Adventures at Best Buy

I'm going to ran for just a few minutes about the mega-retailer, so if you're not in a ranty mood, feel free to skip.

I have a relative who has a tendency to give me nothing but Best Buy gift cards for any occasion. That's a lot better than an ugly tie, but as I age, it's starting to be a real annoyance. I don't mind shopping in person, but the Internet has taught me to be a value shopper. I'll pay a little more for convenience, but not to the point of paying an extra 50+% for convenience. I also live in an area with high (8.75%) sales tax which can typically be avoided for most on-line purchases. I know I'm "bad" for not wanting to pay taxes... just like everybody else.

So, when presented with a small sum in gift cards, I have to try to spend them down somehow. I can either wait until I have enough saved up and buy something large, or try to spend it on small-ticket items. Even on small-ticket items, though, I feel continually frustrated by price and availability. I recently bought an Asus Eee 1000HE for personal/around-the-house use, and for lack of anything else there that I actually wanted to spend my money on under $50, I figured I'd buy a portable wireless mouse. No big deal, right? Well after a lengthy selection process, I had it down to one of two Logitech VX450 wireless mice. One was piano black, a better match for a piano black laptop and the other was black & silver/grey. I could go with either and get a good match. I thought the black one looked a little nicer, but it was $49.99, and the other was $39.99. Nicer, but not $10 nicer, I took my purchase up to pay. I was distracted by the "reward zone" crap while checking out and I had my gift card processed already when the $40 mouse rang up at $49.99. I had to get the manager to reverse the charge, re-credit the gift card back and do a price adjustment to get the price back to where it was marked on the shelf. Apparently the $39.99 price applied to the previous gen VX450 with a large USB transmitter instead of a mini-USB transmitter. Um... ok, well it didn't say that, the SKUs didn't match up and that's not how it was on the shelf. $10, please.

I'm very happy with the mouse, but the whole lack of organization and confusion I had to spend up front trying to figure out why the hell one color was 20% more expensive was tremendously unnecessary and confusing. Honestly, I would have probably ended up with a cheapo Microsoft mouse that was on sale had I known it would be a hassle... but hey, the mice under the "sale" sign were sold out and the same mouse in the Laptop section "looked different"-- minor color/version revision. I might have been in for the same thing all over again.

Unfortunately, the market is shrinking rapidly in this economy and the lack of counterbalance provided by Circuit City as a prime competitor feels like it's starting to show. They're moving a very limited CD selection to the back of the store, adding play areas for video game consoles while reducing game selection tremendously and treating PC gaming as a pariah (1.5 Aisle sides down from 4.5 a few years ago at this location.) They did add boutique mini-stores for cell phones, home theater, MP3 players and Macs. Whee.

The bottom line is that I'm used to selection and aggressive pricing. Big boxes don't have to be the cheapest, but they have to at least be in the game. I'm not sure how to satiate my desire to physically touch stuff without them, but we probably need to see some serious changes in the next 5 years or some shakeout in the market.

Rant over.