Have you ever experienced an event so surreal that you half expected a camera crew led by a guy in a suit to pop out from nowhere – telling you to “smile, you’re on Candid Camera?” Or a situation so ridiculous that for a moment you figured that Ashton Kutcher and the MTV crew had stopped “punking” celebrities only?

I can only imagine that that’s how Alex, a Best Buy shopper, must have recently felt. You see, Alex evidently did not realize that it is best to keep your opinion to yourself when shopping at the East Brunswick, NJ location.


photo courtesy of Wikipedia

According to an email she sent to The Consumerist, Alex went to Best Buy to replace the Jawbone Bluetooth headset she had recently purchased with another, because the Jawbone “wasn’t cutting it.”

While browsing the headsets, she struck up a conversation with another customer who was checking out the Jawbone. Alex told her fellow customer that she had been disappointed in the quality of the Jawbone, and that Best Buy was charging $30 more than the manufacturer or Verizon. A sales associate overheard this and told the manager, who asked Alex to leave the store, then threatened to call the police, then did.

[Emphasis added by me]

Think about this for a moment.

How many times have you been browsing items in a store and found yourself chatting with someone in the same section. It happens, right? And what if you said something mildly derogatory about a particular product – one you had personal experience with – or you mentioned where it could be purchased for substantially less money, and a store employee decided that by doing so, you were being “disruptive”…and they called the cops on you!

The story only gets better.

When confronted by Tom, a store manager, to leave, Alex decided to instead call Best Buy corporate to complain from the store, with a number given to her by Tom. Since she wasn’t leaving, Tom directed another employee to call the cops, who arrived while she was waiting to speak to someone at corporate. Things got embarrassing fast…

Two cops and about four Best Buy associates in tough guy poses stood at the front of the store, obviously creating a dramatic scene. I was calmly waiting for a customer service rep to pick up the phone. I gave up on the customer service line, got the store’s phone number and Tom’s full name and title and left as per police request.

When Alex got home and finally reached Daniel, a Best buy customer service supervisor, “he was shocked and appalled at Tom’s actions. Daniel confirmed that Tom COULD have asked [her] to leave, had [she] been disruptive, then stated that Tom had no right to police a conversation between two customers, regardless of what was said.”

Near then end of her email, Alex asks “What steps can I take to get Best Buy to make a customer happy, formally apologize, and give me a free gift card?”

Hmmm, that would have to be a pretty big gift card to get me to re-enter a store where I had been humiliated like that. How about you?

via Consumerist [thanks Mike]

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