MayhemNetworks

Ok. Nowdays everyone is shopping on the internet. Can you blame them? Who wants to deal with the long lines and attitudes of people around you. One of the great new options stores are offering is online ordering and in-store pick-up. This saves the customer shipping fees and gives them the opportunity to swing by and pick it up at their leisure. Or, well, at least it’s supposed to.

I am one of those customers. The idea is grand, but with Best Buy it NEVER works out that way! Everytime I order online with Best Buy for in-store pick up I not only have to wait in line forever, but they always have a problem with my order. The first few times I ordered online with instore pick up it worked beautifully…I was hooked. But since Christmas 2005 it has been a nightmare with them.

Example: I ordered online and never got a verification to pick up my order like their site says you should. So I called and the store employee said they were getting ready to put back my order because I hadn’t come to pick it up. I explained how I never got an email that it was ready and she said that I should have. I went on to Bestbuy.com and logged in and sure enough it still said order in process…not complete like others on my order history page. I printed that and took it down there and the girl was speechless. All she could say is to call the online customer service to find out why.

PEOPLE don’t bother with that either…they take 3 days to respond to you and then you get an automated message saying how sorry they are. If you reply to them a few times and over an elapsed period of about 2 weeks they’ll cancel your order.

Rating on Bestbuy customer service 1 star.

Circuit city on the other hand…beautiful. They have an awesome 24 minute $24 guarantee. You order online for instore pick up and if you get down there within 24 minutes and your order is not ready for pick up you get a $24 gift card. Out of 3 online orders with them to pick up in-store, I got 1. This was because they showed one of my items in stock, but it was misplaced in the store. So they were trying to search for it and defaulted on their guarantee and gave me the $24 gift card. Not only that, but they offered me another title of PC software that was comparable and more expensive for the same price I was going to pay for the item they couldn’t locate.

Overall, Circuit City online ordering well exceeds Best Buy. The differences:

Circuit City= Free Shipping on all orders over $25, 24 minute in store pickup or a $24 gift card guarantee, but NO CD’s or DVD’s for in store pick up orders.

Best Buy=Pay shipping almost always, bad customer service online and in store, usually same in prices as Circuit City or a bit lower, don’t know when you should go to pick up your order in store, and when you do a search for a product it doesn’t tell you how much it is until you click on it.

That’s my experience you be the judge. It’ll be interesting to hear what experiences other people are having with online ordering with these two big names in Electronics.