Best Buy sells tiles instead of hard drive; Manager says "too bad"

this is great! Didn’t that other guy get a tv dropped on his head at best buy?

I used to work at Best Buy and you would be seriously surprised how many people come in claiming that there was something else in the box when there was not. It is impossible to prove that they didnt take it out and just put those in there.

That’s funny. I went to home depot to buy a box of tile to finish my bathroom and inside was a hard drive!

I was taking a crap the other day, looked up, and noticed to my surprise that my entire bathroom was finished in SATA hardrives! Talk about a terra-bite…

Wonder how the date and origin of that newspaper relates to the date and location of the transaction – assuming that the tiles were wrapped in the newsprint…

I agree. I’ve worked in retail before and people pull all kinds of crap in trying to rip off a big retail chain. I have an easier time believing that the guy was trying to pull a scam that someone at the manufacturer packaged a box to tiles instead of a hard drive. In an assembly line, with lots of people around, I don’t see how that is very likely.

I think the Store Manager was right in refusing the return. It’s too fishy.

A buddy of mine used to work at Circuit City before they put sensors on HDs. He used to tell me that there was a time when they found bricks in multiple hard drive packages.

That’s just Western Digital’s new “Perpendicular Tiling” technology for slower data access…. or he just got a bricked drive. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

i had this happen to me several years ago at best buy. went to buy a HUGE 120gb western digigal, but when i got home i found a 3gb seagate drive. i immediately went back to return it, but was also told i was out of luck. after a good six months of hassle american express flexed their muscle and bb eventually returned it, but it was an ordeal and bb was most definitely not helpful.

Maybe it should be a best practice: Any time you buy a high-dollar item like a hard drive from a big-box retailer, OPEN IT AT THE RETURN DESK before you leave. Think I’ll start doing this myself, just in case.

No mention if the box still had the shrink wrap on it when he bought it? I find it hard to believe a guy who got caught in a scam would risk being changed with fraud. Chances are someone already pulled the scam and Sam just happened to be the guy who picked up the box after BB put it back on the shelf after the first time it was returned.

Best Buy has good security. They are supposed to check returns as well. I know that they wouldn’t re-shrink wrap a return without checking it. So it’s very obvious that Sam is just full of crap.

Umm, it’s really easy to explain. Someone bought the drive, took it out of the box, put tiles in the box, used a shrink-wrap machine to re-shrink wrap the box, and Bestbuy accepted the return no-questions asked (because it was shrinkwrapped). Another possibility is they used a razor to open shrinkwrap carefully, and then used clear tape / glue to close it up. That happened to me at Wal-Mart with a video game. It happens a lot. See the iPod-Target box of rocks stories.

It’s also why I buy almost everything with credit cards. Threatening a dispute is a good way to get them to back down because not only do they not get paid, they pay $40 to the credit card company for having a dispute filed.

Either way that’s pretty damn stupid and shouldn’t have happened in the first place and I feel for all you guys that had that happen to you.

This has happened to me before, years ago I had bought a DVD, and when I took it home, it was scratched, so I took it back to exchange it. The new DVD I happened to pick up, had two cd-roms in it, instead of the DVD. I was standing in the doorway of Best Buy when I opened it, and as soon as I saw it I went straight back inside, and they wouldn’t let me return it.

I own a small Greek music shop in Chicago, so I know that dealing with the public can be a little tricky, but damn those few people who get away with pulling one over on companies such as Best Buy.. they mess things up for the rest of us.

This is the main reason when I purchased highend equipment or really anthing over 50.00$ that I photographed it STILL IN THE BOX in the shipping carton & everything. I actually purchased a laptop from a BB store one time that was supposed to be one model & when I opened it up it was a much lesser expensive model!! I think the only reason I had no problem in exchanging it was because the store had on record that it has been purchased once before I purchased it & so they exchanged it without hesitation. Now I can’t imagine a manufacturer making the same mistake but people DO make mistakes & so do machines so there is STILL the possibility that the wrong merchandise was put in the original shipment or WORSE that the employess are stealing & the customer is the one getting the shaft at the retail outlet end.

Why don’t they use clear packaging for high-dollar items. You see it with other items like headphones etc.

Why can’t hard disk packaging have some sort of see-thru area on the packaging so you can see if there’s a drive in there. Same with digital cameras and MP3 playsers

I agree with Monkey. Somebody I know was able to pull that same trick off on a target near him a few weeks ago. The retailers should do their duty and check returns before taking it back and the customer should check the product they’re buying if it’s used or restocked.

i work in best buy and in my store we dont sell returned hard drives.. and in buffalo no one is smart enough to open it and shrink wrap it again to return it. i work in the cell phone dept and we always get customers that say when they get home their cell phone has a scratch or the battery didnt come with it… but we have to inspect and activate the phone and make sure its working before they leave the store

I work in retail as well and I can tell you that people DO try to pull scams on a daily basis, but when they fail they say “crap” and go to the next store… They don’t go home and make a big thread on a public forum nor complain about it with the assistant manager, store manager, district manager, etc.. because they’re really not losing anything. I do belive this story, I bought a car stereo from Best Buy that to my surprise was completely damaged and missing pieces and they refused to issue a refund. Best Buy’s ethics and customer service are ultimately poor.

I presently work at a Best Buy store and in defense of Best Buy, I think “Sam” is trying to rip Best Buy off. “Sam” is angry because he is trying to play the part of the “Innocent Customer”, that got ripped off when in reality, “Sam” is probably the person that bought the drive and put the tiles in himself. What he is angry at is that we caught him trying to pull the scam. It would simply be called “two for the price of one.”

Sam, don’t mess with Best Buy. Take your stupid little games to Circuit City or Fry’s and QUIT making slanderous statements about where I work.

well this happened not to me but to someone I was working for. I used to fix computer and I had one of my customers go to Circuit City and buy a new drive for his computer. I went to his house opened the shrink wrapping and found was a drive with the label of what he had bought but not the drive. I know he did not do anything and I didn’t do it. So someone must have returned it or the employees replaced. Also I used to work for compusa back in the day and the head of security got busted for just that replacing returns with junk.