Absurd Singularity

So yesterday I decided to attempt my warranty cancellation at the Best Buy down on 23rd since it was sorta on my way home. Bad idea, lotsa people also returning stuff after work so it took me about 40 minutes to even get to the front of the line. When I handed the girl behind the counter my receipt and explained what I wanted, she looked at it, told me to hold on and then disappeared into the manager's cubicle. Manager wasn't in his cubicle but I think she called him or something cause she came back out and asked me why I wanted to return the warranty. Told her cause I didn't think I'd wind up using it. So she disappeared into the cubicle again, most likely contacting the manager. And I'm pretty sure the manager told her to stall until he got back cause she reappeared from the cubicle, didn't say a word to me about what was going on, and ventured down towards the back of the Return & Exchanges line. It was obvious she was waiting for something or somebody.

So a couple of minutes go by and the manager finally shows up. The girl informs him of the situation and he looks at me like I'm growing a second head out of my neck. "You want to return the warranty? On a VAIO???" Then he proceeds with the regular spiel and I use my regular canned answers,

"Why do you want to return it?"
"You know you're definitely going to use it within a year and a half for a battery."
"You're not going to use a battery with it?"
"You know a battery costs like $350 from Sony right?"
"And you never had a problem with the battery and laptop components?"
"Ookk... if that's what you want..."

So after the whole back and forth takes place, the actual refund procedure took all of a minute. =p What the hell is it with Best Buy and their product warranties??? Are they the only things making them money? Geez. There's absolutely no reason to treat your customers like they're loony or morons for not accepting these apparently gift from God warranties.

Grr... so, returning a warranty doesn't save you from harassment either it seems. Guess the last alternative to try next time something like this happens is to cancel by mail cause apparently you can cancel and get a refund through snail mail. But knowing Best Buy they'll probably STILL have some manager call you up to make sure that you really, REALLY don't want their warranty.

Oh, but they wound up refunding me more than I had originally paid for the warranty. I was charged NJ tax when I bought the warranty but since I returned it in NY, they didn't pay attention and refunded me the total amount calculated using NY's tax rate. Score! ;-p