Chris
Google
Until this incident, my family did rate Best Buy quite highly.
I personally even had publicly defended Best Buy against misleadingly low third-party ratings and all together we have made more regular large item purchases there than any other retailer over the past year, probably averaging 1-2 / month.
Our most recent experience tho has changed things:
We purchased a TRIPP Meditation digital gift card for Meta Quest for Christmas. The code was delivered and redeemed successfully, and it still shows as redeemed in the Meta account — but the app does not provide access and instead asks the user to pay again.
What followed was roughly 15 hours across support chat and phone calls, technical forums, multiple departments, repeated transfers, conflicting information, and ultimately a flat refusal to help. We were explicitly told there was no internal path forward and no refund would be issued solely because it was a “digital download,” even though the product is non-functional.
This wasn’t just a $40 issue. It was a Christmas gift intended to reduce stress for the family, and instead it created significant stress during the holidays. More importantly, it cost Best Buy something far more valuable: trust (well and 3 stars)
We’re leaving this review to document a systemic failure in handling non-functional digital products, especially when no other remediation path exists. This single incident fundamentally changed how we view Best Buy as a retailer.
P.S. This incident also connects to a prior issue we experienced with Best Buy’s price match guarantee on a separate purchase (a laptop). Because part of that transaction involved a gift card, Best Buy’s system incorrectly charged us the difference instead of refunding it, requiring several additional hours of support calls to correct.
That was eventually resolved, but it reinforces a larger concern: Best Buy is a technology retailer, and repeated technical and system errors — especially around payments, gift cards, and adjustments — place an unreasonable burden on customers to fix problems that should not occur in the first place.