Best Buy apologizes to blogger for nastygram

Yesterday, I posted word that Best Buy was hassling blogger Scott Beale of Laughing Squid for having blogged about a Best Buy parody t-shirt created by Improv Everywhere. Scott didn't make or sell the shirt, just blogged about it. Today, good news -- Best Buy backed down and apologized. Link.

• [Pyros]

  Funny how quickly the almightly corporation bows down at the feet of a mere blogger.

• [M]

  Todd is right, and MichaeW is right. Which is why I don’t buy stuff from people like that.

• [ethan]

  M, this question is quite likely dumb, but where do you buy electronics?

• [M]

  As little as possible (the laptop I’m using right now is pushing six years, and I hope to get anothyer three out of it), but never from Best Buy, who has a horrible reputation in this type of thing. Sure, you can’t avoid buying from bad people, but you certainly can avoid buying from the ones who consistently do stuff like this as a matter of apparent policy.

  My vendor of choice is Amazon, though if you show me enough similar nonsense from them, I’ll drop them.

• [M]

  Just for fun, google “best buy customer service” and “amazon customer service” and see what you get. I realize that no company is immune from criticism from fruitcakes, and that this creates a certain mass of flack, but one company is obviously MUCH better at this than the other.

• [ethan]

  Ah. OK. I’m just always interested in alternatives to the megacorps, and electronics is one area where they (alternatives, that is) seem to be few and far between.

• [Michae W. Dean]

  A lot of people these days say that they’re “interested in alternatives to the megacorps”, and it’s a decent proposal.

  But really, no matter where you buy it, the stuff you’re buying is made by megacorps. You can order your flat screen TV or iPhone or Vista Laptop or any device with a microprocessor from a mom-and-pop store online, but they’re getting it from the manufacture, who is always a megacorp….a megacorp that most likely utilizes near-slave labor in China to put the stuff together.

  I like to “shop locally” and “support the little guy”, but a lot of these conversations devolve quickly into “more indie than thou”. Even if you’re running Linux, you’re running it on a chip made by a megacorp. It is impossible to make a chip as fast as a Duo-core in your basement.

  I go where the price is best, where the selection is good, and where they let me walk around and poke stuff for hours without bugging me. I’m not going to stop shopping somewhere because they sent someone a lawyer letter (even if that someone, Scott Beale, is someone I know and consider a very decent guy.)

  Megacorps send lawyer letters. It’s what they do. When someone owns intellectual property in the old-world model, if they don’t over-police their property, they’re underpolicing it, which is problematic when someone considers a truly huge infraction, like widescale actual bootlegging. It looks bad in court if they haven’t been “defending their claim.”

  It is fine and good to blog about it when it’s out of line, like with this instance, but it’s not going to keep me out of the store.

  That said, I don’t shop much at Best Buy, because they don’t sell stuff I do buy. (They do, incidentally, carry media that I created.)

  Michael W. Dean
  http://www.stinkfight.com

• [madjo]

  gah! Litigate first, think later?!
  How about the other way around Corporate America?
  How about actually using your brains before you send your lawyer sharks at people? Or don’t you have even half a brain?

  You know what? You sicken me… Get lost Best Buy.

  This is exactly what you get when you let the legal division run your company, incredibly stupid decisions and a destroyed public image. Well done, Best Buy, reallly Well Done.

• [Antinous]

  They might have groveled a little. That’s a pretty dry apology for such a well publicized gaffe.

• [certron]

  Looks like this entry gets posted just in time for Slashdot to pick up the original story…

• [elvisneedsboats]

  Is “regret” legalese for sorry? That sounds more like “we’re embarrassed we were found out.”

• [Todd Knarr]

  I’ll take one of my former boss’s responses: “I don’t want an apology. I want a detailed description of what steps you’ve taken to make sure your legal department doesn’t do this again. If you aren’t taking any steps, I’m going to conclude you don’t think it was a mistake.”.

• [Michae W. Dean]

  Looks fine to me.

  Corporations carefully watch for making any “admissions of guilt” in writing, and I’d say this is the best anyone could hope to get for something like this.

  MWD