Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Best Buy's Trade In Program (Dealtree.com) ***BEWARE*** ***UPDATE***

*UPDATE*
As a result of this blog post, Best Buy, the parent company of Dealtree.com , contacted me to apologize for the experience that I had with their trade-in program and refunded the shipping charges.  I greatly appreciate the integrity that was shown when they admitted that they had made a mistake and did their best to rectify it.

*ORIGINAL POST*
Back in January I decided that it was time to recycle some of my portable electronics, a couple of Nintendo DS Lite's, a Nintendo GBA SP and an iPod 30Gb Video.  I figured that now would be a good time before their value drops to nothing.  So I contacted Best Buy's Trade-in program online and input the information to determine what the value of each item would be.  The NDS Lite value was $64 each, the iPod Video was $49 and the NGBA SP was $12.  So the grand total would be $190 dollars for items that I was no longer using.  The deal is that if I ask for a Best Buy gift card I would get more money than if I asked for a check, so I figured that $190 dollars at Best Buy is better than $120 dollars cash (the amount that the check would be).

I decided to move forward with the trade in and accepted the amount that Best Buy would give me. Best Buy emailed me a shipping label for each item.  I packed up each item, attached the label and sent them off to BB in SoCal (Irvine) on January 18th. Within a couple of days, the UPS tracking said that they received the packages and Dealtree.com (who contracts with Best Buy) would inspect the items within 7 days and send me an email confirming their value.

On January 26th, I received emails from Dealtree.com verifying the values of each item.  The iPod was verified at $49, the NGBA SP was verified at $13 (they added a dollar for more than 3 games) and one of the NDS Lite verified at $57 ($7 less because of a missing cover, okay).  Now comes the shady part, the other NDS Lite was verified at $0 because it was not working, "would not read games".  I know for a fact that it was working as my 6 and 10 year old niece played with them as we were packing them up to ship out. I get an email stating that the trade in value is $0 and if I don't respond within 72 hours then the amount would be accepted and the item would be recycled.  If I wanted the item returned to me, it would cost me shipping both ways ($19.30).  I asked them to test it again and I got a canned response of "we test the units several times before we make a determination".

I decided to pay the ransom and have the NDS sent back to me.  I got the NDS back on February 2nd.  I happened to be going over to see my 10 year old nephew that evening,  so I took the NDS over, handed it to him and asked him to play a game in it.  He grabbed one of his games, put it in and started to play.  I said, does it work, he said yeah why? I told him that this is one of the NDS's that we sent in to get money for it and they said that it didn't work.  He said, what a bunch of liar's, I said "exactly".

On February 8th I receive the Best Buy gift card in the mail for $119.  The name on the mail was not mine but the address was correct along with the gift card value so I figured no big deal.  Gift cards don't have names associated with them, right? I mean if I give someone a Best Buy gift card they don't have to show ID to spend it, right?

Today, I get an email stating,
"Do to an unknown error with the original issuance of your gift card you may have received, or will possibly be receiving a gift card with an incorrect name associated with your address. We have voided this card and you will be receiving a replacement that shipped February 9, 2010. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.
Thank you, Best Buy / Dealtree Trade-in Department"


Man oh man, they lie to me, hold my NDS hostage, and then mess up on the gift card addressing!!! Do yourself a favor and don't use the Best Buy Trade-In program.  BTW they also take in Notebooks, TV's, Cameras, more complicated items to test...


I will be reporting them to the BBB.


Chas

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