I found this record of an experience I had with the Burbank Best Buy. I thought it would be good to start with something especially dull to discourage any more readers.
TUESDAY 05/08/07 2:00PM :: I head to Best Buy to buy a new car stereo. I find a very nice Sony for $200 that they will install, no charge, only takes an hour. I ask the guy, “this will work with my factory speakers and sub?” He says “yes, of course."
I make an appointment for 2:00 the next day, except it turns out they don’t actually have the parts they need to install it . They tell me to go over to Al & Ed’s Autosound to buy the parts and bring them with me the next day. I go to Al & Ed’s Autosound and pick up the parts for $40. I guess that's why they call the installation "no charge", because you have to go buy the parts somewhere else.
TOTAL TIME: 1 HOUR / TOTAL COST: $240
WEDNESDAY 05/09/07 2:00PM :: I show up at the rear of Best Buy with my stereo, car, and parts. Unfortunately, no one is there and the door is locked.
A note about the layout: the auto garage is in the back rear corner of the store. It is enclosed by windows so that from inside the store you can see the mechanics and wave at them, but the door that connects the garage to the interior of the store is kept locked at all times and none of the employees or mechanics have keys to it. If the store employees need to talk to the mechanics—or vice versa—they have to call each other on the phone. They can stand a foot apart, separated by glass, talking on the phone. Allegedly there is a manager somewhere in the store that has keys to that door.
I leave my car at the back of the store and walk around to the front of the store so I can walk back to the back of the store (this is a long long walk). I find an employee and we wait for the mechanic and then we all stand around and wait for the alleged manager to let us through the door. I leave the mechanic my keys and my number and go kill an hour.
Surprisingly, my car is ready at 3:30, an hour after I dropped off the keys.
The first thing I notice is that the stereo is installed crooked, at an angle. Seems an odd way to install a stereo. My old factory stereo was a two-space unit and the new stereo is a one-space unit, hence the dash adapter kit that I picked up at Al & Ed’s. Not only did they install it at an angle but they’ve broken the dash adapter. I find a couple of pieces broken off on the floor, and it is only secured at two corners, leaving the other two corners unsecured and wobbly. It looks terrible.
The next thing I notice is that there is no bass, and I mean none. I have very small speakers in my jeep and without the sub they are worthless. It’s not like they just don’t have a good rumble, it’s that the entire bottom half of the audio is missing—the subwoofer is not connected at all.
I have a meeting to go to so I have to leave it as is, for now.
TOTAL TIME: 3 HOURS / TOTAL COST: $240
THURSDAY 05/10/07 10:00AM :: I’m there when the store opens at 10am. I figure what the hell I can fix the dash adapter myself I just want to get the sub working. I ask them how they can call this stereo installed when there is no bass? They say come back tomorrow at 10am and they’ll fix it for me. I make another appointment, yay.
I go home and pull the stereo out. Now I can clearly see where they broke the dash adapter and didn’t bother to tell me about it. I can also see that the subwoofer output of the stereo is not connected to anything. I'm pretty sure my factory sub is not going to work with this stereo.
WEDNESDAY 05/09/07 2:00PM :: I show up at the rear of Best Buy with my stereo, car, and parts. Unfortunately, no one is there and the door is locked.
A note about the layout: the auto garage is in the back rear corner of the store. It is enclosed by windows so that from inside the store you can see the mechanics and wave at them, but the door that connects the garage to the interior of the store is kept locked at all times and none of the employees or mechanics have keys to it. If the store employees need to talk to the mechanics—or vice versa—they have to call each other on the phone. They can stand a foot apart, separated by glass, talking on the phone. Allegedly there is a manager somewhere in the store that has keys to that door.
I leave my car at the back of the store and walk around to the front of the store so I can walk back to the back of the store (this is a long long walk). I find an employee and we wait for the mechanic and then we all stand around and wait for the alleged manager to let us through the door. I leave the mechanic my keys and my number and go kill an hour.
Surprisingly, my car is ready at 3:30, an hour after I dropped off the keys.
The first thing I notice is that the stereo is installed crooked, at an angle. Seems an odd way to install a stereo. My old factory stereo was a two-space unit and the new stereo is a one-space unit, hence the dash adapter kit that I picked up at Al & Ed’s. Not only did they install it at an angle but they’ve broken the dash adapter. I find a couple of pieces broken off on the floor, and it is only secured at two corners, leaving the other two corners unsecured and wobbly. It looks terrible.
The next thing I notice is that there is no bass, and I mean none. I have very small speakers in my jeep and without the sub they are worthless. It’s not like they just don’t have a good rumble, it’s that the entire bottom half of the audio is missing—the subwoofer is not connected at all.
I have a meeting to go to so I have to leave it as is, for now.
TOTAL TIME: 3 HOURS / TOTAL COST: $240
THURSDAY 05/10/07 10:00AM :: I’m there when the store opens at 10am. I figure what the hell I can fix the dash adapter myself I just want to get the sub working. I ask them how they can call this stereo installed when there is no bass? They say come back tomorrow at 10am and they’ll fix it for me. I make another appointment, yay.
I go home and pull the stereo out. Now I can clearly see where they broke the dash adapter and didn’t bother to tell me about it. I can also see that the subwoofer output of the stereo is not connected to anything. I'm pretty sure my factory sub is not going to work with this stereo.
TOTAL TIME: 4 HOURS / TOTAL COST: $240
FRIDAY 05/11/07 10:00AM :: I’m at the back of the store with my jeep at 10am for my appointment, again there is no one there and again the door is locked. Again I walk around to the front of the store so I can walk back to the back of the store (again, this is a loooong walk). My wife arrives to pick me up at the back of the store. I can see her through the windows but I am on the wrong side of the locked door that the alleged manager can allegedly unlock.
The mechanics tell me I will need to replace the sub, which I already figured out, and they refer me to the salesman. The salesman somehow gets the idea that because I was the first person in the store this morning I must have all day to wait around and twice says to me “hold on let me just take care of this person first.” I am left standing for a total of 30 minutes, I timed it. My wife is still waiting for me outside.
Finally I am allowed to buy a very nice sub for $300. The salesman throws in some installation wire he claims I need for $65 and charges me $70 to install it. I point out that he claimed my new stereo would work with my old sub but he doesn’t remember that.
Now I have my sub, my stereo, the apparently necessary wire, and all I need to do is drop it all off with the mechanics and give them my keys. On the other side of the locked door. The salesman pages the alleged manager three times, and twice disappears himself for a while. I’m hoping he is trying to track down the manager. I wait by the door for a total of 25 minutes, I timed it. My wife has gone to Lowe’s to look at flowers.
TOTAL TIME: 5.75 HOURS / TOTAL COST: $675
FRIDAY 05/11/07 3:00PM :: My car is ready. Naively I go to the back of the store for the third time but this time it’s open. They give me my keys, point me towards my car, and we say goodbye. They don’t mention the fact that my car is dead.
I come back in and tell them my car is dead. They say, oh yeah we had to jump it a couple times, it kept dying. I said well what did you do to it? At that point they decided to tell me that when I dropped my car off at 10am that morning it was dead. It is a crazy coincidence that my jeep, which has less than 20K miles on it, which has never had the slightest problem starting, which started just fine that morning, decided to die exactly when I pulled up to the Best Buy garage.
Some yelling ensues, bottom line is I pop the clutch and make it over to a local gas station. The mechanic takes a look, tells me my battery is dead, sells me a new battery for $85 and charges me $10 to install it. As soon as he puts the new battery in the car is just fine.
Back to the installation. The stereo is still crooked and unstable but I’m not too concerned because I figured if I had given them a new dash adapter they would have broken it again. What I can’t figure out is for what possible reason they would install a $300 sub in the back of a jeep. When they told me they were replacing the sub, I assumed that they were actually replacing the sub, which sits between the front seats under the console. They didn't replace the sub, they added a sub, which is what I would call it when you throw a sub in the back of a jeep without actually attaching it to anything and without bothering to take out the factory sub. I don't know what you'd call it, but certainly not installation.
A note about my jeep: it has no roof. It’s not that the roof is folded down or put away, it’s that there is actually no roof. So to "install" a $300 sub in the back of a jeep where A) someone could easily just pick it up and walk away with it (it’s not secured to anything) and B) any rain would ruin it, shows a definite lack of common sense. At the very least I would have expected a phone call to discuss possible mounting options.
I hate letting Best Buy off the hook, but by coincidence I had ordered a lockable cargo trunk for my jeep a while back and when I got back to my house Fed Ex had just dropped it off on my front porch. I installed the cargo trunk and put the sub inside. It makes the sub a bit boomy, but I am at least satisfied that the sub is safe and waterproof. Not sure what else to do with it.
TOTAL TIME: 7+ HOURS / TOTAL COST: $770
SATURDAY 05/12/07 2:00PM :: I go back to Al & Ed’s Autosound and buy a new dash adapter for $20. I come home and reinstall my stereo level and secure in about 30 minutes.
TOTAL TIME: 8 HOURS / TOTAL COST: $790
Epilogue: I ended up selling that jeep about a year later. I rode my motorcycle for about 6 months and then ended up buying a brand new jeep, which is identical to my old jeep, except it has four doors instead of two and a kick-ass stereo system.
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