January 30, 2005

• So I went to Fry’s Electronics to assist my friend in finding a PC for
  him to buy.  Normally, I would tell people to either build their
  own PC or have someone (like me) do it for them.  But he’d rather
  go for the easy buy and get a pre-made desktop.  Honestly, I can’t
  argue with his logic, because it is cheaper and less time consuming
  than doing one from the ground up. 

  So we went to the desktop section of Fry’s and looking at the deals
  available.  All of a sudden, a Fry’s employee asks us if we need
  assistance.  I tell her that we’ll be okay, but she goes on and
  tells us about this desktop that we might be interested in.  I
  decided that I may as well go with it and have her “assist” us. 

  So this is how it went…
  1) She shows me a desktop
  2) I tell her if we can then get that, but with this other thing, and cheaper
  3) She tells me that if we do that, it’s going to be more expensive, and proceeds to show me another model
  4) I go “howabout this one” and points to another one across the area
  5) She says that it’s not as good because it doesn’t have this or that
  6) I go “really? But it says on the tag that it does”
  7) She goes “oh, that’s right” and proceeds to ask us if we’re getting it or not
  From that point on, repeat steps 2 – 7, three more times.

  After torturing *ahem* I mean… talking with her, I finally see a
  desktop I thought would be really good for my friend, and at a really
  fair price point.  She would have saved herself the time if she
  offered that to us first. You’d think we were buying a car or something
  with the way she trying to hype up the other desktops she wanted to
  show us.  Not to mention her trying to convince us to get the
  warranty…

  

  On a follow up to my Best Buy post yesterday, I went back to my
  favorite store to check on an item that I’ve been eyeing for quite
  awhile.  Beforehand though, I found out that www.bestbuy.com had it on
  sale for $20 cheaper.  I found out that the in store stock had it
  on the regular retail price.  I asked a best buy rep if I could
  get the item with their online price.  He told me “dot com prices
  are different than in store,” then turns and walks away. Yeah I know,
  how rude, and who else says “DOT com prices” anyways? 

  So I leave the store thinking that I’ll just order it online and use
  the option to “pick up at store.” I go ahead and order it online, and
  chose to pick it up at the same store I came from.  But I got a
  confirmation e-mail saying that they apparently did not have it in
  stock for online pick ups.  Those bastards!  I had to call
  their customer service number to alter the order to either cancel, ask
  for delivery, or have it picked up at another location.  I didn’t want to
  pay for shipping and wait, so I decided to go for another
  location.  They told me that they can do that and to proceed for
  the pickup.

  I then go to the other location for the item, but for whatever reason,
  the computer says that we are not authorized to pick it up yet. what
  what what?!  But the lovely sales rep figured that she can just do
  a price match with bestbuy.com, so that I can get the sale price. 
  I also needed to call customer service to cancel the online purchase,
  since it’s now a totally different transaction than the price match
  one.  So I proceed to do all that and am a happy camper. 

  But here’s the thing, if all she needed to do was do a price match,
  then why the hell didn’t the rep from the other best buy do that to
  accomodate my need to get the online sales price?  Idiot.

  • 3:21 am
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