Home electronics retailer Best Buy has pulled out all the stops in a winning effort to edge out Ikea for honors as this year’s most annoying retail experience. Yes, the Apple stores have over promised and way under delivered, and Ikea is so badly run that only the insane return, but Best Buy is an aggressively bad experience.
Yesterday Best Buy made four separate attempts to get my address and phone number. I went in to buy a satellite radio and a DVD player. They refused to sell me the Sirius receiver without me coughing up my verifiable home phone number, so no sale. They then offered me a 59-dollar warrantee on the DVD player, which of course required my address and phone number, so again, no sale. Next was my free subscription to some magazine, which of course would have meant an address and phone number. Finally, the clerk pointed out that my receipt contained a survey that if filled out with my address and phone number would enter me in drawing for a 500-dollar Best Buy shopping spree.
Get Sirius, fellas, that’s a lot of personal information to give out just to get the best buy on a
Religion Free DVD Player.