An annoyance...

While I was down at my parents a few weeks ago, one of my duties was to help my father buy a new HDTV and set it up, along with a media center that they purchased. I had helped with (OK, I did) the layout of the room in terms of what type of furniture and where it would go. I am very good at spatial relations and figuring out what will fit where and look and flow well on paper, and it translates into actual spaces well.

Because of my job, I can be a good person in picking out televisions as well. I went with my father, and we had decided on a particular set. They had it for a good price at Circuit City, which is around 40 miles one way from where they live. There was also a local store that sells the same brands, and we'd thought that we'd stop there before going all the way up to the Circuit City (after going to Comcast to pick up an HDTV Cable box).

We stop in, and they offer to match the price that we had from Circuit City. They then go and look, and they don't have it in stock, and claim that Circuit City wouldn't either (I actually had called Circuit City, and they did have it in stock, or so they claimed). They offered a good deal on a comparable set, although a different make. After looking at the specs of the TV and seeing the picture in person, it would definitely do for my parents purposes. We took it.

I do like the idea of buying local for several reasons. First, if something goes wrong, they're right there, not 40 miles away. Second it keeps money in the local area. It helps the local economy. Lord knows the economy, local, national needs as much help as it can get right now. Thirdly, the guy was truly a nice guy. He didn't try and over sell us, he didn't try to BS me (and I never actually said what it is that I do for a living), and was knowledgeable. I tell the guy that I'd probably be back the next day (Saturday) to buy a Blu-Ray DVD player and an HDMI switching A/V Receiver. That's about 1,000.00 worth of additional sales. The reason I didn't buy them at that time was that I didn't know what the media center my parents had bought looked like, so I didn't know how much space I had to deal with.

The next day comes along, and I put the media center together (minus the hutch part because it would have been too big). I have some other things to do -- move one TV to another room, take another one out totally, remove an old entertainment center, move all the furniture in the living room to where it is supposed to be now that the final piece is in -- but still intend on going to the store to finish up the entertainment center project. I look in their ad to verify their hours, and they were open daily 10am-7pm. It was around 5pm, and the store was about 15 minutes away, so I decide to take a shower and change since I'm all smelly from all the work that had been done that day.

I leave my parents house all clean and fresh at 5:35, stop to get fuel because my tank is almost empty, and go directly to the store. I get there at 6:08pm, and something seems wrong. Every light is out. I walk up and the door is locked. They have no hours visibly posted on the outside. I look back at the ad, and sure enough, it says open until 7pm daily. At this point, I am thoroughly annoyed. They're closed, and the only other place that I can get what I need is 40 miles away. If they had closed at 6pm, I wouldn't have showered, I just would have went there, but their own advertisement said they were open until 7pm.

Because I'm a spiteful bastard, I did not go back to this store on Sunday. I drove the 40 +miles one way up to the Circuit City and spent my 968.00 there. I have also written a letter to the store informing them of this, and included a copy of the receipt to Circuit City so they can see that I was truly willing to spend the money, and that they lost out on a sale, and quite honestly, probably a lot of my future business because of that.

My parents are now styling with a Blu-Ray DVD player (something even I don't have), nice 7.1 surround sound and a 47" 1080p LCD HDTV. Oh yeah, and a Wii.