Not Necessarily The Best Buy

I love my new iPod so much that I made Mumi go out and buy one just like it for himself. That's one of the perks of living with an impulsive little Bubala like me. I am a master at talking people into buying things that they don't really need and may not necessarily even want. I like to treat my men special that way.

We had received some coupons in the mail for Best Buy earlier in the week. One of those coupons was supposedly good for 12% off "any single item from the following categories." One of the "following categories" listed was MP3 players & accessories. Stupid me, I thought that meant that I could use the coupon to get 12% off on the Apple 80GB iPod MP3 player. I was wrong, of course. When we got to the store, the happy little Best Buy employee flipped my coupon over and pointed to the very small fine print that read "excludes Apple products." Wow. Shocker. It seems like every time I try to use one of those stupid Best Buy coupons, it is not valid on the item that I want to use it for.

Oh well, I wasn't going to let that little setback ruin my wasteful spending. I had checked online before we left the house and noticed that the iPod that we wanted was actually on sale at Best Buy for about 5% off MSRP. 5% is not 12%, but it is something. Well, wouldn't you know it. That the sale was not valid on in-store purchases. It was only valid online. No problem, I thought. I'll just use one of these computers here in Best Buy to order the iPod for in-store pick up and then just pick it right up while I'm here. I'm so clever.

Nice try Bubala! Somehow, Best Buy has managed to rig their in-store computers so that they don't offer the same sale prices as my computer at home does. Really! That's okay. Since I only live minutes away from Best Buy store, I decided to go on home and order the iPod online and then drive then right on back over to the store and pick it up. Sounds easy enough. Right?

Wrong!

I ordered the iPod online and received an e-mail from Best Buy letting me know that my order had been received. I was instructed, however, not to actually go to the store to pick up my purchase until I received a second e-mail confirming that the product was definitely in stock. This all seemed kind of silly considering that I been at the store only mere moments ago, and I had seen with my own two eyes that the iPod was available there in abundant quantities. According the the first e-mail from Best Buy, I was informed that it would take no more than 45 minutes for the second confirmation e-mail to arrive. The first e-mail came at 12:28pm EST. About an hour later, I still had not received the second e-mail. Since I had a lot to do and I didn't want to wait around forever for this second e-mail, I called the store to try to speed the process along. I reached a nice receptionist who agreed to forward my call to "the guys in the back that deal with that stuff." Well, the phone rang and rang and rang and rang and rang and... well, I think you see where this is going. I hung up in disgust.

By this time, I was way over the whole "buy a new iPod from Best Buy comedy show." So, I canceled the Best Buy order and logged onto Circuit City's Website (where I had purchased my iPod) and started the whole iPod ordering process all over again. This time with much better results though. Less than 10 minutes after placing the Circuit City online order, I was in the store picking up Mumi's brand new iPod. I didn't have to wait for no stinking confirmation e-mail. All I had to do was order the iPod, get in the car, drive to the store and pick it up. Easy! And, as an extra bonus, the iPod was $5 less at Circuit City than at Best Buy. Every little bit helps!