Don't buy the Bestbuy PRP!

When I picked my 360 up the guy told me for $60 that I'd have my console covered in store for two years, and if it ever breaks all I'd have to do is bring it there and they would give me a new one. I figured well for $60 to have a new one after 2 years that's fine and paid for it. After I moved my console got the Three Red Lights (went for 18 months!) so of course I head off to Bestbuy.
I put my box with everything in it onto the counter and the guy says 'Allright I'll just go grab the box to send it out' I say 'What? No I have this Product Replacement Plan and the guy said I can just grab a new one when it breaks' then he tells me that they don't do that anymore and they send it to their repair people then when it's ready I have to go back there and pick it up and that it could take up to 60 days.
So of course I question him and since he's just a regular employee and he felt a ****storm coming he said he'd just get the manager so I can talk to them, that's fine. Then the manager comes and says they can't change their policy now and I'm asking what's the point of spending the $60 then if I am covered for 3 years by Microsoft. She tries telling me that it's only a one year warranty by MS and I insist it's 3 years (I KNOW it is) I tell her it's more of a hassle anyways to come out here to pick it up when I can send it out and have it delivered to my house for free. And she says that they don't exchange for new ones anymore so they can send it for repairs or I can keep it. Of course once she brought that up again I ask why it doesn't apply to me then if when I bought the damn thing they did in fact exchange for new ones.
She just avoided answering. So I said I want my $60 back, I don't care if you give it to me in a giftcard I want it back since it's useless but she kept refusing. Now I must say most the time I keep my temper under control with employees because I work in customer service as well and know that angry employees are just a hassle. BUT the fact that she is a manager, and she could damn well give me a $60 giftcard at least, that made me mad. So I called her a word that rhymes with punt and went to buy a new one. I'm going to happy box the console tomorrow, lets see them try to screw me over.

Sorry for the novel but I just felt I had to say this because for these 18 months I've been telling people, in real life and on GS that they should buy it from Bestbuy and get the PRP thinking that it's so easy but obviously it's not.

if mine breaks, I will do the same as you.

sue them, you signed a contract and that should still apply, they have to replace it.

Hey, I work at Best Buy and the PRP definitly means that your are supposed to get a new one. That's why it's called a replacement plan. The Best Buy I work at definitly honors this. I mean, that's why there are PSPs and PRPs, PSPs are service plans and PRPs are replacement plans.

Oh man, I don't think I could have contained my anger in that situation. I got angry just reading your story. I'm pretty sure I would have demanded a regional supervisor's number or something like that. Because that's honestly just completely unacceptable. That's the type of thing that would have me making phone calls and writing letters, and I'm usually too lazy for that kind of stuff.

When I picked my 360 up the guy told me for $60 that I'd have my console covered in store for two years, and if it ever breaks all I'd have to do is bring it there and they would give me a new one. I figured well for $60 to have a new one after 2 years that's fine and paid for it. After I moved my console got the Three Red Lights (went for 18 months!) so of course I head off to Bestbuy.
I put my box with everything in it onto the counter and the guy says 'Allright I'll just go grab the box to send it out' I say 'What? No I have this Product Replacement Plan and the guy said I can just grab a new one when it breaks' then he tells me that they don't do that anymore and they send it to their repair people then when it's ready I have to go back there and pick it up and that it could take up to 60 days.
So of course I question him and since he's just a regular employee and he felt a ****storm coming he said he'd just get the manager so I can talk to them, that's fine. Then the manager comes and says they can't change their policy now and I'm asking what's the point of spending the $60 then if I am covered for 3 years by Microsoft. She tries telling me that it's only a one year warranty by MS and I insist it's 3 years (I KNOW it is) I tell her it's more of a hassle anyways to come out here to pick it up when I can send it out and have it delivered to my house for free. And she says that they don't exchange for new ones anymore so they can send it for repairs or I can keep it. Of course once she brought that up again I ask why it doesn't apply to me then if when I bought the damn thing they did in fact exchange for new ones.
She just avoided answering. So I said I want my $60 back, I don't care if you give it to me in a giftcard I want it back since it's useless but she kept refusing. Now I must say most the time I keep my temper under control with employees because I work in customer service as well and know that angry employees are just a hassle. BUT the fact that she is a manager, and she could damn well give me a $60 giftcard at least, that made me mad. So I called her a word that rhymes with punt and went to buy a new one. I'm going to happy box the console tomorrow, lets see them try to screw me over.

Sorry for the novel but I just felt I had to say this because for these 18 months I've been telling people, in real life and on GS that they should buy it from Bestbuy and get the PRP thinking that it's so easy but obviously it's not.

Scarface_tm431

I'll let you know right now. I work at best buy and there was NO change to the PRP on the gaming systems. They should still replace the consol for the TRLs. We do not service systems since we cant resell used systems so fixed systems do us no good. We will give you a new system and switch out your HDD with your old one if you'd like.

My fiancee just picked up a 360 a few days ago from Wal-Mart, and they offered her a similar plan (2 years) for only $30. I hope that if it does red ring on me, I don't have to go through the same thing.

i work at best buy and just so u know its wrong. the policy didnt change. they jus dont want to take the hit for it. u shoulda called corparate

yes it does suck and i scoffed at buying the plan .they also didnt know about the 3 yr plan . the one truth is they will cover other problems for 2 xtra years non rrod problems that ms wont . yet i would not buy it myself.

go back to the store, prp in hand , and if they still refuse, have the manager sign something stating they refuse to honor their contract. call corporate, fax them the document, have the jackass manager fired, get your new box and prolly a nice gift card to boot.

definitely get it written down and signed by the person refusing to do the exchange, otherwise its a he said she said. if they refuse to sign a statement that they wont exchange it, have the manager call corporate while your standing there and watch them try to lie about it to their boss. bet you 20$ you get your box as soon as you ask them to sign or phone a higher up with you watching them, even better ask to be put on speaker phone so all 3 of yous can discuss it conference style.

Sadly this happens all too often.

Which is why whenever any store gives me their warranty sales pitch I decline because I know I am not getting a replacement and I will just keep my (approximately) $50.

Look, everyone just needs to calm down here, and instead of acting like idiots, some people here need to educate themeselves on the situation in thier own area. There are a huge amount of issues that could be at play here, and ranting like an idiot that all Best Buy PRPs are useless is just ignorant of you.

It may be a matter of state law changing since you bought your PRP. For example, in my State, in the last several months, state law has changed regarding warranty coverage. Now it doesn't impact every store chain, but for instance EB/Gamestop. They normally offer a single year replacement plan on all thier consoles, although now the entire chain has discontinued warranties on 360s, but that doesn't change anything.

Normally if you buy a console from EB/Gamestop and pick up the 1 year warranty, you have 1 year from the date of purchase to take it in and get a new replacement console no questions asked. Well because my states law has changed, now the way the warranty works, is that for the first year, it's under manufacturers warranty, so for example if I bought a PS3, and it broke after 7 months of use, I would have to send the console in for service through Sony, for the first year. After 1 year is up, then my 1 year replacement plan comes into effect, and after that first year and for one entire year thereafter, I can then use my 1 year replacement warranty.

The State essentially forced EB/Gamestop to offer thier warranty in addition to the 1 year manfucturers warranty, so your getting twice the coverage, but it works rather oddly. Before you go flying off the handle at Best Buy, know your state laws, or country laws if your not in the US, and make sure they have not changed, because if they have, Best Buy may have no choice in the matter. This is only aState law in my case, and other states vary with thier own policy on such matters, but they can change and as soon as they go into effect, itno longermatters what contract you agreed to with Best Buy or any retailer that is bound by that given law. In my case,EB/Gamestop isaffected, but Best Buy is not, so thier PRP is just as good as it always was.

You also need to know the store you are dealing with, and thier policy on things like this, again I know Gamestop is like this. They give the store manager quite a bit of freedom to run things as they see fit. For instance, my local Gamestop, used to have a great manager, that would really go out of thier way to help you out. They changed managers, and everything changed. The new manager will not allow you cancel a reserve on a game or change it until after the game is released, most stores let you change it or cancel it anytime before release. Gamestop warranties are supposed to be no hassle, no questions asked, but that new manager double and triple checked to see that the problem was genuine and messed around until you were ready to puke. There were many inconviences with that manager, so I called corporate, and found out that Gamestop allows thier managers to set a whole list of policies at their discretion, as long as it doesn't break any civil laws or discrimanatory factors. It is fully in thier rights, and perfectly legal to change store policy at any time.

I don't know if Best Buy has that kind of manager power, but you should find out before condeming all Best Buy PRPs, because clearly the store's overall policy on them has not changed.

Just do some research and educate yourself and then take the fight back to them if you have any ground to stand on.

OK guys I'm getting a 360 soon and I have two questions. How many years of warranty do you get from MS for free and If the MS warranty isn't good enough, where should I buy my 360?ratchet3

The free MS warranty is 1 year for everything, that includes the Power Supply, the controller, any random failure or issue. They have extended the RRoD coverage to 3 years, but that is only if the system sufferes a RRoD hardware failure, it doesn't cover non RRoD issues, which can still be a lot.

The extended Warranty is 50 bucks and gives you 2 years of complete coverage and of course there is still the 3 years on RRoD, and I believe after the warranty expires, you can still extend it for another 2 years for another 50 bucks, but I'm not certain on that.

The only downside to MS's warranty is that your without a system for up to several weeks and at best usually a week or two but it can be up to 5 or 6 weeks or more. Also, often they will repair the system but not replace it. But the upside, is that you don't lose all your DLC and stuff like that if you send it in to MS, if you havea replacement plan, you will run into issues with certain DLC and especially if your not constantly conected to Live.

The longest replacement plan that I know of, and probably the best is also the most expensive, and that is Circuit City used to and I believe still offers a 3 year replacement plan. But it's over $100 if memory serves.

They screwed me on my ps3 warranty. They told me that they had to send it in for "diagnostic testing". What the hell???

I kept telling them that I want a new one now, and if I didn't get one, what is the point of buying the PRP for almost $100 (launch 60GB). I've worked in customer service for years and am very, very patient but that was they only time i ever lost my cool in a store. I mean, I had veins popping out of my neck mad.

I will never buy a PRP from them again on anything. It's all just a quick way for them to make easy money and they can choose to honor it or not honor it whenever they feel like and your basically powerless. Best of luck to you though.

man, I have three xbox 360s and none of them have had any mechanical problems

i guess i am just lucky or something

I never BUMP but people need to know about Best Buy's recently scamtastic PRP's. I am bitter as hell because everything used to be so easy with PRP's and I want to fulfill my promise to that lame manager that I would go out of my way to let everyone I know and don't know that PRP's are a SCAM and they are not worth it.

This may not apply to every BB, but I think that lately some manager's are given the right to decline an instant replacement on consoles and instead they say that they will get your "replacement" whenever they are done fixing it. Which of course defeats the whole point of the convienance of instant replacement plan.

I think you were at the wrong Best Buy dealing with the wrong manager.

I have had 2 separate 360s die on me and both were replaced by the Best Buy PRP without a hitch. Both times I went in expecting to get the run-around and was quite surprised that I didn't.

The best part? The last time I swapped consoles Iended up with the HDMI port, Forza 2/Marvel Ultimate Alliance games, and a $50 gift card because MS dropped the purchase price since the time I originally bought the console.

My suggestion is totry a different Best Buy for your return.

READ!!!

BEST BUY PRP's ARE GREAT!!!

I had bought my Xbox around June of 06 and a few weeks ago the tray would not open at all, I know there is an emergency release but why go through that when I had a 2 Year PRP. I would also get an occasional error 74, which is an AV cable error.

I first decided to take it up to best buy, but then I READ THE PLAN and it told me to CALL to report a claim. I called and the same day they sent me a mailing label, via email,tomail my XBOX to them. That's it. It took them about 5 days to recieve it and the day they recieved it they sent me a giftcard for the full amount that I paid. Easy as that. All you have to do is have a little patience and about two weeks. NO PROBLEMS.

READ!!!

BEST BUY PRP's ARE GREAT!!!

I had bought my Xbox around June of 06 and a few weeks ago the tray would not open at all, I know there is an emergency release but why go through that when I had a 2 Year PRP. I would also get an occasional error 74, which is an AV cable error.

I first decided to take it up to best buy, but then I READ THE PLAN and it told me to CALL to report a claim. I called and the same day they sent me a mailing label, via email,tomail my XBOX to them. That's it. It took them about 5 days to recieve it and the day they recieved it they sent me a giftcard for the full amount that I paid. Easy as that. All you have to do is have a little patience and about two weeks. NO PROBLEMS.

ts1445

The point of the PRP is that you go in the store and walk out with a working console immediately. Strange how you just failed to realize that.

You need to learn how to type in paragraphs. I'm not reading that crap.

The Best Buy PRP is a great deal. Instead of waiting over 1 month for a repair, you simply walk into a local Best buy and do an exchange. Very simple. Very easy.

If you want to get a Gift Card instead, you may. It all up to u.

When I picked my 360 up the guy told me for $60 that I'd have my console covered in store for two years, and if it ever breaks all I'd have to do is bring it there and they would give me a new one. I figured well for $60 to have a new one after 2 years that's fine and paid for it. After I moved my console got the Three Red Lights (went for 18 months!) so of course I head off to Bestbuy.
I put my box with everything in it onto the counter and the guy says 'Allright I'll just go grab the box to send it out' I say 'What? No I have this Product Replacement Plan and the guy said I can just grab a new one when it breaks' then he tells me that they don't do that anymore and they send it to their repair people then when it's ready I have to go back there and pick it up and that it could take up to 60 days.
So of course I question him and since he's just a regular employee and he felt a ****storm coming he said he'd just get the manager so I can talk to them, that's fine. Then the manager comes and says they can't change their policy now and I'm asking what's the point of spending the $60 then if I am covered for 3 years by Microsoft. She tries telling me that it's only a one year warranty by MS and I insist it's 3 years (I KNOW it is) I tell her it's more of a hassle anyways to come out here to pick it up when I can send it out and have it delivered to my house for free. And she says that they don't exchange for new ones anymore so they can send it for repairs or I can keep it. Of course once she brought that up again I ask why it doesn't apply to me then if when I bought the damn thing they did in fact exchange for new ones.
She just avoided answering. So I said I want my $60 back, I don't care if you give it to me in a giftcard I want it back since it's useless but she kept refusing. Now I must say most the time I keep my temper under control with employees because I work in customer service as well and know that angry employees are just a hassle. BUT the fact that she is a manager, and she could damn well give me a $60 giftcard at least, that made me mad. So I called her a word that rhymes with punt and went to buy a new one. I'm going to happy box the console tomorrow, lets see them try to screw me over.

Sorry for the novel but I just felt I had to say this because for these 18 months I've been telling people, in real life and on GS that they should buy it from Bestbuy and get the PRP thinking that it's so easy but obviously it's not.

Scarface_tm431

Welcome to the club!

Are you by any chance canadian? If so, the very same thing happened to me 2 weeks ago in Future Shop (Since BestBuy owns Future Shop now, everything is the same there). My XBOX died and i had exactly same plan, and they also refused togive me a new one (mine only worked for 6 months though). My friend who used to work there told me that they SHOULD give you a new one right away, but that didnt happened. After hour spent or arguing and yeling (words like "punt" were used quite a few times) i just had to bite the bullet and send it to MS.

Only "good" thing is that now we send it to Ontario and not to Texas as it used to be so the process takes less time.

But hey, sorry for your troubles, i know how you feel.

This wasn't the first time news of this was happening. I think near a yewar ago when MS extended the warranty, maybe the 3 year one, some BB stores decided to just send it to MS, as why should they give you a new one if they can have it repaired for free. Which is wrong, but their change seemed to correspond with MS extending warranties. And of course, then you wonder why you paid $60 just to have them act as a middle man that you can do something yourself faster and free. And the death rate of the 360s probably had a play them changing their policy. Which is more bs, as it's a gamble with warranties. You give them money, and they hope you don't need to use it so they make money, but if you do, it saves you money in the end. Though, it seems BB bit of more than they can chew with this gamble and went and changed the rules when the odds of this gamble were no longer in their favor thanks to the common RRoD.

If anything, that store should have refunded your warranty if their policy changed, which I think is wrong and only should effect new buyers. Maybe go back into the store and act like you are interested in a new 360 and ask abou the replacement plan to see if they feed you bs again.

Look, everyone just needs to calm down here, and instead of acting like idiots, some people here need to educate themeselves on the situation in thier own area. There are a huge amount of issues that could be at play here, and ranting like an idiot that all Best Buy PRPs are useless is just ignorant of you.

It may be a matter of state law changing since you bought your PRP. For example, in my State, in the last several months, state law has changed regarding warranty coverage. Now it doesn't impact every store chain, but for instance EB/Gamestop. They normally offer a single year replacement plan on all thier consoles, although now the entire chain has discontinued warranties on 360s, but that doesn't change anything.

Normally if you buy a console from EB/Gamestop and pick up the 1 year warranty, you have 1 year from the date of purchase to take it in and get a new replacement console no questions asked. Well because my states law has changed, now the way the warranty works, is that for the first year, it's under manufacturers warranty, so for example if I bought a PS3, and it broke after 7 months of use, I would have to send the console in for service through Sony, for the first year. After 1 year is up, then my 1 year replacement plan comes into effect, and after that first year and for one entire year thereafter, I can then use my 1 year replacement warranty.

The State essentially forced EB/Gamestop to offer thier warranty in addition to the 1 year manfucturers warranty, so your getting twice the coverage, but it works rather oddly. Before you go flying off the handle at Best Buy, know your state laws, or country laws if your not in the US, and make sure they have not changed, because if they have, Best Buy may have no choice in the matter. This is only aState law in my case, and other states vary with thier own policy on such matters, but they can change and as soon as they go into effect, itno longermatters what contract you agreed to with Best Buy or any retailer that is bound by that given law. In my case,EB/Gamestop isaffected, but Best Buy is not, so thier PRP is just as good as it always was.

You also need to know the store you are dealing with, and thier policy on things like this, again I know Gamestop is like this. They give the store manager quite a bit of freedom to run things as they see fit. For instance, my local Gamestop, used to have a great manager, that would really go out of thier way to help you out. They changed managers, and everything changed. The new manager will not allow you cancel a reserve on a game or change it until after the game is released, most stores let you change it or cancel it anytime before release. Gamestop warranties are supposed to be no hassle, no questions asked, but that new manager double and triple checked to see that the problem was genuine and messed around until you were ready to puke. There were many inconviences with that manager, so I called corporate, and found out that Gamestop allows thier managers to set a whole list of policies at their discretion, as long as it doesn't break any civil laws or discrimanatory factors. It is fully in thier rights, and perfectly legal to change store policy at any time.

I don't know if Best Buy has that kind of manager power, but you should find out before condeming all Best Buy PRPs, because clearly the store's overall policy on them has not changed.

Just do some research and educate yourself and then take the fight back to them if you have any ground to stand on.

Schumi7WDC

Dude, a contract is a contract. The only research that should be done is reading up on the PRP that was signed for. He fulfilled his end of the bargain by dropping the $60. BB needs to fulfill theirs. The average consumer can't be expected to go to law school and learn how to read up on laws and their effects. If you really know an easy way to look up laws, could you let me know? That sounds interesting.