A couple of weeks ago, CompUSA had a killer sale on a DVD burner. Actually it’s a DVD+R/+RW/-R/-RW/-RAM burner – Sony has been making a couple of models that has burned in all of these formats for a while now, but a few other manufacturers (in this case I/O Magic) recently caught on as to why this is a good thing. The fact that the media people have screwed up the works with five formats is a whole other pooch screw of an issue, but I digress! I missed out on this past sale because my local CompUSA sold out and I was still in Washington (local stores there were also sold out) when the sale was running. Today, I noticed (as did Steve) that Circuit City had the same I/O Magic drive for $150 after multiple rebates… if this wasn’t a perfect set up for a Randy-esque afternoon I don’t know what else would be.

I pop onto the Circuit City web site to find that all three of the local stores had this drive in stock. Shocking! While on the web site, I noticed that there was an option for Express Pick-up: cool! I’ve used it at Best Buy before and while ya still pay local sales tax, you can avoid the shipping charge and it usually cuts an extra human out of the sales process. Click. Click. Type. Type. Done! Order prints out and off I go.

When I get to the store, I find one woman hard at work and three lackeys that are hardly working. The store is mobbed so I get in a line and after a bit of glaring at the non-working knaves, I get to the counter. Pet peeve of mine, actually: waiting in lines when there’s a cluster of non-working mammals in plain sight of waiting customers. I get up to the counter. I give them the photo ID, credit card and order number. Given that this was an hour and a half after when the order was placed, I figure no worries.

Hah.

The salesperson clicks away on the keyboard, frowns and tells me “This order is locked, so we can’t fulfill it.” Huh? “Well… um… I think it is raining out and the weather some times screws up the computer, see? And it’s telling me that the order is locked so I can’t process it.” The weather? Um, whatever – I need the drive today; the paper said it was ready and in stock, I paid for it, so here I am. “Yeah, but the order is locked so I can’t pull up the order, so I can’t release the product to you.” Ah, OK. I need a store manager. [This is the practical prick that the northwestern people didn’t get to see last week because it only comes out in the right environment] “Well, I don’t know what that will do! If I can’t bring it up, then he can’t either so -” Store manager. Now. I want someone that can get my product for me. Because right now I own a $200 sheet of paper! [insert random flailing Italian gestures here

After a conversation with a sales manager – who made the salesperson call the corporate help desk, but they couldn’t help either – I’m assured that a) the drive will still be in stock tomorrow b/c it’s on hold, b) that the problem will be fixed on Monday, c) he can’t cancel the order and d) that there’s nothing he can do. I take the “help” number for pissed off consumers and I leave. Once home, I stew for about 1/2 an hour and call the “help” number. They tell me that it should be fine; I assure them that it isn’t. They tell me that I can pick it up; I assure them that I can’t. When I ask them to cancel the order, they tell me only the local store can even though they can’t because the order is locked! I ask what the return policy is, if I bought a different one in the store; they tell me that I can cancel the Express pick-up order on Monday without a restocking fee.

Yay!

Back to Circuit City! While I’m waiting to get rung out – this line I don’t mind waiting in because it was just busy and everyone was working hard – the sales manager wanders by. Seems that the “help” center that I talked to had called the store before I got there and they talked about my situation: the manager gave me 20% off the drive because I was so inconvenienced. Oh, this didn’t re-buy my loyalty to the store – I can be bought, sure, but not that cheaply – but I do think that this went beyond the call of duty because in truth I was inconvenienced. If I had just run back to the store twice, fine, this gesture would have quelled my anger. After finding out that I had the only locked record that any Circuit City employee has ever seen could have helped too. The fact that the original salesperson first tried to tell me that weather (just rain, mind you) can effect a network and lock my record… and then followed that up by giving me attitude for trying to pick up my order? that pissed me off a great deal. I doubt that “pick up your product minutes” means 1440 minutes.

The real irony of it all is that after going through all this rush to get the new drive on a Sunday (I always assume that any hardware upgrade could take 24 hours longer than it should and I need the computer during the week – part of the Bad Geek Karma theory) and I/O Magic’s website is down so I can’t get the updated firmware that is required before burning!

Ah. A day in the life of a Geek.