A nightmare shopping experience

Despite my wife warning me to not go shopping today, I decided to leave the house to look for a Logitech h800 wireless headset. I checked Best Buy’s website and saw that they had the headset in stock. (I wanted to get it locally in case I needed to return it.)

After a quick trip to Costco (it wasn’t too bad despite being this time of year) and Target, I headed to Best Buy. Parking was easy and then I went into the store to find the headset. It was a complete zoo, so I started looking for the headset. First I saw headsets in the PC area. They had some Logitech wireless headsets there, but not the h800. So I went to the mobile phone area and there were more headsets, but not the h800. Onto mp3 players to find more headsets, but not the h800.

So, I asked a sales person and he said to check over by the home stereo area as I had said “wireless headphones”. Nope, not there. Someone else suggested gaming. There were headsets, but not the h800. By this time, I was about to lose my mind. I tried to use Best Buy’s mobile website to verify that the store had it, but the Find in Store option kept spinning and didn’t show me results.

I went to one of the cash registers (they have them scattered throughout the store) and asked the guy behind the counter to look it up. He looked it up and the computer said they had 7 of them. He went into the back (I thought I’d never see him again) and when he came back maybe 10 minutes later, he said that they were unloading a truck and that they were probably in the shipment. However, he didn’t stop there and asked someone else who said that they wouldn’t have them listed in the computer unless they were already unloaded. The very helpful guy went with me looking for it. First was gaming to double check, then he said “let’s try wireless mice”. Presto, the headset was next to the wireless mice. I’m not sure I would have been able to find them without help. I profusely thanked the man and went on my way to pay.

So Best Buy has headsets in no less than 6 different locations in the store! I’m not sure that anyone there would have been able to find it on the first try. This was an exercise in frustration and a valuable lesson; shop online, it’s easier and faster!