Returning a Fullscreen DVD for Widescreen at Best Buy?
 

I just bought Dawn of the Dead (the remake) from Best Buy. I got home, opened it, and didn't realize it was full screen until I saw the "this film has been reformated to fit your screen" at the beginning of the movie.

I have the receipt, will Best Buy hassle me at all if I try to exchange it for the widescreen version?

You'd think that the unrated director's cut would be widescreen only...

Re: Returning a Fullscreen DVD for Widescreen at Best Buy?
 

That depends. I have had some let me do it no problem (it only happened to me once, when I got the Mummy, one of my first DVDs, back in the day when I foolishly thought ALL DVDs were only in widescreen) but I have read stories where Best Buy can be total asses on this. They claim the UPC code is specific for a full frame, so you can only exchange it for that. However, what's the big deal if you are over in your inventory one full frame DVD and short one widescreen DVD? Is it really that hard to explain that to your store auditor when you have DVDs getting stolen left and right every day?

The success story I had with the Mummy was at a Wal Mart. I swear they will let you take back anything, with or without a receipt.

Re: Re: Returning a Fullscreen DVD for Widescreen at Best Buy?
 

Very true. When I worked for them they had 5 things that they were not to take back under any circumstances. When I left a half year later, they were taking back used underwear even though that was part of the Forbidden Five.

Just bring the DVD + receipt back to BB and explain politely about the problem. Most of the time they will let you exchange it for the WS. The trick is politeness. Being rude or demanding won't get you too far.

Re: Re: Re: Returning a Fullscreen DVD for Widescreen at Best Buy?
 

Ew, what the fuck is up with that?

speedy1961 - What are Forbidden Five?

Re: Re: Re: Returning a Fullscreen DVD for Widescreen at Best Buy?
 

One time I bought some undershirts from Wal Mart. I am kinda stocky, so I need some extra large undershirts to feel comfortable. Anyway, I rip open the package, I try to put one of the shirts on, and it's very tight and doesn't fit well at all. I take it off and confirm the tag says "46-48" but when I hold it up to my other undershirts, it's obvious I either got mislabled small shirts or medium shirts. I am leaning towards mislabled small shirts.

Well, I forgot to go back to Wal Mart for a couple weeks. A trip there has to be premeditated for me, which means I have to remember to grab the shirts on my way to work so I can stop by there after work, and I usually forgot to grab them. But by the time I did remember and took them back, I had lost my recepit. I still had the plastic wrapper, but no receipt. They refused to take it back with a receipt. Fine, whatever.

I just kinda let it go, but something stuck in my mind when I went to Wal Mart that day. It was an elephant girl at the customer service desk and her nasty ass attitude about my exchange request and the way she said, "SORRY" every time I tried to stress a point why I should be able to exchange these mislabled shirts. They were 6.00 shirts, no big loss, but I thought about going back there and buying more shirts eventually. In the mean time, I just forgot about the shirts and they sat in the corner of my hallway for a while in the blue Wal Mart bag until one day I went to Wal Mart again to buy some new clothes and decided to pick up a new package of undershirts. A few months had passed.

Armed with my new package, a fresh receipt, and a determination to get my mislabled shirts exchanged, I went back to Wal Mart with the mislabled shirts. The girl takes a look at them and said, "We can't take these back, they have been worn." Huh? "The underarms are yellowed." Yeah, they were. I had no idea why. "It's not like I can wear them! Look at me!" I pointed out as I held the shirts up to me to proove my point. I could tell she wasn't buying it, as if I had a secret agenda and gave the shirts to somebody else to wear or was trying to return them for somebody else. It took a good 10 minutes of so of arguing, calling the manager and all that good stuff before I got my replacement shirts. On my way out, I saw them throw the returned shirts in the trash. As far as I cared, they could have put them up where the sun didn't shine at that point.

And I did get a lecture of how they couldn't take back worn clothes. Something to do with a health code violation or something like that. And I can only surmise the shirts yellowed because they sat in that bag for a couple months before I felt like going back to Wal Mart. I simply didn't think about buying another package at the time elephant girl pissed me off, I just wanted out of there, and I consider it a chore to go to that store in the first place, so I wasn't going to go back there to jack around for a six dollar package of shirts. I would go back when I had another motivating reason to go back.

Cal, dont wear tiny shirts. Lesson learned.

Did you really pick the wrong one, or just pick up a Full Screen to get the bonus disc (because all the widescreen ones were sold out already) and are now looking to keep the bonus disc and get the widescreen version that you originally wanted? ;)

Yeah, I'm suspicious...but only because I have heard of a few people trying this already.

Shannon -- I almost had to do that with Van Helsing (sort of, I was going to ask). I picked one up out of the display that said "Free Bonus Disc" and of course it had no bonus disc. When I went back they actually were very helpful, but all we could find was FS ones with the bonus disc. Just as I was about to ask if we could just open up a FS and take the disc out, one of the clerks found a WS buried way in the back. The security guy at the door was very polite, the floor help was helpful, but the girl at the exchange counter was a bit of a snot ("I told them to tell people about the special sticker." -- Well, don't put "Free Bonus Disc" on the displayer then!)

This begs for either packaging the disc on the outside or just handing them out at the cash registers (which I realize opens up all kinds of other problems).

Cal -- Take it easy there! I am not doubting you one bit, but you have to think about how it looks from the clerk's point of view. An opened pack of shirts that don't match the packaging . . . plus they do appear to have been worn . . . a couple of weeks to a couple of months later . . . I understand that these things happen, but you have to look at it from all points of view. Now, this does not justify a bad attitude from the clerk, but . . . . think about it.

When I was working in the rental business I had a lady come back in about mid-January trying to return a copy of Santa Clause 2 that she had purchased over a month before-hand (pre-Christmas). She claimed that it didn't work. Well, I am a customer service oriented guy, but something was queer here (as it tends to be when dealing with seasonal merchandise). She didn't want an exchange, she wanted her money back (conveniently after the holiday). I flipped the disc over to see why it "wouldn't play" . . . well, it may have been due to multiple pieces of Scotch tape that were on the disc's surface! Of course, that tape (and all the scratches) was there when she bought it . . . now what am I supposed to do? I can't turn around and re-sell this as a new product. I can't send it back and claim that it was a manufacturer's defect.

Unfortunately a few bad apples spoil the pie for everybody. I just ask that you look at it from all points of view when dealing with retail employees.

wal mart doesnt take back broken playstations that they sell without a reciept....,

related to the topic, ive had goodluck returning full for wide at BB, CC and Target...

Take what easy? Huh? Did I miss something? I didn't know I came off as anything but. If I was really worried about it, I would have made a special trip.

To clarify, though, it wasn't a simple matter of shirts that didn't match the packaging. It was a matter of shirts that were labled 46-48 that did not match the other shirts sold by the same company that were marked 46-48. They didn't simply wind up in the wrong package, the shirts got the wrong lable. And considering I did take one of my worn shirts in for a visual comparison, no, I don't understand the clerk's point of view. They had all the evidence on hand that there was something wrong, they just reached for excuses not to help me.

I have worked in customer service befoer and sometimes you just have to give the customer the benefit of the doubt. The only time I may suspect something is up is if their story keeps on changing. My story stayed the same each time it came out of my mouth.

The Best Buys in my town are nazis about returning anything.

Yeah, I really picked the wrong one.

End result, I returned it (with the included bonus disk) for the widescreen version without a problem. The return clerk asked me if there was anything wrong with it, and I said "it's fullscreen." I did get the bonus disk with the widescreen version.

Maybe someone else had already bought those shirts and wore them and washed them. And after the wash the shrunk really bad so they returned them in the original package. Those shirts will shrink up bad on the first wash/dry. Maybe you got screwed by a loser consumer that was taking advantage of Wal-mart? Just a theory.