Well, I reserved a car last night, for just two hours, to drive myself down Howard to Best Buy, to pick up an order I placed online. Last night's adventure was interesting, but I'm not going to call it a success.
First, when we got to the parking spot for the I-GO car (at Morseland), the car wasn't there. I called I-GO and explained this fact to them. They called the person who was supposed to have checked in the car by now, then calls me back. "Sorry, running late due to weather, ETA 10 minutes. Do you want to switch to a different car?" No, there's only one car at Morseland, and other I-GO cars are a bit of a walk, so we'll wait it out. I-GO extended my reservation by 30 minuets, and credited me the additional time, so I'm effectively not paying for when I'm not driving. The person with the car shows up just about 30 minutes late.
OK, we're not off to a great start. First, I had to call I-GO. Would have been nice if they had actually called me and told me the car wasn't ready. That's a few blocks from home and it's cold out. Thankfully, we can go stand in Morseland, if need be. But, OK, not their fault that the last user of the car kept it longer than she said she would. Maybe she was supposed to call and tell them but did not. I hope she gets nailed with some sort of overage of fine.
So we get the car. The car is fine, I've ridden in it before, as my girlfriend, who is already an I-GO member, has rented it before. Takes a bit of figuring out to drive it, because it's a hybrid, and has a lot of buttons. It all works and we get on down the road to the Best Buy on Howard.
That's when the best/worst part of the adventure takes place. I go into Best Buy, with my printed out order pickup email ("Your order is ready for pick up", the subject line screams at me) and I queue up in the customer service line, behind people with broken laptops and people who bought the wrong iPod.
Sure enough, I get to the counter, only to find that my order is not actually ready for pickup. It's not sitting in the pile of gadgets also awaiting pickup, and the customer service rep doesn't know what it is or where it is. He looks it up and "RSS" says there is one in stock, so he hunts down somebody to go look for it on the shelf or in the warehouse. Fast forward another 15-20 minutes. Nobody can find it in the warehouse or in the store. Guess I'm out of luck, and they inform me of such.
OK, please let me speak to the manager. He pages an "MOD", and while I'm waiting for that person to never show, I call BestBuy.com customer service, who is suprised that the product isn't available. I hand the phone to the customer service rep in the store. He explains to the call center rep that he was surprised that the online site allowed the order, as RSS was less than 3 (I think this means "confirmed stock is less than 3 items"). He also says that the store does not carry this item. Which is odd, because from the context, it sounds like the inventory system says there's one in stock, but it sounds like they just simply have no clue where it's sitting, and they decided to give up on it.
OK, fine, cancel the order, thanks for nothing. So, I rented a car for nothing, to buy an imaginary thing from Best Buy that doesn't actually exist. Fail.
Oh well. I'm going to try again later today, with Circuit City instead. Hopefully the car will be ready for me when I walk over to Morseland in today's brutal cold.
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