My worst experiences with a business have occurred at Eau Claire's Best Buy store. I've lived most of my life in the Eau Claire area but have traveled extensively throughout the country and I can honestly say that this is the worst store, not even just electronics store, I've ever dealt with. Their staff is very rude and profane. I once witnessed a male worker there stare for 15 seconds at a young female patron's butt as she walked by, I told him that was inappropriate and he stated, ""So, go tell my supervisor."" After much searching, I come to find out there were no supervisors around and I left very disguised.
On a subsequent visit, I was walking past two younger male employees and overheard them talking about ""wanting to ""do"" someone"", I saw them staring in a certain direction and was appalled to see them referring to a young, probably underage, girl who was looking at cell phones with her mother. I immediately informed a supervisor of this, his action you may ask, he had me fill out a comment card and gave me the generic 1800 number to corporate, how crazy is that?!
Not only is their staff disgusting, but their policies and procedures they hide behind and try to sell you are equally as bad. They charge $99 to copy and paste your pictures from your computer to a cd, for many, that takes less than 3 minutes using a 35 cent cd, some states call this extortion. Also, they use scare tactics to make you buy their overly priced extended warranties. Their warranties are terrible too. One warranty is no more than an extended factory warranty which only covers faulty parts or craftsmanship, but no accidental damage, and their accidental damage warranty, which is a lot more expensive by the way, only covers ""normal"" accidents, so that means if you drop your phone and it breaks that's not covered because that's not ""normal"", but if your keyboard gets wet, that's covered because that's ""normal."" Read the fine print they tell you. Even more crazy, if something breaks and it;s covered under warranty, you must bring it, so if your 100 lbs flat screen breaks, you must bring it in, then they ship it to the Twin Cities for repairs and then ship it back. For the 5 things I've had to do this for, the quickest it came back was 3 weeks! Oh wait, but now they have their geek squad white glove service where they'll come to your house for repairs, but they still take your device with them for several weeks if they can't fix it at your house and for this service they make you pay upwards of 30% the original cost of your item, that's like you buying a car for $30,000 and having to pay the dealership right away $10,000 in case something happens to it within the next 2 years, just crazy!
Lastly, unlike a normal store, when you buy something you take it to the cash register and pay for it, but here you get a warranty pitch by the salesman, then they ""must"" bring the computer/tv/camera to the geek squad for some reason or another they say, but really it's so the geek squad can try to sell you on the warranty again! I feel bad for some people who are strong enough to resist the salesman but cave to the geek squad guy only because Best Buy gives them some false sense of security like they're actual computer experts, which they aren't. Best Buy doesn't require any formal computer training or education for the Geek Squad people, only on-the-job training and some proprietary Best Buy training courses so they can flash you a fake certification when you question their qualifications.
I'm not against all Best Buys, but steer clear of Eau Claire's because they are the worst of the worst. Their profane predatory staff are as bad as their crazy predatory sales techniques.
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