I know many of you know our stance on shopping local.
I try to live by that practice as much as I can. There are items, however, like newer DVDs/Blu-Rays and some technology that it is harder to buy here.
Mom mentioned in a phone call in mid-November that she was thinking of buying a DVD player. Hearing that and with the holidays coming up, I file that for gift ideas. I had extra money on a November paycheck and found a Blu-Ray player (similar model to the one I own) that was a deal. I bought it and the needed HDMI cable, told mom not to buy her own and I would install it when I came down for Thanksgiving.
I brought a handful of movies with me and first thing I did was install the player. Tried a Blu-Ray first. Didn’t read. Tried a DVD. Didn’t read. Tried a different DVD. Didn’t read. Tried a different Blu-Ray. Same result.
I had an old Blu-Ray player that no longer plays Blu-Rays, but was still working to play DVDs I could give mom in the interim as I worked on replacing the gift I promised, and she was in need of a DVD player most.
On Black Friday, I returned the faulty player I just bought. I followed the retailers return process by bringing a copy of my online receipt, credit card and photo ID, but a trainee was working the register and I didn’t leave with a receipt or acknowledgement that they had my returned item, with him telling me I should receive notification by the end of the day. That was probably my mistake that I will own up to, that I should have had at least a receipt acknowledging what I just did, but it was Black Friday and getting out of there quickly was also a goal.
Saturday evening rolls around and still no notification. That’s odd, I follow up with online customer service. Basically, give me a “they might just be swamped, give them a day to catch up” message. Fine.
Tuesday evening after still seeing nothing, I follow up again with online customer service and their advice is make another trip to Cedar Rapids.
Wednesday I decide I’ll try calling the number of the store and getting someone there I can try and avoid a drive to C.R. Apparently, the calls to their store all roll over to their corporate support lines and after half an hour on hold and being bounced from one customer service representative to another, told via phone that againmy best option is still a trip to Cedar Rapids.
And so I drove to the store Wednesday, five days after returning the item, now in a less than happy mood to now be using more gas and additional time (I’d now been upwards of two hours on just figuring out this return issue with online customer service) to check on something I had returned that online had told me “this is your quickest option.” And it was resolved very quickly at the store. There was just one step the trainee had missed in the process to issue the refund, and the ordeal was over.
It left me in a less than jovial holiday spirit navigating this whole thing, and placed a retailer on my “Probably not willing to shop here again” list for a couple reasons.
And reminded me why I always start locally with shopping first.