So you neglect to describe how that customer was treated when they arrived. My experience with Best Buy managers is that they are unavailable and uninterested in customer service (and I am being kind). So we dont really know how they got to the point of an outrageous request from the customer.
In my experience, if you (manager) are ready to offer some compensation that diffuses the customer. Most Best Buy managers come looking for a fight. That is, if you can actually get to the store manager these days.
I'm not sure how they were treated by customer service initially, but I can absolutely tell you that the GM will always take concerns face to face if requested. In the event that the GM is not in (all management already works 50 hour weeks and expecting s GM to be on call at all times would push their weeks well about 90 hours) there is a designated manager on duty that has authorization to take all issues. Generally that manager on duty is one who is being looked at as a potential general manager in the coming years.
I can only go by what my wife tells me. And believe me, I've had bad experiences at Best Buy as well, so I'm speaking against my wife's employer here, but I can guarantee you the customer wasn't treated like trash, at least in the instance. I'm also unsure how poorly one must be treated on a $60 pickup to expect a $400 item to be your compensation. For me to expect $400 "for my time" I would have to be physically and verbally abused, but I guess we are all different in our expectations.
My point was, plenty of people have unreasonable expectations. Expecting a $400 vacuum, which I will repeat, isn't even related to the original product ordered, is simply asinine.
Obviously I'm biased with how my wife treats people because, well, she is my wife, but I do know that she does hand out quite a few courtesy gift cards, and when she tells me at the end of the day how her day was, and shares a problem customer, I often tell her that she was too nice (there have been occasions where I've said "all he wanted was $20 and you didn't give it to him?"). Just this morning she was telling me about a customer who brought in an expired (three months ago) rewards coupon and she honored it no questions asked (and the customer was still pissed off because "they shouldn't expire in the first place")
My wife tends to get moved to "problem stores" that have been managed poorly for a while. This is her second move in three years to help start turning the store around. The last store where she worked went from among the last in the district to literally the top. They actually won a trip to Puerto Rico last year and she was pissed because she had just transferred to her new store and that made her ineligible. So she (and I) completely understand that there can and will be problems with management; her current position place of employment happened because of problems with management.
But, the take home here is, as has been suggested many times in this thread, if you have an issue with a store, a manager, employee, etc. bring it to the top. My wife is always happy with feedback. You know why? Because a crazy customer with asinine requests and remarks is pretty damn transparent. If you leave a ****** review and it's clear you're just hating because you feel you're the most important and most entitled person on earth, the employee you just slammed may get s talking to, but to won't go beyond that. Because consumer relations recognizes that their are tons of idiot customers in existence. On that same token, if an employee is consistently receiving bad feedback, it will absolutely get looked into.
It amazes me how many people (and I'm not implying anything about you here, just the thread in general) jump straight to the conclusion of "you want to get then guy fired?!!??!?" When talking about leaving feedback. Not many companies deal with their employees constantly in the razors edge where sneezing at the wrong time gives you the boot. Best Buy, occurring to my wife, is actually very forgiving, and one of the reasons she hasn't picked up three times the help she has already for the upcoming holiday season, is because hiring an inept fool is easy, firing them, not so much.
In unsure where you shop, but if it's anywhere in the New England area and you have issues I am happy to try and help. Nobody likes to hear that their employer has terrible customer service, and my wife aims to fix that. But these things can't be fixed without good feedback.
