Deadline Put Off Again in Best Buy's Complaint Against Its Ex-Phone Refurbisher

A U.S. magistrate judge in St. Paul, Minnesota, postponed Friday for the fourth time the deadline for iQor Global Services, Best Buy's former smartphone refurbisher, to answer the retailer's November complaint that iQor botched the job of restoring phones to mint condition and charged Best Buy millions of dollars in contract fees for work it didn't perform. Magistrate Judge Steven Rau’s Friday order gave iQor until March 31 to respond to Best Buy allegations in a Nov. 29 complaint (in Pacer) that it’s guilty of six counts of breach of contract and one count of unjust enrichment. For five years through 2016, iQor was the service provider for Best Buy’s Rapid Exchange Program, which allowed Best Buy customers to return defective phones to Best Buy and exchange them for refurbished phones, said the complaint. “The Rapid Exchange Program was intended to provide Best Buy customers a convenient way to return defective phones and to minimize the time those customers were without a properly working device,” it said. But iQor didn’t properly refurbish “a large portion of the phones it received,” and in many cases had to refurbish the same phones “multiple times,” all the while charging Best Buy “a new service fee each time iQor tried (and failed) to adequately service the same phone,” it said. Best Buy estimates it "overpaid" iQor more than $17 million in service and warranty fees and credits, said the complaint. Representatives at iQor didn’t comment Friday.