Victim: $54 million Best Buy lawsuit stupid, but necessary

$54 million is what Raelyn Campbell wants out of Best Buy for her missing laptop, personal data, and her time. The Washington, DC, resident filed a lawsuit against the company after Best Buy allegedly lied to her for months at a time about the status of her machine, then offered her an insultingly low compensation once it acknowledged the loss. Campbell even says that she knows $54 million is outrageous, but it's apparently the only way to get media attention and put enough pressure on Best Buy to do the right thing.

"It shouldn't take a $54 million lawsuit to motivate Best Buy to address these issues," Campbell told MSNBC. In fact, she doesn't even expect to win that much—all she wants is appropriate compensation, an explanation of what happened, and a promise that employees will receive training on preventing the loss or theft of items from secure areas of the store.

The story of how the lawsuit came about is convoluted. Campbell bought the laptop from Best Buy in 2006 and was "talked into" paying an extra $300 for the extended warranty. A year later, in May of 2007, the power switch on the computer broke, so she took it in for repairs and was told it would take between two and six weeks. Two months later, she began making phone calls to Best Buy to find out the status of her repairs, but continually got the runaround.

"On July 11, I contacted the (store's) helpline and was instructed by 'Agent David Goodfellow' that it would be 'ready within days,'" Campbell wrote in her complaint letter to the company in late August. She called again on July 19, when someone told her that the machine was in Louisville for repairs. On July 25, she was told that a part had been ordered and it would be leaving Louisville "soon."

On August 9, Campbell managed to get an answer out of another Best Buy employee, who told her that the computer never actually went anywhere. In fact, he told her several days later that the computer was missing, and that Campbell would be compensated. That compensation amounted to a $900 gift card several weeks and a number of phone calls later—an amount that Campbell found to be ridiculously low. She says that her laptop and warranty alone cost over $1,100, not counting her purchased software, time, and all of her lost data. Campbell demanded $2,100 in cash, but was met with silence.

After Campbell contacted the Washington, DC, attorney general's office in November, Best Buy offered her a $1,100 refund to her credit card and a $500 gift card. Finally, when Campbell filed her $54 million attention-getting lawsuit later that month, the company upped its offer: $2,500 in cash, plus all of the above. But Campbell withdrew her original demand for $2,100 because of the added costs of filing police reports, consulting lawyers, and taking measures to deal with identity theft.

That's right: Campbell's tax returns were on her laptop, and Best Buy apparently violated Washington, DC's security breach notification laws by not telling her about the potential data loss. And the potential for data theft as a result of missing equipment is no laughing matter: the state of Ohio, TSA, IRS, US Department of Transportation, and the Veterans Administration have all lost equipment (often laptops) that have forced them to alert millions of citizens to watch out for identity theft. Campbell says that she still hasn't heard from Best Buy on that particular issue, and has been forced to incur extra costs to monitor all of her accounts for suspicious activity.

Best Buy did not respond to our requests for comment by publication time.

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