a nightmare at circuit city

I suppose I shoudn't complain about circuit city too much, after all, they do offer good prices on a lot of stuff. of course they do outsource their phone help to asia minor-- always a major strike against any company for me . . . but i had a most annoying experience at their Burlington, MA store last night that is worth blogging.

i needed to buy an mp3 player and a video camera. i knew exactly which models I wanted, i just wanted to pick them up and go on my merry way and get to the post office before it closed. you would think this would not be that hard to do, after all, selling such items is what they do all day everyday.

So after being ignored for a while, i asked one of the red-shirted staff about buying the camera. He was pleasant enough in a distracted high school kid sort of way. But all the cameras were locked up under the display counter and he had no key. (one would think salespeople would have keys at the ready for eager buyers, but . . . no.) finally we tracked down someone who had a key. even so, i was not allowed to touch the box-- the sales kid escorted me tot he service counter with it. I told him i wanted to shop for some other items-- he said fine, we'll just leave it at the counter for you. So for the mp3 player, I went through an identical process of having to hunt up yet another engaged-in-conversation-with-coworker youth who could had to find someone else who had a key, and again the product was carried by them to the front service counter.

So at this point i started to browse around for some dvd disks and other things. I finally had enough browsing and went up to pay for my new camera and mp3 player. no one there could locate it. much confusion. long story short, apparently i had not bought them fast enough -- and so within 10 minutes of being brought up, they had all been returned to their glass cages. so i had to go through the whole process all over again. it took almost 15 minutes to re-find all the people with keys. this system was vexing enough the first time, time is ticking away, it's almost five, no hope now of avoiding rush hour, and i have a carload of boxes that need to be mailed before the post office closes.

all in all this was one of the most aggravating shopping experiences I have had in quite a while. I don't blame the youngsters working in the store, i am sure they are doing what they are told, but whoever is training them and creating the systems for moving desired products from the floor to the check out counter leaves much to be desired. This store was not at all crowded, and yet I had to actively seek out attention from floor staff.

i forgot to mention, one counter person asked for one of my receipts (i ended up having to buy things separately) they forgot to give it back to me. when i went to pick up my items from another counter, they asked for the receipt, which of course i now did not have. the previous desk person left it out on their counter, apparently it was up to me to come fetch it when i discovered i no longer had it. if someone else had picked it up they would have been able to walk out with my camera.

i am having second thoughts about this camera-- i think i can find something better and cheaper on ebay. my experience with the store makes me feel guiltless-- even happy-- to return it.