Best Buy I70 & Tower Rd

I made on online purchase for a soundbar / subwoofer combo which was discounted as “Open Box Excellent.” I have generally had good luck purchasing open box items from Best Buy in the past, but this one was a disaster, only made worse by lack of customer service by my local store. Per Best Buy’s description this item was: “Works and looks like new. Restored to factory settings. Includes all original parts, packaging and accessories (or suitable replacement).” As you can see in the photos, what I received wasn’t even close. I can’t actually believe this was sold / shipped by Best Buy. After unboxing only the soundbar, it was clear this wasn’t “excellent” condition and the original packaging was nowhere to be found. I didn’t even finish unboxing everything because I could see broken pieces in the bottom of the box and I wanted Best Buy to be able to see the shipment “as received.” I went to my local store to make an exchange. The customer service desk said exchange wasn’t possible because there were no more “Open Box Excellent” items available in the system. I made the point that the only different between “Open Box Excellent” and New should be the box was no longer factory sealed. So a New item would be a reasonable and acceptable replacement. I was told that I would need to call Best Buy corporate support to resolve the issue. Why? I was standing in a Best Buy store. After three calls to Best Buy getting me only partial solutions such as issuing a credit that store employees could see, but not apply to a new order because “it hadn’t processed,” I unfortunately had to stoop to using “I need to speak to a manager.” After wasting almost two hours of my time trying to resolve the issues, within FIVE MINUTES, the manager said they could do a price adjustment to the New purchase to match my original order and everything was resolved. Why couldn’t this solution have been offered the minute I walked up to the customer service counter? I felt the first line employees are instructed to push the problem back on the customer even when it was such a clear-cut disaster as this order. I will say that at all times the employee I spoke with was polite, calm and professional, but they seemed to be powerless to take action and make things right. Why does a customer have to be a bit of a jerk and ask to speak to a manager to before common sense comes into the solution? So a couple stars that the issue was resolved to my satisfaction but this should have taken minutes with one person and not hours with multiple people and multiple phone calls. When you ship a customer a pile of broken equipment, please just make it right without turning it into a huge issue.

Friendly service and helpful staff. I shop because of prior service.

Good customer service and good prices

It was alright