Was Best Buy wrong to ask a customer to return the Galaxy Nexus?

[yakitori]

--Extortion does not usually require that the offender threaten to commit a criminal act as long as the threat attempts to obtain money, property, or to force the victim to act against their will. For example, a threat to bring criminal charges or file a police report unless money is paid is still extortion, even though the offender may have every right to file a police report. By coupling the legal act with the illegal act of demanding payment to not act, the offender has committed extortion. Note, however, that a threat to file a civil lawsuit typically is not considered extortion even if that lawsuit is frivolous.

The threat also does not have to be directed at the victim. It is still extortion if the threat is directed towards the victim’s family or if it threatens to release information about some third party, the victim seeks to protect. --


So yes, it would be extortion if you told him that you were going to do it. If you did it without letting anyone in on the plan, you would be correct . . . no extortion. Just passing along information.

Bartering is hardly extortion lol. You freaking people make me laugh. Negotiating business exchange is not extortion. BB wasn't put in a position to be forced to exchange anything extra in return he simply asked. The details of a public business deal are public information unless a confidentiality agreement was signed. There was no threat of reporting crimes...etc. did y'all actually bother to read how it happened. He was ASKED if he would bring the phone back. He wasn't obligated to...so he ASKED if they would make it worth his while vby offering a discount or some kind of incentive. They declined....he kept the phone. Nobody FORCED anyone to do anything and nobody FILED any kind of charges or even threatened to.

Y'all can shut up now with your libel (which is illegal) accusing the Guy of committing a crime in public forums when no crime has been committed. Geez...u people ....shakes head



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[craigschroeder]

If you receive stolen property without any knowledge it was stolen, would you be required to give it back? If you knew it was stolen, or would have any reason to know, are you at fault?

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[powerwagon]

Apparently my thoughts on this topic in the other thread set off a bit of a firestorm, so I'll address them here. This is what I said:

Just to be clear I am NOT the guy who got the phone, but I will be responding as if it had happened to me.

First off, someone said I may be breaking laws. Not so. No law is broken when I post pictures of a phone that I bought lawfully and give you the location, contact information, and name of the manager on duty of the store I bought it from. Realize I'm not giving away the manager's personal contact information, I'm giving the info of the store. Not even close to being slanderous or libelous. Any judge would throw that case right out of court, it has no merit.

Secondly, someone said Verizon could just 'blacklist' the phone. No, they could not. They cannot choose to cancel my service or disable my phone unless I have broken their terms of service which I have not. I legally purchased a phone that was legally sold to me, and legally activated it on Verizon. In this case I, the customer, has done absolutely nothing wrong. Best Buy has broken their terms of sale with Verizon by selling the phone before they were supposed to. I had no agreement with Verizon to wait until it was officially released before I bought it. I did not break any law or agreement by purchasing the phone therefor Verizon has absolutely no right to do anything to my service. In fact if Verizon DID 'blacklist' the phone they would have broken our agreement. At the very least I would no longer be held to any service agreement I was under, but I would likely sue them for breaking the agreement and disabling a phone I purchased legally. And I would win easily if it came to court, which it would not. They would settle out of court to save lawyer fees.

Thirdly, this is not blackmail or extortion. My agreement with Best Buy was completed once the phone, money, and receipt exchanged hands. I have absolutely NO reason to return the phone. They have no legal standing to force me to return it. Therefor if they want me to drive back to the store to give back the awesome phone, they will have to give me a reason. No one is hurt by my keeping it (see below), but I am hurt by giving it up. Having the GN now is something of a special beast. No one else has it. You cannot buy the GN for Verizon right now at any price. That is worth something to me. They will have to convince me financially to bring it back. Best Buy is a business, and this is a business transaction. If the GM of that BB store doesn't want it splashed all over the internet where I bought the phone from, then he will do what he can to convince me to bring the phone back. If it's not worth anything to him, then I would just go forward with my plan to post videos of the phone so you all could see it, and in those videos mention where I got it.

Fourthly, my action at this point will not save anyone's jobs. If the person were going to be fired for selling the phone, my returning it will not change that. It's pretty apparent that the salesperson did not mistakenly sell the phone because of the 99999999 serial #. He probably lost his job. His manager at the very least got chewed out and probably written up. The store GM probably also got chewed out. This one transaction puts into jeopardy the entire relationship between Best Buy and Verizon. If I were that person's manager I would fire them immediately and hope that my boss didn't fire me as well. I've been a retail sales manager and general store manager and I've fired plenty of people for plenty of things, and that is certainly a termination level offense. I don't care if the customer brought the phone back or not, that guy would be gone.

Fifthly, I want to point out that I never said I would put the manager's address, personal phone number, or any of that garbage online. My video would be walk-throughs of the phone on Verizon with some accessories and I would start the video by saying "This the the Verizon Galaxy Nexus I purchased from the Best Buy on X street. Their manager Mr. X was there when I bought it, I suggest you call him at (store phone number) to ask if you can get one too!"

Finally, yeah it's Christmas. I'm a generous guy. But I'm not generous when a company asks me to bring something back that I really love and they have no right to. If they want me to go out of my way to downgrade my phone for a week or two, they have to make it worth my while. If they don't (as it seems they haven't) then that's fine. I'm happy with my new phone. And from their point of view they probably didn't offer him anything because the damage has already been done. Whether he returns it or not probably doesn't mean anything to them now. I certainly don't feel like I'm ruining Christmas by not bringing the phone back.

So many errors in this post, I can't believe I even wasted my time in saying there were so many errors in this post. Sheesh

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[powerwagon]

"Thirdly, this is not blackmail or extortion. My agreement with Best Buy was completed once the phone, money, and receipt exchanged hands. I have absolutely NO reason to return the phone. They have no legal standing to force me to return it. Therefor if they want me to drive back to the store to give back the awesome phone, they will have to give me a reason. No one is hurt by my keeping it (see below), but I am hurt by giving it up. Having the GN now is something of a special beast. No one else has it. You cannot buy the GN for Verizon right now at any price. That is worth something to me. They will have to convince me financially to bring it back. Best Buy is a business, and this is a business transaction. If the GM of that BB store doesn't want it splashed all over the internet where I bought the phone from, then he will do what he can to convince me to bring the phone back. If it's not worth anything to him, then I would just go forward with my plan to post videos of the phone so you all could see it, and in those videos mention where I got it."

Unfortunately, this IS extortion. What you said was in essence: if you don't give me something of greater value that what I paid for the phone (excluding reasonable compensation for time and travel expenses) I will do something that will hurt you, ie. put your name and information out there for all to see and hope to hurt your job, business, reputation etc.. That is extortion. You can certainly ask for greater compensation, but as soon as you make a threat intended to do harm if they don't agree, that is extortion.

Thank you thank you thank you. Finally someone on here with some damn sense.

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[powerwagon]

Extortion? Pleeeeeeeeease. There is nothing illegal about showing a video online of a phone you bought LEGALLY and stating WHERE you bought it. I can't believe legal consequences are even brought up in this debacle. There are NO legal consequences for anything this guy is doing. He DOES NOT have to return the phone and is CAN post all the info he wants about his phone. It's not like he's threatening to post naked pics of the manager's wife in exchange for money. That would be a little different.

You sir are incorrect. If he just posted the video on youtube and did nothing else, then yes, he did nothing wrong. Doing that in tandem with trying to financially gain from a threat is absolutely extortion. No question about it. It's morons like that who keep the courthouse filled.

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[ilikemoneygreen]

We need to relax a bit in this thread. Take it down a notch from rock to jazz. :biggrin: to much attitude....

 

[JSM9872]

I agree with money. We need to calm down a little in here. Let's try and remain respectful from here on out. Thank you.

 

[9wire]

Thank you thank you thank you. Finally someone on here with some damn sense.

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I agree. Bought it fair and square.

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[kparks]

I have not read this whole thread but my thoughts are should they have asked him to return it yea why not... Should the customer return it well that's up to him

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[ice456789]

So many errors in this post, I can't believe I even wasted my time in saying there were so many errors in this post. Sheesh

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Please point them out to us, so I can tell you where your are wrong. I can tell you that this scenario is NOTHING like extortion. Extortion is someone in the government using their power to take money from you illegally. If a police officer says "Give me $1000 or I'm going to say I saw you speeding and write you a ticket" when you weren't even driving, that's extortion. If a small town judge takes money in return for 'protection', that is extortion. In this scenario I bought a phone. Best Buy wants it back. I am willing to sell it to them but only at a higher price than I bought it for. Sorry, that's not extortion, that's capitalism. And posting the video on youtube is protected speech. I am not divulging any private information. I have every right to share both the location of the BB that sold me the phone, the store phone number, the name of the manager and ANY other public information I choose to include. I can tell you what the manager looked like. I can tell you if the stock boy didn't have his shirt tucked in. I can even call him fat and ugly if he is fat and ugly. None of that is even in a gray area. This is the USA, not China. As long as I don't lie, I can pretty much say whatever I want.

Also this phone may not have been released yet to the public, but I did not sign ANY non-disclosure agreement when I purchased the phone so Verizon cannot demand it back. I'm not a beta tester. I bought it at a retail outlet. Best Buy made the mistake, not me. Best Buy may have broken an agreement with Verizon but I sure didn't. And if Verizon makes a material change to my account then THEY will have been the ones to break my contract, not me. These 2 year agreements do offer some protection to consumers too. If they break the contract and cut my service, then I don't have to pay any ETF and I just got a $700+ phone for $300. Plus Verizon would be risking some seriously bad PR if they cut off a paying customer in good standing for buying a phone legally, just because someone at Best Buy didn't get a memo.