Billoblog ®

Today Mrs. Billoblog decided she wanted to drive to Chattanooga to do some shopping. While she wandered around the Hobby Lobby, I decided to take a peek at the local Best Buy. It had been awhile since I had been in one. I had decided to upgrade my wireless network, and wondered what was on sale. I found a cheap Netgear router and there, sitting beside it, were a couple of plug-in-the-outlet bridges to act as repeaters. The bridges were priced at $99.99. Imagine my surprise when they rang up at $149.99. I went back and showed the customer service person where they were, with the price tag in bright yellow and multiple boxes stocked right there — it was not some customer who had moved a box.

The customer service guy first told me that these were not bridges, but were routers, so clearly they were not the same thing. I told him I knew the difference between a router and a bridge and showed him on the box where the description matched the description on the price tag. He then said that even if they had the same description, they had different inventory numbers, so they must be a different product, and a customer must have restocked them incorrectly. Please. I asked for a refund and left empty handed.

This is the second time Best Buy has pulled this on me — putting one price on the shelf and ringing up a higher price at the register. The first time, I didn’t notice it until I got home, and decided it wasn’t worth the hassle. But, as they say, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I suppose that the principle of caveat emptor applies everywhere. And it wasn’t even so much that I had to watch the guy ring up the items. The thing that pissed me off was that it took 30 minutes of standing in lines and dealing with people who treated me like I didn’t know what I was talking about. Life is short. I have better things to do with my time than that.

When I was young, I knew a man who was a manager at a grocery store. He told me he would have his cashiers put a broom or mop at the occasional register and then add the cost of it to every person who checked out with a lot of groceries. If the customer noticed, the cashier would say “Oops, that must have been left here by the last customer,” and cheerfully refund the money. A lot of the time, though, people wouldn’t notice — particularly if they had a lot of items. He must have sold that same broom a thousand times, to hear him tell it.

That’s the feeling I get at Best Buy. I don’t need the hassle.

The day was still a success, however. After a nice dinner, we went to a wonderful production of Arsenic and Old Lace at the Chattanooga community theater, finished by a nice look along the river. That was great. I like movies, but they are dangerous. They are not dangerous because they are evil, or because they have bad messages. They are dangerous because they divert people away from local live entertainment. America ignores all of the wonderful talent at their doorsteps because everybody has to spend their money on mass media.

Big mistake. Get out there and go to a live performance.