My brother wanted to buy a flat-screen TV and he asked me to go with him and his friend, Joe, to Best Buy, along with his friend Joe. I have almost always had positive experiences at Best Buy (except with the service plan), but today was a pretty amusing trip.
Adam narrowed it down to three TVs. Normally if you go over to buy a DVD, at least three service people attack you asking if you need any help. My usual response is “nope, just hear to shoplift.” Just kidding, I never say that, but Adam made the better comment “nope, I understand alphabetical order” and he would definitely call me out if I tried to steal that one.
We see a worker and ask him for any insight into which is the better TV. He says “oh, I know nothing about TVs man, you need someone from Home Theater.” He then tells us he will send someone over. Unfortunately, no one comes over. Adam goes to the bathroom, with the instruction to me and Joe to find someone. I stop a guy and explain that we need help. He says that any employee can help us out. I laugh at that and respond with “not true! we already found one guy who couldn’t help.”
Adam decides on getting the LG 46″ blah blah blah. He wants to pay $400 in cash and then finance the rest. Well it turns out they do not have any in stock. He can still pay for it and they should get some in next week and if he buys it now he can get it for the sale price. Good deal.
After a good bit of entering information into a computer, Adam is told he has to go up front to fill out the paperwork for the Best Buy Credit Card. The guy up there tells him that almost everyone gets approved instantly. Unfortunately, Adam is one of the one percent who does not.
He will need to speak with an actual human to answer a few questions. But, the guy explains that he can still pay part cash and then put the rest on the card when it becomes approved. So we go back to the first guy and he has no idea what the other guy is talking about. Actually, if Adam wants, he can pay cash and then when he gets approved he can slide some of it over and finance that portion. If you have enough cash to buy the TV, why would you want to finance any of it? Actually, he has enough to buy the TV, but he wants to make sure he has enough leftover until next payday.
We leave pretty disappointed. I have no clue why I was disappointed. I was excited because I plan on buying a new TV pretty soon and figured I could get my research out of the way now. We decide to stop at Wal-Mart just to see what they have.
They have the same TVs as Best Buy, yet they are cheaper. A worker, who I shall call Lurch, comes over and Adam explains what he wants. He decides on the 47″ Vizio and he says that he wants to finance part of it. Lurch grabs a giant cart and tosses the TV on it. He is quite confident in the approval process.
It turns out that he screwed up the financing and had Adam sign up for a $300 Wal-Mart card, which was not a real big deal to Adam, he figures he will have it paid off in less than a month. We were at Best Buy for about an hour and a half, we were at Wal-Mart for thirty minutes.
I just want to point out the difference between Adam and I. He had a set price he wanted to spend and he did not go over it. Me? I would have put $400 down on a 55″ and tried to finance the rest. Or I would have kept adding stuff, like surround sound and a PS3…I guess my brother has me beat when it comes to self-control.
I won’t even get into the horrible ordeal I went through when I bought my TV and Home Theater… needless to say Circuit City deserved to go bankrupt.