Best Buy Will Not Replace Or Refund My Stolen Item After Saying They Would

TLDR: Best buy won’t replace or refund my stolen $750 Tamron 28-75mm camera lens, paypal won’t refund me my money, Roadie will not get back to me, and the police have been useless. This all started 12/9/24. The person who stole it was the delivery driver hired by Roadie and there is video evidence. This man went around doing this all day to everybody and was posted all over ring. Best buy was initially going to replace (I have all the receipts) but then switched up last minute and cancelled it and won’t tell me why. Question is should I take best buy to court over this or what are my options? ——————————— In December, I bought myself a new camera and a few lenses to go with it. One of the first lenses I bought was the Tamron 28-75 f2.8 through best buy. The options were either pick up in store and wait until Wednesday 12/11 or delivery on Monday 12/9 so of course I went with delivery as I wanted to have it sooner than later.

Well, unfortunately, best buy uses a third party company to deliver products sometimes (Roadie) and it is basically like instacart where they just hire anybody. Unlucky for me, the person who was supposed to deliver my package decided he actually wanted to keep my package instead and did it so that he would make it seem like my package was delivered, when it reality it wasn’t. He basically took a picture of it, marked it as delivered then picked it up and took it.

I have video evidence of this, contacted best buy, roadie and the police. There is a police report and it turns out this guy had been doing this all day and multiple other neighbors have video evidence of him doing the same thing.

Best Buy initially said that they will be giving me a replacement as it was either that or a refund and I really just wanted the lens. I was told I’d be able to pick it up from the store by 12/13, got a confirmation number and was told I’d receive an email for information about. I had been contacting them through different means such as phone call and text and was told all of this over the phone (wish I would’ve recorded it) and later was replied back to on text where this information was confirmed. No one said anything about a “backend team”.

12/13 came around and I didn’t receive any updates so I contacted best buy again and this time was told they had to do a case thing with a different department; their “backend team” and that I should receive an update in 24-72 hours. I was super confused about this as no one had notified me of this and I explained it had already been 24-72 hours since I first spoke with someone about this. They told me not to worry and that sometimes things get backed up and to wait until the end of Saturday 12/14 for any information. They were now claiming the lens as lost rather than stolen so I corrected them about this as well.

So after waiting a bit longer and not hearing back, on 12/17 I decided to file a dispute through paypal as I wasn’t about to be without both my $750 and camera lens. This whole time I hadn’t heard anything back from Best Buy and I was really tired of waiting as I needed the lens by 12/22 for a shoot I was doing.

Well come 12/18, the day right after I submitted this dispute on Paypal. I received an email from best buy saying the investigation was complete and that I will be able to pick up my replacement lens at my store soon and to check my email for updates on when it’s ready. I was going to then close the dispute, but had a super busy day and completely forgot to.

Then on 12/19, Best Buy sent me another email about the completed investigation which said this: “We have completed our investigation and are unable to provide a refund or replacement. All items on this order that have not already been fulfilled have been cancelled. We encourage you to work with local law enforcement regarding this matter. Sincerely, Your Customer Care Team”

At this point I’m fuming. I contacted best buy yet again for some answers to no avail so I let paypal know what they did and sent proof of this as well to help my case.

I have not heard from Best Buy since and Paypal just got done with their investigation and sided with best buy because “Best buy states the item was delivered”. I just filed another case with paypal to reconsider with more information.

So now I’m waiting for paypal to finish their investigation. I really want to know what more I can do. Police can’t get me a refund or my item back. Do I go to court?