Big-boxed in a corner
I spent much of Saturday exchanging one of those new-fangled flat-screen high-definition TVs for another one.
I'd been through this before, and it had been similarly exasperating. The original TV had gone bad, so I had exchanged it for an identical model two weeks ago. When that model, too, suffered from the same glitch, here I was again.
I disconnected the TV, loaded it into its box and squeezed it into the back seat of my car. Then I unloaded it, stood in line for a while at customer service, stood in line at the tech support booth and then stood in line at the home theater department.
When someone finally acknowledged my presence in home theater, I presented one of the people there with a videocassette documenting the problems I'd had with the flickering picture on the returne TV.
I wanted to make sure the problem was the TV and not something else.
He looked at me as if I'd handed him an eight-track tape.
Anyway, he found one of the handful of VCRs at the store (they're apparently going the way of the record player) and hooked one up.
Eventually satisfied that the problem was the TV, the guy advised me to pick out a new TV. Fair enough.
Problem was, it became nearly impossible after that point to find someone who would actually talk to me about my options or the nearly indecipherable numbers and alphabet-soup terminology.
Time was when buying a TV meant looking for the one with the best picture and taking it home.
Anyway, I was there for several hours. The people were generally nice but seemngly overwhelmed with too many customers and too many questions.
This experience ranked right up there with a trip to the dentist or the DMV.
I just wanted a decent, reliable TV to watch in the comfort of my den. This was like camping in line for Duke-Carolina tickets.
Comments (6)
To report abuse of the comment feature on this site, please use the feedback form at the bottom of any page.
I'm going to just take a guess--Best Buy?
Posted on January 21, 2007 9:49 AM
Allen,
If you had shopped at a specialty retailer, you might have been able to get some help. Of course, you wouldn't have gotten a Wal-Mart price, but then again, you wouldn't have gotten wal-mart service either. It's unfortunate that no-one values the specialty retailer any more; most of them have gone extinct in favor of stores like the one in your wonderful shopping experience.
Posted on January 21, 2007 9:52 AM
There are a lot of out of work and hungry people who would give up a lot to have your problems, Allen.
You frequently waste this opportunity you've been given to lend insight and shed light on important issues. It's a shame.
Don't like Best Buy? Don't go to Best Buy. Find something real and meaningful in the world to write about, please.
This newspaper increasingly isn't worth a quarter.
Posted on January 21, 2007 2:18 PM
Yes, Allen, but think how much more you'll enjoy watching Duke-Carolina in HIGH DEFINITION. The furrows of Coach K's ratlike visage will POP. That's worth some sacrifice. I'm still stuck with the non-HDTV flat screen. It's my wife's fault--the same wife, incidentally, that made me spend a summer in New England with a 27 inch curved screen with (get this) four channels. But I still love her.
Haven't been to Best Buy in a while, but recognized the place immediately.
Posted on January 22, 2007 11:10 AM
A quarter... Im bein ripped!
Dodson, lighten up. This is a blog for goodness sake. Its not even the official editorial section and certainly it isnt news. Besides neither has to be "all end of the world all the time" anyway. Gee willakers.
Posted on January 22, 2007 12:09 PM
Time was when buying a TV meant looking for the one with the best picture and taking it home.
Time was, also, when for many years you could count on the price of pretty much any 19-inch color TV to be around $300.
Technology would incrementally increase. Price would stay flat. So, $300, year-in and year-out.
Now? Not so much ... in good AND bad ways. ;-)
Posted on January 31, 2007 1:52 PM