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Got shafted by best buy, verizon, and my cousin. What do I do?

Chango99

Well-Known Member
Jun 1, 2010
149
12
I bought a droid incredible on June 12th under my cousin's account.

2 Days later he did a change of liability without informing me about it. He just told me my warranty was dead. I was okay with that, except I wasn't told my 30 days was dead.

I was planning to return my droid incredible to best buy and get the droid x. So I go a couple of days before July 15th and try to return it.

It looked to be going well until the employee called verizon. They said that my 30 days was voided because of the change.

The best buy employee guaranteed me that I should wait for the Droid X when best buy gets it in stock and then exchange it through them, even if it was past the 30 days. I decide not to call verizon myself about this since he was guaranteeing me this.

So I wait, July 15th comes, they barely get any stock. I wait some more. Every couple of days I am calling about the stock.

1 week no droid x. (At this point, I see online, my local wal-mart, and many other stores have it either in stock or for nearly 100$ cheaper)
2 weeks no droid x.
3 weeks no droid x.
On the 4th week, just now, I called back (also to see if I could just exchange it for the Droid 2 if that one comes in stock before). Still no stock but...

The employee who talked to me that day was the one who picked up.

He told me that they couldn't do the exchange for me anymore, as the mobile manager and him talked to the store manager and they said they couldn't do that anymore. Exchanges past the 30 days.

This is bullshit. I could have worked something out with verizon if it weren't for this employee guaranteeing me the exchange.

Now I'm shit out of luck and I'm not sure what I can do here?
 
uh............open your OWN line and quit depending on your cousin??? Lesson learned.
As a smart person I know says. You paid your stupid tax, now don't repeat it.

Wow really? Opening my own line would have costed me about 70-80$ mo/. I'm thinking financially and i'm paying 40$/mo with my cousin. Sorry I don't like to throw my money away.

Thanks for the completely unhelpful post.
 
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Wow really? Opening my own line would have costed me about 70-80$ mo/. I'm thinking financially and i'm paying 40$/mo with my cousin. Sorry I don't like to throw my money away.

Thanks for the completely unhelpful post.

No, the post was not unhelpful, at least no IMO. Learn from your mistakes, i.e. being depend on someone else (cousin) and taking the word of someone that has no authority to do what they said (Best Buy sales guy).
 
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Wow really? Opening my own line would have costed me about 70-80$ mo/. I'm thinking financially and i'm paying 40$/mo with my cousin. Sorry I don't like to throw my money away.

Thanks for the completely unhelpful post.


I'm thinking paying the $40 to your cousin may have not turned out to be the financial savings you originally thought it was. Seems like your only viable alternative now is to go through your cousin to fix the problem. Do you honestly think it is reasonable to expect Best Buy or Verizon to make good on his screw up?

Let me throw out a wild guess here, you were born between 1982 to 1992 and are clearly part of the entitlement generation??? I'm sure this wasn't the answer you are looking for either, you can thank me for a completely unhelpful post.
 
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I'm thinking paying the $40 to your cousin may have not turned out to be the financial savings you originally thought it was. Seems like your only viable alternative now is to go through your cousin to fix the problem. Do you honestly think it is reasonable to expect Best Buy or Verizon to make good on his screw up?

Let me throw out a wild guess here, you were born between 1982 to 1992 and are clearly part of the entitlement generation??? I'm sure this wasn't the answer you are looking for either, you can thank me for a completely unhelpful post.

I was born in 87 and don't feel entitled :p
 
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Well your cousin can't put a phone in your name for you. That's illegal. Tell vzw you didn't consent to this and they should either terminate the contract and charge your cuz the etf or put it back in his name and you can get your own line.

If you can't afford it, oh well dude you have to eat crow.


Exactly, I kept waiting for someone to mention that. You BOTH have to be there in the store to transfer liability and you both have to sign.. I'd be very curious to know how your cousin managed to do that with out your knowledge since they are required to ask for I.D. from both people as far as I know.
 
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Check the classifieds and see if someone will trade you an X for an incredible (they'll probably want some cash with it). You didn't really get screwed by Best Buy and VZW, they were just following their policy. You should however have a chat with your cousin because if you're paying half of the bill you should get half of the say.

If you were born in 87 you're 23 now. If you're also not in college you should be working so just get a plan in your own name. I know it'll be more expensive but you'll have complete control over your own account and you won't have to rely on or worry about your cousin making changes.
 
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If you were born in 87 you're 23 now. If you're also not in college you should be working so just get a plan in your own name. I know it'll be more expensive but you'll have complete control over your own account and you won't have to rely on or worry about your cousin making changes.

Not if he went to architecture school... in that case, he wouldn't have time to be mad about his phone then. :cool:
 
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Went to vzw and best buy stores today (they happen to be a few stores down from each other). Basically, no. Mobile manager was a douche though and is either misinformed or lying like the rest of best buy is doing to me.

Best Buy is crap. Expensive and shitty service. But hey, at least they got a full refund policy for 30 days (which backfired on me in this case) that lets me try out products before I purchase them online for half the price.
 
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While I'm not a big fan of Best Buy, I really dislike the way you are using (abusing) their policy. You take their product with absolutely no intent to actually keep it. I end up having to pay more for my goods because customers think that this is OK. Abuse of a liberal return policy is why more and more companies have become restrictive or even charge you fees to return a product. If you buy it and don't like it, return it. If you buy it just to play with it for a month before making them take it back, then you hurt us all.
 
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Well, I don't support Best Buy at all, so I don't care if they lose money. Whenever I return my product, I see it up on the shelf open box for cheaper than regular, although I've only done this twice anyway.

We're talking about a company that charges like 100$ for them to install a TV, a playstation, etc for you. That's just absolutely stupid.
 
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Well, I don't support Best Buy at all, so I don't care if they lose money. Whenever I return my product, I see it up on the shelf open box for cheaper than regular, although I've only done this twice anyway.

We're talking about a company that charges like 100$ for them to install a TV, a playstation, etc for you. That's just absolutely stupid.

And this is the epitimy of what's wrong with america.
 
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Well, I don't support Best Buy at all, so I don't care if they lose money. Whenever I return my product, I see it up on the shelf open box for cheaper than regular, although I've only done this twice anyway.

We're talking about a company that charges like 100$ for them to install a TV, a playstation, etc for you. That's just absolutely stupid.

This is just a poor attempt of you justifying the abuse of their return policy. kg6epf is correct in saying that you are just simply increasing the costs of doing business which Best Buy and the rest of corporate America eventually passes on to the consumer. The higher ETF on smartphones is the perfect example. People abused the system and justified their actions by saying the cell phone companies are big evil corporations with billion $$ profits and they deserve to get taken advantage of. The end result is the actions of a few ruined it for the rest of us.
 
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Well, I don't support Best Buy at all, so I don't care if they lose money. Whenever I return my product, I see it up on the shelf open box for cheaper than regular, although I've only done this twice anyway.

We're talking about a company that charges like 100$ for them to install a TV, a playstation, etc for you. That's just absolutely stupid.
Its people like you that make their prices so expensive in the first place.

Honestly, if you don't like Best Buy, why are you even doing business there? There are cheaper alternatives online like Amazon and in the end you don't feel shafted if you actually do research on the product you buy.
 
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Haha... Me? Not researching the product I buy?

I'm exactly the opposite. I research too much. Ignorance is bliss. If I didn't research, I would be happy with my incredible. I did research the incredible, only to have the droid x announced a week later.

You guys think I do this all the time. Just because I said it doesn't mean I do it all the time.

I initially was researching a mouse to buy and went to best buy to see if they had floor samples. They didn't. I asked if they could open a box to try out for a floor sample or something, they said no. THEY suggested I buy it and if I wasn't satisfied, just return it. I'm like, cool okay. Tried it out, (razer deathadder) and decided it was too big and bought a logitech G9. This was a legitimate try out/didn't like/return.

Only other time I bought/returned was a Logitech G35 headset, which was grossly overpriced at best buy. I basically got mine while I got paid 80$ on top of it... You try to get that deal from best buy. I paid 141$ at best buy. Online I was looking at paying about 90$. Even better, a deal came from logitech and they had shipping issues that they sent me 2 headsets for the price of the discounted price of one. I sold one for more than I paid for one and kept one myself.

That said, Best Buy is a ripoff and I don't feel bad if the consumer has to pay more, which I don't even think is the case. Where is this coming from anyway? The product I bought and returned went to the store shelves at a discounted price. Best Buy doesn't automatically raise their prices on everything else, and they price match. They aren't going to raise prices just because I and other people return our items. How would they stay at competitive prices (at least B&M stores).

If a consumer is happy paying Best Buy 130$ for installing a PS3 and updating it
bestbuyps3.jpg

then let him be.

I'm not trying to affect the consumer, but I am also not going to sacrifice anything to Best Buy.

Oh, and I did my business there because they happened to have had the incredible in stock. This is completely my fault, buying from best buy because I was being impatient, but nonetheless.
 
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