The IT Nerd

Last night my Apple Watch Series 4 went crazy on me. Long story short, it started acting like the side button was being pressed when it wasn’t. One of the side effects of that was that the phone was trying to dial 911. I disabled that with my phone but the issue persisted. Even when I tried to turn the watch off, it would turn itself on. I tried doing an erase and set up as new watch and that didn’t solve the issue. Since the watch was under AppleCare (Pro Tip: Always get AppleCare for any Apple device you buy), I called Apple and they confirmed what I already know. It was a hardware problem. Thus they arranged for me to visit a local Apple reseller on Saturday to start the repair process. Which really meant that I was dropping it off to be shipped into Apple and returned to me four to six weeks later.

Since I have found it difficult to live without an Apple Watch, I decided to get a Series 5 and sell the Series 4 when it gets repaired or replaced. To that end, I went to the Best Buy website and found that they had a Series 5 with GPS+Cellular model in stock. I also noted this on their website:

In short, the stores are closed to browsing due to COVID-19. But if you reserve online, your purchase can be delivered or picked up. Best Buy has a FAQ here. I chose the pick up option and reserved my Apple Watch. I got an email 20 minutes later saying it was ready for pickup.

I then took a drive down to my local Best Buy and there were two lines. One for walk up traffic. One for online reservations. I was the latter and I was the only person in that line. The other line had four or five people who didn’t understand that the store was basically closed. Thus they were arguing with the Best Buy staff. Speaking of the line, there were markings on the ground and the walls that were about 2 meters apart and you had to make sure that you were that distance apart or else the Best Buy staff were enforce it. Now I was asked to print out my reservation and bring ID to pick up my watch. But when I hit the line I showed them my reservation. I then waited for about five minutes before being invited into the store. It appeared to me that they were only letting one person into the store at a time for obvious reasons. A Best Buy employee brought my Series 5 Apple Watch to the cash and after scanning the serial number, and trying to get me to buy the Best Buy warranty (Pro Tip: Never buy the Best Buy warranty. Buy AppleCare instead), I paid (They don’t take cash. Only debit and credit cards are accepted forms of payment) and left with my new Apple Watch. I should note that at no time was asked for ID even though their FAQ says that I would. That I think is a bit of a #Fail and Best Buy should look at.

All in all, the process was painless and easy. I applaud Best Buy for taking this approach. Though I suspect that they need to tweak a few things to make this work perfectly. But at the present time, I have no complaints about the way Best Buy has dealt with COVID-19.

As an aside, I will have a review of the Apple Watch Series 5 GPS+Cellular sometime next week. Stay tuned for that.

This entry was posted on March 25, 2020 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Best Buy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.