Returning defective products is harder than it should be

16 May, 2024

I gifted my wife a Keurig coffee machine this past Christmas; it was a nice, single serve machine that also allows you to make iced beverages if you want to. I was looking for a machine for her for several months and this one went on sale at the beginning of December so I pounced on it.

I bought it from Best Buy, and decided to buy their 2-year protection plan. It wasn't an expensive add-on, and - in theory - it meant that I could avoid dealing with Keurig's warranty plans and sending it away and waiting for it to come back etc.

But when I went to the store last night with the machine in tow, my receipt at hand, I was told that they don't do exchanges in store; you have to go through the protection plan self service portal to start the exchange process. They send you a shipping label, which you have to affix to either the box the product came in (which we no longer have) or in another box, and ship it via UPS. You can't bring it to the store for Best Buy to ship, no, you have to bring it to any authorized UPS location.

Then, when they've received the machine, they will email you a gift card for the amount of the item plus applicable taxes¹.

This makes no sense. Why can't all of this be done at the store? Unloading the exchange process to an outside source just increases friction between the store and the customer. Now I am not likely to buy appliances like this from Best Buy knowing that I have to go through so many hoops to exchange them (if I buy the protection plan, anyway).

I don't really have much else to say on the matter, I just needed to rant somewhere. Honestly, Best Buy, you could have made a customer very happy by providing actual "service" at your "Customer Service" desk instead of turning me away. What do your customer service desks actually do?

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#complaint