Best Buy El Camino Real

No service in the mobile network section. Never buy anything through here

Update: double don't. I chatted with an agent, escalated to a supervisor, then posted this review. And now they want me to reach out through a social media channel? Who in heaven requires their customers to use social accounts to resolve issues?!? Don't. They messed up an open box order by including the wrong charger. They can't fix it online and require a visit to "a" location. There just isn't an area where Bad Buy is a better alternative anymore.

Not good employees

I've been a customer at this particular location for ~7 years. The store overall has been fine, but my current views on it have been ruined by Patrick, who appears to have been a manager, on 11/22/25 at approx. 2:30PM PT. I was at checkout and mentioned to the cashier that I believed I had some small amount of rewards credit ($100) pending from a prior purchase that I had refunded at another onsite Best Buy employee's recommendation with the promise that the credits would be returned to my account. I had not seen the credit refunded to my account in the employee's stated timeframe (~2w) and wanted to ask about it. Patrick, who was standing behind the cashier, presumably training/monitoring her, explained that this was a particular type of credit that would not be returned even in the case of a refund. He proceeded to become aggressive and make accusatory statements when I pushed back with the facts I was working with - in particular, the promise that I would receive the credit. I offered actionable evidence to verify my claims, but I believe his exact words were "this is a waste of time" and "I am not going to believe every story people come to me with". When I pointed out the nearby cameras that would have provided the only "real" proof, as I had received the misinformation at about the same spot, it was dismissed as the recordings having no sound and therefore useless as evidence. I began to offer further evidence to prove my honesty that was waved away. I would have been happy with a technical explanation if provided in even a neutral tone, but Patrick seemed to prefer attempting to escalate the situation as much as possible by continuing to raise his voice and using verbiage designed to elicit reactions (wording along the lines of "you should have known the terms and conditions" instead of "sorry, this is company policy"), all while trying to not-so-subtly frame me as some kind of scammer wringing out droplets of money from Best Buy (which is absurd because I likely earned the credits while spending ~$11k here in the past month). I wasn't aware that Best Buy had adopted a new store policy to promote an openly hostile environment for the customer. My impression of this location has been torpedoed due to this one person. I'd like to call out that the other employees seemed fairly reasonable and friendly, though, and I'm sure there's some measure of frustration affecting my judgment here. However, because of Patrick, I recommend getting any critical information from any employee here in writing alongside their identifying employee information and timestamp for reference. I've lost my ability to believe information provided by employees at face value here due to the evident distrust from management. The only thing I felt sorry about was that the (trainee?) cashier had to stand between us and listen to our back-and-forth, as she had not done anything wrong and was just doing her job. For someone in an apparent leadership role, Patrick's approach did not meet even a single basic customer service standard. This could have been entirely avoided if I was shown a modicum of empathy for the situation. I see from other reviews (Johnny, Nobel) that Patrick has a history of being rude and unprofessional. Regarding the missing rewards credits - I accept that it was due to my own ignorance that they are lost forever, and do not require follow-up on this particular piece of the matter. I genuinely don't care about the money here, and I'm not interested in fighting something I was misinformed about in the first place, even if the information was coming directly from another Best Buy employee. I agree that, as ridiculous as it is, I could technically have read the full terms and conditions that came with this particular type of reward credit. I also don't blame the employee that provided the information, as everyone can make simple mistakes around complex policies. To Patrick: being correct about policy does not justify your hostile behavior and implication of fraud. Not everyone is working with the same set of information.