I'm happy to say that I have finally picked up my LTEvo from Best Buy! After getting the run around most of the day yesterday, I called the Best Buy Mobile HQ today at 9:45 AM EDT. The canned message about the LTEvo had changed with a prompt to "press 1" for more info, so I did. I reached a very helpful woman who took my pre-order reservation number and checked the system at store #0299. She saw that they had received 10 PHONES YESTERDAY, but they were not in inventory. She also saw that there were 10 more pre-orders that were awaiting shipment. My pre-order confirmation was dated 5/7/2012 at 11:44AM, so she said I was in the group that should have a phone waiting for me in the store.
The Best Buy Mobile CSR then called the store and it took over 20 minutes for her to get in touch with personnel at this location. They first said that they did not have the phones, but she insisted that they did and they should look again. Finally, someone came back and said that they did have the phones, and offered an explanation that they must have come in on the truck last night. Of course this is bogus, as UPS delivers phones to Best Buy, and I spoke with them after 6PM yesterday when the guy told me had had not looked in three containers that had arrived earlier that day.
The Best Buy Mobile CSR then told me I could go to the store and pick up my phone! When I arrived, they were waiting for me and greeted me by name. The long saga was finally over - or so I thought! The person in the Mobile Phone department was very polite and he was trying to get everything processed, but he had no clue as to how to get the $50 gift card applied to the phone purchase. At one point he asked if I could come back in a few hours while they sorted out the problem. I told him to get his manager to approve the $50 gift card another way or the next time I walked through their door would be my last. He then figured out that he was not inputing the information properly. I sat through two system reboots and finally we moved to a different terminal to complete the transaction. I also waited through a call to Sprint to resolve an issue with the plan which turned out to also be caused by the Best Buy employee's unfamiliarity with the process. He actually was reading the step-by-step guide out loud to me while he was processing the activation. As the next LTEvo customer was waiting behind me for his turn, we finally completed the transaction - and it only took 1 hr and 25 minutes! And all I had him do was to activate the phone! I did the data migration and all account sync and setup myself after leaving the store. I will say that the guy was nice and apologized throughout the process, but nearly 1.5 hours to buy a phone?
I'm very happy to have my new phone, and I hope everyone who has not received theirs yet will get it ASAP!
