Fun with Future Shop

A few posts back I mentioned a slight problem with Future Shop. I thought it might make for a mildly interesting blog topic. Maybe not to you all, but it was a good conversation for us at the time....

Back in November, when we came out for our househunting trip, we decided to go in and pick out our new TV, etc. We had intended on just looking, but ended up picking stuff out and buying it because it was a good deal. The TV was on sale, and the salesman was gung-ho (of course!) so we didn't see the point in waiting and just went ahead and bought the stuff at the time.

Of course, we didn't need it delivered until January so we asked about layaway instead.

How it works is that if you pay full price at the time of purchase they will hold your stuff in stock until whenever you want it delivered. If you only put a down payment on it, they can't guarantee that it will be in stock when you need it. Makes sense. So, we paid for everything in full up front. The TV and the receiver were in stock, so they were immediately tagged as ours. The speakers had to be ordered in, but would be there way before we actually needed them and would also be tagged as ours upon their arrival in the warehouse. All good.

Since we were in town a week before we had arranged delivery, we had been into the store a few times to look at DVD players, cables, etc and had even seen our salesguy and he confirmed that our stuff was all there and tagged, awaiting our delivery date. Awesome!

Fast forward to delivery day......

DBF was all excited waiting for the Future Shop truck to arrive. He raced around getting the new stand all put together in anticipation that our system would be arriving in the afternoon. We were stoked to see the truck pull up about an hour earlier than expected. How exciting to see those boys drag that massive TV box out of the truck and up our stairs!! But wait, what do they mean "sign here"?? Isn't there more stuff on the truck for us? Nope, sorry, but this is all they gave us to deliver. Say what?!

So, long story short...we called, got put on hold, hung up, called again, got put on hold, hung up. DBF decided just to drive down there and find out WTF. He found our salesguy and explained what happened...so buddy went into the back and sure enough he finds that someone has tampered with our order! The receiver is there....and TWO speakers (we bought FIVE)....and the paperwork has been torn off and is laying on the floor. Nice!

Now, had I been there I probably would have lost it and pulled out my bitchy, screaming voice on the guy. Instead, it was DBF and he just stood there staring at the guy. I can imagine the poor guy was probably terrified....DBF can be imposing when he wants to. DBF explained that obviously he would like his $50 delivery fee refunded....which was done without question. Then the guy even offered up a credit towards something else for the trouble, so DBF got a pair of speaker stands that we needed for cost ($60 off...nice mark-up eh).

Luckily the missing three speakers were on order and arrived the next day, so we were able to pick them up and it wasn't really all that big of a deal....but what a hassle!!

Nice business ethic there though, eh? Some other sales guy probably had a deal pending and didn't want to have to order the speakers in, so just took ours out of the warehouse knowing that more would be there in a couple of days. Lame. Not cool.

But at least we got a bit of free shit.