready Bosch 800 Series dishwasher. We recently purchased a new home in need of some appliance refreshing, and with two young children in our home (including a new baby), everything is going to receive a workout on a daily basis.
The ten-year old Asko dishwasher was the first to go. Naturally, its degradation came just before the holidays, when we planned to host my wife's entire family as guests in our home for a week. The scheduled December 16 delivery could not come soon enough.
The night before scheduled delivery -- December 15, at 9:11 PM, I received an email informing me that delivery was being rescheduled for December 28. I scrambled -- we needed a dishwasher to accommodate the increase in demand about to be placed on our home, and to ensure we had a functioning dishwasher after that.
I called customer service late on December 15, as soon as I received the email, and was told that although my chosen dishwasher would now not be in stock and available for delivery until December 28, if I picked another dishwasher I might be able to get the install before the 22nd when family arrived. I browsed online while the customer service rep patiently waited, and when I identified a custom panel ready GE Profile, I was told that you had it in stock and that all I had to do was go to my local best buy store to place the order and schedule delivery.
The next day, on December 16, I took a break from my work day and went to a local best buy in Madison Heights, MI. I cancelled the Bosch order entirely and submitted a new order for the GE Profile. It was not until after the sale, when the sales representative went to the system to schedule my delivery, that I was informed that the GE Profile would not be available for installation until December 29. My original purpose -- to be able to handle holiday family, meals, and more was completely dashed.
We braved it through holidays on the old dishwasher, which cleaned sporadically and poorly. We spent countless time handwashing pots and pans on a daily basis (not the best way, you can imagine, to end each night during what is supposed to be family time).
Our sights became set on the December 29 date. And, on the night of December 28 at 6:31 PM, I received an email telling me that my delivery and installation the next day would occur between 1 to 5 PM. I moved work plans around to ensure that I could be home.
When I woke up the next morning, I found an 11:26 PM email cancelling my appointment and rescheduling for January 6, 2016. Deja vu, all over again. We just wanted a dishwasher.
On January 5, we received an email confirming a 3 PM - 7 PM delivery window on January 6, and on the morning of January 6, because we had waited for so long and had so many appointments cancel on us, I called your customer service center to confirm the appointment and provided my cell number so that the installing tech could give a call ahead. My wife took off the second half of the day to meet your technician, but he never showed up.
I called your customer service center on the morning of January 7 to inquire about the no show and was told that the driver "tried to call me" but received no answer -- he used a years-old work phone number despite the fact I had called in and explicitly provided my cell phone number to your customer service team. The cell number has long been on my customer profile, and I'd imagine it would be perfectly reasonable to try both in the event he couldn't reach the first. But, by this point, I'd set the bar low for your logistics capabilities.
Customer service rescheduled me for a delivery the following week, January 13. This is where the story goes from challenging our patience to outright maddening. On January 13, neither I nor my wife were unable to be at home, but my mother came to our home to let in the technician. All I can say for this encounter is that, at least he showed up.
At installation, the service technician could not figure out how to shut the water off under our kitchen sink in order to remove the dishwasher. He suggested that he had to shut off the entire water main to the house but that, if he did so, he couldn't vouch for its effect on our home. He called me from my mother's phone (FaceTime, actually) and suggested that the main shut off would allow him to conduct installation but that I should have a professional plumber come review both the under sink and main shut off valves to ensure that my whole house had running water on the back end. I gave him the go ahead to shut off the main water and scrambled to find a plumber that could be at my home within 30 minutes. The technician removed our old dishwasher for tow away service and prepared to install the new dishwasher. When he took it out of its crate, it was severely damaged, including multiple dents to the front, sides and back of the dishwasher (several of which appeared rusted, suggesting the damage happened some time ago and that the underlying metal had had some prolonged exposure). I have pictures if you need them. The technician had reason to believe the control panel was damaged and decided not to install the dishwasher. In removing the old dishwasher, however, he damaged that unit as well, and it was not capable of reinstallation. He turned the main water back on and made notes regarding the damage to the new dishwasher and left our home -- and we were left without a dishwasher!
The plumber came just after the Best Buy technician left and confirmed the water main was providing water to our home. He checked the kitchen under-sink water shutoff to ensure that the lever functioned for the next Best Buy tech that would eventually show up with a working dishwasher. Apparently, the lever -- which was no different than any other under-sink lever the plumber had ever seen -- had not been intuitive to the Best Buy tech.
To compound matters, later on the night of the 13th, while we were hand washing dishes in the sink, the cabinet under the sink began furiously leaking water all over the kitchen floor, with chunks of food in the water. I sopped it up with towels and inspected the area but could not find the source of the leak. I also went to my finished basement to see if any water came through the ceiling, and quite a bit did find its way through, pouring out of my recessed lighting and onto our basement carpet. I vacuumed and towel dried the area. The light occasionally flickers, the carpet was stained, and I still have concerns to this day that food may have leaked into the ceiling along with the water, leaving us with a growth source for mold in the ceiling area.
Because I could not find the source of the leak, I ceased using the kitchen sink immediately and called the plumber on the morning of January 14 to return to our home -- he could not come until the next day, however. When he did return on January 15, he found that the installing technician had taken the hose that runs from the the back of our undersink garbage disposal that leads to the dishwasher with him when he departed, leaving an unplugged hole from which water and food was escaping. None of us had previously noticed the hole because it was on the back of the unit, and our focus when inspecting had been on the pipes and under-sink shut off lever's integrity. The plumber capped off the disposal with a seal that could be opened when a dishwasher ultimately was available for install. Of course, I paid for all of the plumber's time.
I called Best Buy on January 14 to reschedule yet another installation of yet another unit. We scheduled a January 19 delivery, but, to no great surprise at this point, on January 18, I was informed that we would be delayed yet again until February 2nd. For that stretch -- three weeks from January 13 to February 2 -- we were left with no dishwasher and an otherwise gaping hole in our kitchen. We sealed off the hole for child safety purposes and once again resigned ourselves to washing dishes and bottles by hand (and boiling/sterilizing the bottles on our stovetop) for the entire time.
During that three week stretch, I worked with a customer representative named Ana {removed per forum guidelines}, from your New Jersey call center, who gave a great deal of attention and effort to righting the long list of wrongs to date. She attempted to rush a dishwasher from a Florida warehouse to Michigan for installation by January 19 but was told "by corporate" that the rush could not be approved; she sent a check for the $125 in plumbing expenses that I had incurred (and asked me to keep her up to date on the carpet stain damage and to monitor my home for mold damage that might occur, for which I might be able to be reimbursed); she called the day before and day of installation on February 2 to ensure the unit scheduled for installation that day actually arrived, undamaged.
On February 2nd, a dishwasher did arrive, and my wife was home to oversee the installation. The unit delivered that day also had damage to the rear of the unit's housing, as well as the inner door's seal, which the installing technician said presents the possibility of water intrusion over time. On his recommendation, we kept that unit at our home but, yet again, scheduled for a replacement unit to be ordered and delivered February 23. At least we had a functioning dishwasher again, even if it was just a black box in a hole in our white kitchen cabinetry (we did not put the custom panel, trim, or any other final finishes on, since it would eventually have to be torn off when the replacement arrived). Doing dishes was no longer an hours-a-day chore in our house, at least.
On February 23, after almost three months of waiting and countless intrusions on our time and resources, we finally received a fully functioning, non-damaged dishwasher. I'm completely spent from the process, and I'm now at the point where I'm planning to replace our basement carpet and the light in the ceiling, but at least we have a lovely model dishwasher (even if the springs aren't strong enough to hold the front panel -- I'm shuddering at the prospect of a service call to help pull the dishwasher back out and put on the stronger spring set).
This is not the customer experience I have come to expect from your company, and I imagine it's not an experience you'd be proud of sharing with all the people that do work hard to support your organization, or the hundreds of thousands of other customers considering patronizing your appliance showroom.
Although I have several additional major appliance and electronics purchases to make this year -- washer and dryer, foremost, more A/V equipment eventually -- I have doubts about progressing down a road of supply chain, installation and customer service failures again. I'm asking that you find a way to right that perception, to compensate me for the damage to my home, and to convince this longtime customer to remain one for life, and to ensure that this otherwise cautionary tale for anyone that might similarly place their trust in a Best Buy appliance purchase can instead be resolved with a happy ending.
I thank you for your consideration and looking forward to your reply,
Lando
(Yes, I've sent a hard copy of this letter to Best Buy HQ, addressed to Mr. Joly.)