So I see an announcement for the new Google Nexus 7. I decide to get one right away to play with. Go to Best Buy (large US retailer) and see that a store that is 20-30 miles away has it in stock. Wanting to make sure before I drove there, I call their number. Turns out what is listed as the store number, is not. It is Best Buy's main number. Lady answers and checks stock for me. She says they have 6 in the inventory of that store. Before I can hang up she talks me into ordering it and have them save it for me. I say fine. It takes 10 minutes to order this even though I have an account with them. She had to manually copy and paste the info from one system to the other!
I get a confirmation of the order and then two minutes later another email saying the item is NOT available for pick up at the store!!! I call and they don't know what is going on other than all of a sudden, the store now shows 0 inventory. The operator offers to call the store and comes back and tells me they sold all 6. I say that is not possible. How can someone sell 6 units that fast? He says the person at the store said "those units were spoken for!" Spoken for??? The heck does that mean? If an item is sold it should be taken out of the inventory not left there. I could have made the 30 mile trip for reason.
My sense is that this is a hot unit and the store was saving this for their friends/family. As soon as an order came in, they realized that and changed their stock to show zero.
This is not the way to run a business. You either have an online inventory system or you don't. Showing 6 units, when checked by their own internal system/employee and have that be zero in reality is completely screwed up. They wasted my time and theirs and got an unhappy customer.
Never have anything remotely like this happen on Amazon.
I get a confirmation of the order and then two minutes later another email saying the item is NOT available for pick up at the store!!! I call and they don't know what is going on other than all of a sudden, the store now shows 0 inventory. The operator offers to call the store and comes back and tells me they sold all 6. I say that is not possible. How can someone sell 6 units that fast? He says the person at the store said "those units were spoken for!" Spoken for??? The heck does that mean? If an item is sold it should be taken out of the inventory not left there. I could have made the 30 mile trip for reason.
My sense is that this is a hot unit and the store was saving this for their friends/family. As soon as an order came in, they realized that and changed their stock to show zero.
This is not the way to run a business. You either have an online inventory system or you don't. Showing 6 units, when checked by their own internal system/employee and have that be zero in reality is completely screwed up. They wasted my time and theirs and got an unhappy customer.
Never have anything remotely like this happen on Amazon.
