Sunday, August 24, 2008
One more reason not to give Best Buy employees your personal information
I blogged a while back about the time I tried to purchase a Sportster 5 Sirius satellite radio from my local Hagerstown Best Buy. I was paying cash. The person at the register refused to sell it to me unless I gave her my personal private information. I refused to do this so they refused to sell it to me. They told me that Sirius requires them to record the personal private information of anyone buying on of their radios.
I contacted Sirius and they informed me that this was not correct. There was no requirement to gather the personal information of the people that were buying their hardware.
The Best Buy employee lied.
There now appears to be one more reason not to give your personal information to an employee at Best Buy. Amanda Hopkins, a former Best Buy employee in New Mexico has been indicted by a grand jury on numerous felony counts of credit card fraud. She worked as a customer representative at Best Buy. Her duties were opening new accounts for customers. She obtained customer credit information and used the information make numerous purchases on their accounts.
Best Buy doesn’t trust their employees so why should you? Every Best Buy I have been to has a person standing the exit checking the receipts of customers that purchase high value items. The reason? They are afraid that the person who ran the sale did not charge the right amount. They worry that their employees with have friends or family members come in and buy something and they won’t charge the correct amount. Instead of scanning the iPod player or the Blu-Ray player, they’ll scan a DVD movie or a pack of gum. By all appearences, it looks that you paid for what you were purchasing.
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Man, I am with you one hundred percent on this. Fuck Best Buy. I hate that place; I had a couple run-ins with their staff in the past. A few were real doozies. I avoid that shithole like the fucking plague.
I’m not saying I wont buy something there if I have to, but I try to pay cash and I don’t give them any of my personal info. It ain’t like Circuit City is much better.
Just because of ONE employee does not mean that all emlpoyees are out to steal or peoples idenities, and YES you do need to give personal info to buy as satellite radio beacause your personal info needs to be recorded, so you can can be registered monthly for services that Sirius providees, i bet you didn’t even call or you got told wrong because there is no way around not giving personal info! Best buy does trust their employees, they trust them until they are given a reason not to like amanda hopkins and that is why they fired her. The reason there is someone standing at the door waiting to check receipts is to record receipt iformation to make sure inventory is correct reason being is because customers steal!!”Instead of scanning the iPod player or the Blu-Ray player, they’ll scan a DVD movie or a pack of gum. By all appearences, it looks that you paid for what you were purchasing” and this little comment that you made? where is your source for this? before you say all this stuff about best buy get your facts straight, before you go around sounding like an idiot. As for DJsloofus stay out of best buy, best buy does not need your buisness anway!
I’m pretty positive that you are one of those dumbass customers that has no idea what he’s talking about. There is theft everywhere. Not only at Best Buy. A security guy at the front is just another extension of the camera systems that other retail stores may possess. So how are the camera systems different from the security personnel besides the obvious reasons? And no Best Buy cannot sell a Sirius radio without personal information. If the cashier tries to bypass it, it will refuse the sale. It is mandatory for registration and the information is only used for the purpose of the sale and for registration through Sirius. I think it’s the only thing in the store besides service plans and replacement plans that require personal information. And there are employees that steal everywhere you go. I don’t really see how you can single out one employee from Best Buy that you know of stealing and hold that against them (Best Buy). If you had a problem with every retail store that had dishonest employees at one point of time or another, you wouldn’t be shopping anywhere. That’s about all I have to say on that. There’s no reason to be upset over something that miniscule and ridiculous.
@Jess: Nope, you’re wrong. I contacted Sirius and I was told that they do not require Best Buy to gather the personal information of the people buying their radios. I then went to Circuit City and purchased the same radio I tried to buy at Best Buy without giving out my personal information. I was able to activate the radio without any problems whatsoever.