I don't normally shop at Best Buy. They're too far away from where I live, they don't have very good prices (except for their loss leaders, which are spectacular if you're willing to battle the crowds to get one of the three advertised items they have in stock), and they unenthusiastically offer clueless service with a scowl.
However, I was in southern California and wanted to buy some music to listen to in the rental car. In Los Angeles, the radio stations consist of:
- Gangster rap (very popular in LA)
- Religious broadcasting
- Spanish-language programming (there are actually more Spanish-language stations in Los Angeles than in Tijuana, Mexico)
- Painfully boring Whitney Houston and Celine Dion stations targeted to 31 year old receptionists
Amazingly, I found something that I wanted. This was kind of difficult, because the types of music I like don't generally appeal to the mass market, and I had to sort through all of the Dr. Dre and Backstreet Boys to get to it. Eventually, though, as the store was closing, I found a disc I wanted and proceeded with it to the checkout.
Best Buy uses signature pads to record your signature when you give them a credit card. The cashier swipes your card, and then you use an electronic pen to scribble your signature on the pad. The signature appears in a window on the cashier's terminal. When you're done, she checks it against the signature on the back of your card, and then submits the transaction. Once the transaction is approved, the cashier hands you your card and receipt. Sounds simple, right? No muss, no fuss, your signature is captured electronically, and there are no more bothersome paper receipts for the store to fumble with and lose.
Well, it should be simple to a normal company. Best Buy is not a normal company. They employ handwriting recognition technology (just stop for a moment and consider how ludicrous this is), in order to ensure that your signature meets a set of parameters defined by the developer who wrote the software. What are those parameters? No one at Best Buy seems to know, but my signature is--for whatever reason--invalid. If I sign on the signature pad the way that my signature appears on my drivers license and on my card, the following message appears when the cashier attempts to complete the transaction:
Invalid signature!It's obvious to everyone that this is false, because my perfectly legal, valid signature appears in the box. Obvious to everyone, that is, except Brent, the general manager of Best Buy #111 in Westminster, California. After a couple of times of signing the pad, and getting an "Invalid signature!" response, the cashier called Brent over. He watched me sign twice. The third time, in frustration, I wrote the words "Invalid signature" and said--genuinely curious if it would work--"here, try that and see if it goes through."
Brent said "No, we can't accept that," so I tried signing with my signature again, as it appeared on the card. Of course, I got the response:
Invalid signature!
At this point, I asked "Can't you just print out a receipt on paper and let me sign that?" Of course, the answer was no. Brent, however, had a solution. "Sir, if you don't stop playing games and sign your name normally, I'm going to have to release you from the store."
I was more than a little perplexed with his response. "What do you mean 'sign normally'? This is my signature. It's good enough for the bank and my drivers license, it should be good enough for your computer."
Of course not. There was a line behind me, Brent pointed out, and I needed to use a signature other than my legal, valid signature in order for the computer to accept it. Just print my name out in block letters, and if I didn't do that, he'd "release me from the store." I guess Best Buy managers are taught to avoid saying that they're going to kick you out.
While flabbergasted by the response, I opted to proceed with the transaction--signing my first initial and my last name, in a wholly different way than it appears on any official documentation related to me. This was less because I wanted the CD at that point, than to prove that the events actually transpired when I later wrote to both Visa and Best Buy to complain. Visa has very strict regulations regarding the way in which merchants must process transactions. I suspect that their regulations include specifics on how to proceed with transaction processing in the event of equipment failure. And I doubt any of those policies involve "releasing" customers from the store.
What's most amazing to me is that Best Buy is so protective of their software--which is not only buggy, but buggy in a completely unnecessary feature--that they'd be willing to lose paying customers rather than fix the software. Meanwhile, I won't be returning to Best Buy. I've opted to "release" myself--and my money--from their stores.
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