Called local Best Buy on pre-order start day and asked to see if I should come in the store to setup the pre-order so I could get the 256 gb card, or whether I could just do it online. Was informed they would have plenty and to just go ahead online. I believe the actual word used was "tons" but I won't take that literally. We all know what happened next.
Show up Friday and there's a phone and no memory cards. They tell me they can order me one but it will take 5 days. Not bad, I can live with that. Then I get an email saying mid September and I check the website and it says mid October. Then it says nothing, can't be shipped and no where in 250 miles where it can be picked up. This just means that maybe in some distant future after Samsung fulfills all the ones they are going to fulfill from people who do the direct promotion, they might send some to Best Buy.
I decide to return the phone, still in the package. I go to a different Best Buy after owning a still in the box Note 7 for about 12 hours and come to find that this location actually has a 256gb card available. I tell them nevermind the return, go ahead and activate it and I'll walk out of there happy. They open it up, take it out of the box, take the stickers off, put the sim card in, turn it on for the first time, activate it, and then go to exchange my memory card order for the actual memory card sitting in front of me. I had the phone for literally 5 minutes.
Now they tell me, they can't give me this memory card because they have to send it out for another order, and that if I still want to return it, I have to pay a $35 restocking fee. So I hand back the phone and tell them to go ahead and process the return and turn my old phone back on. I tell them I never would have accepted this phone nor made this purchase were it not for this promotion which they don't seem to be able to fulfill and that the sales person spent more time handling the phone than me. They don't care, $35 please.
Then, they tell me they can't return the Note 7 because when they activated it they messed that up and basically didn't know how to return it and that I should go back to the other store, 30-45 mins away, to see if they know how. This is a Best Buy Mobile that can't sell me the item in front of me and that somehow doesn't know how to process a phone return.
I go to the other store and explain the situation. They appear confused as to why the other store couldn't just sell me the card, but they understood that I was just over it. I returned the phone, after 3 hours and paid $35 to do so.
I will never ever so much as buy a AA battery at a Best Buy again nor will I restrain myself from going into a tantrum bitchfest anytime I see someone wearing the color blue. I will tell everyone I know, everyone I ever meet, strangers on the street, random people out of the phone book if I can find a phone book, dead relatives, fictional characters, squirrels in my yard, trees, a ham sandwich, whatever, of my hatred of this store. I will be the Billy Graham of hatin' on Best Buy. I will show no inhibition and talk about Best Buy as if it was equal to some cross between ISIS, NAMBLA and Comcast. People in my life will start avoiding me just to not have to listen to my whining. Believe me, I was an only child and there is no limit to my ability to whine. Will I lie? No, I won't have to.
Now I know many people didn't actually even get the phone they were promised Friday. But it actually would have worked out better for me in my case if they had just been sold out of the phone too. Should good customer service be defined as having a less terrible experience than the next person?
Oh and I checked my carrier account and now that's all screwed up so I have fixing that to look forward to.
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