Best Buy screw-up means customers won’t be getting all their presents by Christmas

Some shoppers are having a very frustrating holiday season, thanks to retailer Best Buy. Some of their gifts aren’t going to make it in time for Christmas, according to Moneyland.

In what can only be explained as a complete “Grinch” move, Best Buy has announced that there’s a good chance that those holidays orders you placed online won’t make it to the recipients in time for Christmas, three days before the holiday.

Oops.

Best Buy offered up this statement, as if it makes a difference to those affected:

Due to overwhelming demand of hot product offerings on BestBuy.com during the November and December time period, we have encountered a situation that has affected redemption of some of our customers’ online orders. We are very sorry for the inconvenience this has caused, and we have notified the affected customers.

Sorry for the inconvenience? Sorry my ass Best Buy, that’s not going to cut it. On top of that, the company isn’t sharing how many customers this screw-up touches.

Its customers aren’t buying it either, launching into the company on its forums:

…I am a VP in New York with a large global company and speak with stock analysts in the course of my work. I am not just a small town complainer who is used to being ignored. I may not be able to save Christmas for my family that Best Buy is trying to ruin but maybe I can make Christmas miserable for Best Buy too.

Yikes. This is a perfect example of why online shopping isn’t the end-all be-all. While it’s convenient to hop online and drag a few items into your basket, you have no guarantee that you’ll get the gifts in time. And it’s not just shipping issues, either. It seems like Best Buy happily accepted orders for items it pushed heavily on Black Friday and the days leading up to Christmas, but ran out of the items to fulfill the orders. Simple mistake, right? Not really, this customer says it took three weeks for Best Buy to let them know:

I ordered Games on 11/25 and 11/26 only to wait three weeks for them to tell me that they will not restock the item I purchased. It’s understandible (sic) if I was told initially that I would not recieve (sic) my products purchased, but to wait three weeks to be just written off is just poor customer service.

Ok, ok, surely a huge company like Best Buy will offer something in return for all of these people’s headaches. Right? Wrong. Here’s a response from an extremely not-so-helpful member of the “Best Buy Social Media Team”, Brandon:

I agree with you, this is not the best example of customer service. This holiday season presented us with a high volume of orders that had some effect on our systems. It is not fair to you what happened, so I apologize about the error.

In the future, feel free to reach out to us here if you are having issues with an order and we can look into it for you. I hope this experience doesn’t cause you TOO much stress over your holiday season :smileywink:

This is why online ordering gets a bad name, and the slight inconvenience of walking into a store, picking out your items, and shipping them yourself might be the way to go next year.

All online shopping isn’t bad though, rarely do you hear horror stories like this about Amazon. Take some notes Best Buy, or you won’t have any customers for the holidays next year. At least not ones online.