Lessons from a ‘Best Buy’ That Wasn’t

Come on Best Buy, you can do better than this. Your little $10 LCD TV mistake could have been parlayed into some goodwill publicity—if you bothered to follow through.

Instead, we get what amounted, more or less, to a classic “no comment.” In fairness to Best Buy, the retailer is refunding everyone who ordered the sets at that eye-popping price on bestbuy.com. And the official word from the company was oops, sorry for the misunderstanding.

But that was followed by a gentle reassertion of the company’s right to change pricing and availability of products at any time. And beyond that, Best Buy is mum.

Why? Seems to us like the perfect opportunity to turn a mix-up into a make-up with customers. Turning an unhappy customer into a satisfied one is one of the quickest routes to positive word of mouth (and great PR). For Best Buy, it could have been as simple as sending all the aggrieved a little Best Buy gift card (or at least a decent coupon) along with their refund. Then, of course, announce loudly that you’re doing that.

Alas, that’s not happening. Meanwhile, customers are griping, news outlets are spreading the story and Best Buy is looking kind of cold and careless.