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Best Buy's Brian Dunn writes open letter apology to consumers

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Dela @ Dec 07, 2005 14:13 | 22 comments

Best Buy President of Retail in North America Brian Dunn has written an open letter apology to all consumers that were charged several hundred extra dollars for accessories they had to buy in order to get their hands on an Xbox 360. He had commented a few days ago that the company was aware that "some stores acted inappropriately" and yesterday he wrote an official apology to anyone caught up in the scams. Here it is...

TO: Open Letter to Customers

FROM: Brian Dunn, President – Retail, North America

RE: Launch of Xbox 360

CC: Best Buy Store, District and Territory Employees; All Officers and Directors

DATE: December 6, 2005

I’m writing to apologize.

While all of us at Best Buy were thrilled to be part of the recent launch of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game system – one of the most anticipated events in the history of electronic gaming – the launch did not go as we had hoped. We sold out of Xbox 360s nationwide in less than two hours, and most of our stores did an outstanding job of serving our gaming customers. I’d like to thank the majority of our employees, who provided a terrific experience for customers at the launch date. However, our promotional activities in certain cases failed to follow company guidelines. As a result, some of our valued gaming customers had an experience in our stores that was inconsistent with what you’ve come to expect from us, as a leader in the consumer electronics industry.

Specifically, customers in some Best Buy stores were told that they were required to buy additional Xbox accessories or services if they wanted one of the sought-after Xbox 360 consoles, even though we advertised the Xbox 360 console alone. I want to be very clear that Best Buy does not condone pressuring customers to purchase items they may not want or that may not fit their lifestyle. In fact, these behaviors are in direct conflict with our desire to serve customers’ needs better than anyone else, and our values of honesty and integrity.

We are currently investigating all leads about promotional practices that may have violated the company’s guidelines, and we will take disciplinary actions as appropriate. We also have reminded all of our stores about our policies with respect to launches of hot products. Meanwhile, on behalf of Best Buy, I’d like to offer a sincere apology to any customers who felt pressured to buy items they did not want.

Customers who are unhappy with Xbox 360-related purchases made in November 2005 may return unwanted items for a full refund at any Best Buy store. In addition, if your Xbox 360 purchasing experience did not meet your expectations for any reason, please email us at [email address will be inserted when the letter is posted to the website]. (Employees with information pertinent to our investigation are encouraged to call our Ethics Hot Line instead.)

Last, I would like to invite you back to our stores, particularly later this month, when Best Buy will receive more shipments of Xbox 360s. While supplies continue to be very limited, we are truly excited about this new gaming platform, and we’d like to deliver the best of that experience to you. We promise an in-store experience that is focused on your needs and the needs of everyone on your holiday gift list.

Brian Dunn

Source:

360updates

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Comments

Comment by: uwiloz2me (Dec 07, 2005 16:46)

Take that you Bastardos! Great bussiness for customers huu...

take a look here....http://www.bestbuysux.org/

Comment by: llongtheD (Dec 07, 2005 21:42)

The old good cop bad cop routine. This was all planned well beforehand, and if anyone believes otherwise, your kidding yourself. The CEO of Best buy knows exactly what is going to go on in his stores, and if he doesn't, better sell your shares of best buy. What a crock of corporate bullsh**t.

This letter did kind of give me a warm fuzzy feeling in my middle section though.

Comment by: esrever (Dec 07, 2005 23:20)

Ugh..makes me sick. He doesn't mean a thing in this letter. Just trying to get people to go back to BB. DO you really think he's "sorry" if any of the gajillion BB stores that effed up? Yeah right. Hes probably in Tahiti with platinum on one hand and a fag in the other.

Comment by: jacsac (Dec 08, 2005 03:19)

Just like they controlled the frenzy outside every store on the day after sale. Nothing like being 20th in line at 12:30am and getting in 150 people later. Eat shit bestbuy.

Comment by: evilh0ly (Dec 08, 2005 06:06)

bestbuy freakin sux i remembered back then when i bought some router or something which came with the mail in rebate. I done it numerous time with stuffs i bought from circuit city, and always received like 2-6 weeks. But bestbuy never send me my rebate what a jerk.

Comment by: DeMody (Dec 09, 2005 12:29)

Who wants a Xbox 180 anyway? PC's are much more scalable. Every BB sales assoc. I've ever talked with has not a clue when it comes to electronic technical specifications. But obviously they are good at selling, just not with being honest!

Xbox 180 (take it back!).

Comment by: tynub (Dec 09, 2005 13:42)

Haa I call Bullshit.This from a company whos boss ADMITTED one of 1st things he implemented as new boss was to make it as difficult as possible for ppl to return things.

Comment by: duckNrun (Dec 09, 2005 15:23)

You notice that nowhere in here does he try to "win" customers back or compensate all those who stood in line for hours on end only to end up empty handed by their corrupt policy. Sure bring back your unwanted items (certainly only if unopened and resellable state right???) for a full refund. But I'm sure that most of these people have already opened and used these mandatory purchased items

As I've always said....

Hell is sure going to be crowded!

Comment by: jolo (Dec 09, 2005 17:45)

Any of the ignorant fools who have been scammed by both Microsoft and Best Buy deserve everything they get.

First of all, anyone who is such a selfish, anti-American , anti-community baby to help support monopolies and purchase Microsoft products is hurting their neighbors, the industry and is destroying an open market system.

Anyone stupid enough to get on line at MIDNIGHT, because they can't wait to help Microsoft in their quest to destroy any competition because they have been hypnotized by professional marketers, should seek out a de-programming class, in the hope that they can get their free will back.

All of those complaining are ignorant children who do not have the maturity to graduate 1st grade and should be reading books, getting involved with something positive in their lives and look at Microsoft's history .

Comment by: llongtheD (Dec 09, 2005 21:38)

I think I'm sexually aroused jolo. Did you post to this thread with a PC or a MAC. Please don't tell me your one of those ignorant fools. Its just a video game system, and a retailer dude. Lighten up.

Comment by: duckNrun (Dec 09, 2005 22:27)

wow.... I didn't think I started my clinical Psych rotation until NEXT semester....

:-)

Comment by: esrever (Dec 10, 2005 03:39)

I didn't know you needed to be mature in 1st grade...

Pentium 4HT CPU overclocked to 3.5 Ghz - 2 GIGs RAM

ATI Radeon X800 Graphics Card

Plextor DVD+/-RW Drive

vs17 LCD Monitor

Comment by: ironD (Dec 10, 2005 07:09)

I am of the same mind as that of duckNrun. If this was a genuine attempt to right improper situation(that I might add wreaks of corruption)he would have surely offered some type of compensation for the said "Wrongdoing"

Comment by: MrOrlando (Dec 12, 2005 18:54)

All speculation folks. If you're not psychic, you're probably wrong. Bottom line, these companies aren't where they are because they are clueless. They play the market right and offend/piss-off most people...but do they care? Of course they don't...and all of your bickering does nothing more. If you really care, then boycott them. And as far as "PC's are better"...while preference is a large factor, and memory may be in larger sums with PC's, the fact of the matter is consoles are more geared to gaming, seeing as the CPU and GPU use SHARED memory. This means that the GPU needn't request textures etc from the CPU's RAM when it doesn't have it already loaded. Not to mention, the bus speed on consoles is much faster. Again, the only difference...especially with this new-generation, isn't enough to justify...unless you need to use the mouse because the analog joysticks are too hard to handle. Hah.

Comment by: llongtheD (Dec 12, 2005 21:19)

Mrorlando, I guess you didn't read the posts prior to your own. Thats exactly what I was saying, they have this all planned well beforehand.

Comment by: MrOrlando (Dec 14, 2005 15:54)

Yes, I did read the posts before my own...there are more than just yours and mine. I do agree with you though.

Comment by: j0j081 (Dec 14, 2005 21:42)

MrOrlando that's ridiculous. While it is preference as to which you prefer to play on, consoles will never match pcs graphic and performance wise. Although the xbox 360 is on par with two 7800s in SLI now which will cost you an arm and leg to buy by the end of next year mainstream pc graphic carda will be far superior with the lauch of Win Vista and the new DirectX10. Consoles won't be getting Dx10 features until the next gen launch a few years from now.

Comment by: MrOrlando (Dec 15, 2005 10:39)

To set my path of credibility (and I mean not to sound pretentious), I'd like to start by saing that I'm currently attending the most prestigious video game programming school in the country. Every game developer knows of Full Sail, and actually attends monthly/bi-monthly meetings and presentations for all students here. I take everything taught here with extreme seriousness. These people know everything going on in the industry, and most often they know it first. They leak future technologies to us students because we are the ones that will be programming it. So while you say PC's are more powerful, and in many respects they are, gaming consoles will surpass them (if not already).

More polygons is nice, sure...but textures is the main focus of future graphics. MMO's will be revolutionary with displacement textures that allow a single 75,000 polygon model to make an alien, human, or droid with a simple texture change (I've seen it, though it's not implemented in the real world just yet..maybe a year or two from now). XBox 360's Elder Scroll's Oblivion takes advantage of displacement and bump map textures. If you pick that game up, you will see ridiculously realistic bricks on the walls, that merely make up a 2 polygon (2 triangles) wall. Moreover, if you read various articles, (btw, I'm not a Microsoft fan boy, it's just the most recent example to use), you will see that the XBox 360's 3 core processors, multi-threaded, create a more powerful machine than 90% of the systems out there (premade, not custom made of course). I've got a custom made desktop, which is a beast of a machine if I do say so myself...and they are easily comparable.

Sorry for the long rant, but I completely disagree. More importantly, operating systems matter not the slightest for video games, and consoles take advantage of DirectX (Xbox of course) and customized OpenGL (Sony). So what if PC's have DirectX 10 for a year or 2 longer than console. By the time the next generation comes out, software will be highly focused on consoles. PS3, being now a 2007 release, is a good example. The merge is approaching. The argument might be borderline, but we are gradually leaving the age of PC gaming, though it'll never be deprecated because people are too attached to keyboard/mouse for its fps accuracy etc.

Comment by: madman91 (Dec 17, 2005 23:01)

hey people , when you clicked "post your comment" you lied, we didnt come here to debate directx dual-triple cores bla bla bla ... your supposed to comment on the article, dont we have forums for discussing things like these?

anyways my comment-:D-

"what a phony" quote from Catcher In The Rye

Happy Holidays everyone! (not Brian Dunn)

Comment by: MrOrlando (Dec 18, 2005 10:40)

Lol, you're right Madman. Though the BestBuy situation is kind of exhausted. Btw, for everyone who, despite anger/resitance, wants an XBox 360, BestBuy currently has 35 for sale tomorrow in each of its stores. And, for those who want to boycott BestBuy, I'm sure most other stores will have a handful as well. I've currently got 3 on the way to me...though if PS3 didn't get pushed back to 2007, I wouldn't be getting any at all.

Comment by: oshams (May 06, 2009 19:21)

Best buy is the cheapest store in the US.
I remember returning back a cheap item of less than $30 in Dublin CA's store along with my 12 year daughter, and the smart customer service representative called the cops believing that I was returning another Best Buy item too.
These people are stupid :)
Then, they offered me $75 to return back to their store :)
I asked them to shove it :)

Comment by: ugc (May 06, 2009 23:16)

oshams>
this post is 4 years old.

?????????

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