FRY's Sucks dot com

I had my sister write this up….and I may edit this at some point, but I have a co-worker as a witness to the fact all this actually happened. It is why I will never shop at Fry’s again and instead use Tigerdirect.com for all my networking purposes. The premise is pretty simple….I have a sister who is not very computer literate and asked me to help her out with an external hard drive purchase so she can store her photos (she loves to “scrapbook” and needs tons of pictures to do so effectively). She asked me to help her get an external hard drive because she was getting a memory full error.

Today’s experience in customer service.

I leave for lunch at 12:15 and pick up my brother and his coworker who are in town from Seattle on business. Every time Nick is in town he knows to expect to be my tech support. This visit was no different….well …. Except for the experience at Fry’s.

We arrive at Fry’s about 12:30 and have a sandwich in their deli, do my shopping to pick up an external hard drive and some ink for my printer, and proceed to the check out counter….total time 45 – 50 minutes.

When I get to the check out counter (1:10 – 1:15) my external hard drive and ink cartridge were being rang up together when the clerk (Lani) said she can’t ring up the hard drive because it is a special order item. I let her know that I didn’t think it was a special order item because it is on sale in 3 different places in the store … one of those places being about 3 feet from us in the isle leading up to the registers. She replies that because it is special order she has to go get a tag for it from the hardware department. So off she goes. About 5 minutes later she comes back tag in hand and rings me up again and reads me my total for the two items…she them says … she can’t ring the items together because it was a special order and then proceeds to credit back my credit card for the hard drive and ring up only the ink cartridge which was then signed for, bagged, and my receipt handed to me. At this point Nick who was originally waiting by the door for me comes to see what the hold up is. Lani says she apologizes and is almost finished. Nick and I shrug our shoulders as there is nothing we can really do about it. It is now about 1:25 when Lani rings up the hard drive for the 3rd time and now can’t print my receipt because Fry’s is having a printer problem. At this point I am already getting a bit fidgety as I have been at her counter for 20 minutes to purchase 2 items. The supervisor (Sushma) comes over and ties to print the receipt, not luck so they move to another register and tell me they are going to try to ring it or print it from there….more minutes go by. I am now at the breaking point and ask for them to get a manager and at this point I want them to credit my credit card back because I just need to leave the store. They couldn’t do this either because why…. They didn’t have the original receipt! I now (politely of course) ask for the manager again because I need someone who can just get me out of the store. We are now walking to customer service where the manager should be able to issue a credit to my card and let us leave the store. But no … we (manager, supervisor, clerk, nick, and me) go back to the register where the manager (Christopher) tries to explain that even though they can’t print to the receipt printer they should be able to get all receipts from the register. The supervisor is just not getting it and the manager is also now getting upset. He literally had to tell her if Lani was going home for the day…what would you do.? She says close the register, the clerk say F8, and whallla it clicks. They close the register, all receipts print, and they now have my receipt number to credit my card. The register manager (Phuong) now walks up and Christopher explains to her that her people have no idea what they are doing….she took over and credited AGAIN and I finally saw a receipt with the credit on it. Phuong now wants to ring up the hard drive again, and I again explained I don’t want it now I have been her for 50 minutes, I’d rather just leave and she says but I need to ring you for the hard drive…Nick then say what didn’t you hear…she wants her receipt so we can go and I reiterated that I will not be buying anything from them since it took them 50 minutes to not sell me the product I came for and YES I left without the hard drive.

In comparison … After work I pulled into Best Buy, picked up an external hard drive, checked out with a price discrepancy, and was still out in no exaggeration 7 minutes!

One thing I will note....In the time it took her to write this out, she had all her pictures transferred the esternal hard drive she bought from Best buy. In the past year, both of us (mid to late 30's) have purchase dnew washers and dryers, computers, external hard drives, games, etc... We ARE the TARGET audience.