Thursday, January 31, 2008
New external 500GB Hard Drive
I stopped in to the Hagerstown Best Buy yesterday and ended up buying a new hard drive. It’s a Western Digital 500GB External Hard Drive.
I took it up to the register and the the total came out to be over $170. I knew the Maryland sales tax went up recently, but not that high. I told her that the tag said it was on sales for $129. She told me that she could go grab a weekly sales ad and take a look. She looked though the entire ad, but the hard drive could not be found. She then called the computer area and asked them to look for the posted price.
Luckily there wasn’t anyone else waiting in line. I hate holding things up.
The person called her back and informed her that that price was indeed $129. This is getting to be a definite pattern on the part of Best Buy. Other then a spindle of blank DVD +R discs, the last few items I have purchased there have scanned in at the register at a price different then what was posted in either the weekly ad or the sign displayed where the item was sitting.
I don’t mean to be bitching about Best Buy. I’m old enough to remember ordering peripherals for my Commodore 64 over the telephone when I was stationed on Guam. I was calling a 1-800 number, but to call anywhere in the United States was .99 a minute from Guam. The dork I was talking to on the phone was taking his sweet old time taking my order. If I didn’t want that second 1541 floppy drive so badly, I would have hung up.
The point is, I remember what it was like living in a world without Best Buy.
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Yeah, but Best Buy has been in a steady decline for the last several years.
Maybe they need some better competition. Circuit City blows. The one by me smells like BO all the time. It fucking sucks.
You sure it’s Circuit City? Maybe you just need to scrub that upper lip.
Nope- not me. The first 2 times i noticed it, I checked my own ‘pits. Not me.
I doubt it was anyone in the store, either (not that their sales staff isn’t filthy and unwashed.) I think it’s the carpet or something. It’s weird.
The Circuit City by us sucks. They have about 10 registers, and none are ever open. You have to go over to the “courtesy desk” to purchase something. Still, it’s better than Best Buy.
That is why I shop at Tiger Direct and Directron. Even with shipping I can get stuff like that cheaper online.
One time I went to Best Buy to get an ink cartridge for my printer. They had one of those flip-card reference guides that shows customers what kind of cartridge to get for their printer. I couldn’t find my printer in the list, so I asked one of Best Buy’s resident boneheads for help (don’t ask me why I did that).
He told me, quite matter-of-factly, that I couldn’t find my printer on the list because my printer was obsolete, which it wasn’t. He was just making up an excuse on the spot. He couldn’t be convinced otherwise until I noticed that the last two pages of the reference guide had been stuck together and my printer’s part number was, in fact, listed there with the others. Then the Best Buy bonehead said, “Yeah, you should have checked the list more carefully.”
Best Buy’s employees tend to lie when they don’t know the answer. This is compounded by the fact that they NEVER know the answer.
I don’t ever ask people that work retail at Best Buy or Circuit City for any help or if they have something. More times then not, they are going to tell you they don’t have what you are looking for just to be done with it. Plus, the people that work at these places are usually semi-retarded.
The last time I bought an HP printer it came with a plastic card to put in your wallet that showed what type of ink cartridge it took.
Cayusa, I try to buy things local if I can. I bought a PC case from Tiger Direct and some rounded IDE cables from them. This was before brick and mortar retailers started selling rounded cables.
Tiger Direct is listing the same drive for $139.99 plus shipping.
Newegg shows the same drive for $142.99 shipped.
I haven’t used Tiger Direct in a whole (they stopped sending me catalogs.)
Newegg is awesome. If you really check out their website, you can find some great deals. And their customer reviews seem better and more helpful than any others on the internet. Unlike Amazon, where it seems only retarded semi-literate douche-knuckles post reviews.