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

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Surewest Email Down...2-2-10 ***UPDATE***


*UPDATE*

As of 9pm on 2-2, my email was back up and running.  The outage was approximately 16 hours for me...your mileage may vary...


This entire morning Surewest's email has been down.  Granted, this is the first time that I have experienced the outage with Surewest, but it is a major inconvenience non the less.  I have a second email account which is actually my primary inbox, but I have some items that only go to the Surewest inbox and not knowing what I am missing is a bugger!

Chas

Facebook Here I Come...


I have been on Twitter for over a year now and I like the quick and simple communication and information that can be found there.  I didn't want to get into facebook because I didn't want to maintain another webpage.  I keep this blog going the best that I can without it being a drudge.  Well I have finally decided to get on facebook.  So if you want to find out more about me and my views, friend me on facebook (hope that I said that right) or follow me on Twitter.

Chas