Best Buy Restock Fee

I got this email forwarded today and it turns out that I knew first-hand that it was true. For extreme thoroughness, I verified it on snopes.com: Best Buy Restock Fee.

The lady at the refund desk said, there is a 15% restock fee, for items returned. I said no one told me that. I said how much would that be. She said it goes by the price of the item. It will be $45.00 Dollars for you. I said, all your going to do is walk over and place it back on the self! Then charge me $45.00 of my money for restocking!! She said that's the store policy. I said if more people were aware of it they would not buy anything here! If I bought a $2000.00 computer or TV and returned it I would be charged $300.00 dollars restock fee!! She said yes, 15%.

Having been on the other end of this exact conversation with a customer WHILE WORKING AT BEST BUY, I'd have to say that I agree with the merchant. All of these policies are to protect Best Buy from scammers, which would surprise you to know happens all the damn time.

On more than one occasion during the time I worked at Office Depot, a customer would buy an electronics product with cash and return the carefully resealed box with a brick or something heavy inside it to make it seem like the item.

On one extremely busy pre-holiday shopping season day, a customer tried to return something for cash at Best Buy. But the item in question was over $200 and they would not give us their address to mail them a check. A few minutes after they left the store yelling, we learned they had actually stole the merchandise from Circuit City. We do not believe they were captured by authorities that day. That person is still out free as far as I know. Honestly, there are more laws protecting the clients and customers than there are protecting merchants. I've learned this from the last few years listening to stories from ecommerce merchants. Purchase something from ANY online store using your American Express card. Then wait until after it arrives, and call Amex and have the charges reversed (cite fraud or whatever). You get your money back and the merchant has NO recourse. Except, of course, to stop accepting American Express.

Migration Has Begun

The massive work project of migrating E-commerce software version 4.x to version 7.2 has begun in earnest this week. It's going to get crazy busy around here. Although my role is not directly involved in inbound calls or tickets, but monitoring inbound calls and scoring them for quality, I am tasked with helping out as much as I can when necessary.

As I have predicted, the main brunt of the reaction so far mainly deals with the 'newness' factor. The merchants are accustomed to running their business and web site a certain way on a daily basis and the new system is laid out very differently. Certainly, the most glaring issues are features that were in version 4.x, but are not yet in version 7.2. Some of them are coming soon, but some of them will never be implimented. There is a certain moment of "Why'd You Remove That Feature?!" that occurs, but it's not insurmountable.

What surprises me are the slightly nitpick requests for minor changes that from a certain point of view seem really irrelevant. Software improvements that would benefit all clients using version 7.2 --even those clients that have never seen version 4.6-- are very important and going to get put at the top of the list. But examples that are mundane or easily ignored make me scratch my head. For instance, in v4, when a merchant viewed their orders the customer's shipping information was on the right and their billing information was on the left. However, version 7 has this on the opposite side. If you have a whole team of employees and they're used to it on the other side, this might be a feature request that would seem important. But hopefully everyone understands that this is not make or break.

As an analogy, imagine that I'm going to take away your old jalopy of a vehicle and replace it with a fancy hot rod sports car with all the modern features. It's gonna be the most spectacular ride you've ever sat in, let alone driven. However, there's just one problem. It was made in Germany for British customers. The driver's side is on the right side rather than the left. So, would you sheepishly ask me about this feature? Would you request that it be moved back to the other side like you are used to? Heck no! You'd get in that kitten and make it purr. (...did I really just type that? Yuck.)

This new software is that hot rod. It's the hot rod that everyone's been waiting for. The uninitiated would assume that the whole left/right thing wouldn't even warrant a mention among other more important improvements that are already coming soon. The uninitiated would be wrong...

• Billing/shipping Information
• Please Put The Billing And Shipping Address In Standard Position

Don't get me wrong. I'm not judging these requests and I'm not in a position at the company to affect the decisions on what features get implemented and which ones don't. I'm thankful for that too, as it is likely a stressful position. I guess I'd just like to say that version 7 is damn good and I'm ready to evangelize it to anyone who will listen.

My favorite response to the new version? Check this out.

[The old version]... was working, why change? Did anybody ask for this change? Who said, things are running very smooth, lets screw everything up! How do we switch back to the previous version? [more details]

Who asked for change? Well, I'm really trying not be too blunt here, but you did. Yes, you: Mr. or Mrs. John Q. Client. Our clients as a group were asking for large feature changes across the board and our software development team has delivered those:

• Better stability
• Better SEO features
• Better integration with QuickBooks®
• Keyword URLs
• Better WYSIWYG editor
• ...and ridiculous amounts of little usability improvements all over the place!

Certainly there have been some hiccups along the way --as there will be in any major upgrade like this. I don't know how many times I need to repeat this, but the entire e-commerce platform was re-written from the ground up, starting with code line one. Does this mean that certain more obscure features, such as an export tailor-made for Endicia, might not be implemented right away? Yes. Does this mean that these very very intelligent and adaptable merchants and business owners will have to adjust to new ways of working? Yes! Once they get over that hump will they have the best solution that money can buy? Well, you be the judge. I already know my answer.

Personality Not Included

Personality Not Included Cropped Horizontal Stack
Originally uploaded by rohitbhargava

Rohit Bhargava gave a talk today regarding blogging and his book, Personality not included.

Update (2008-06-06): A public post was made about the event with a link to an embeddable video. You can find a copy of it on the Network Solutions E-Commerce Forums