Grrr. Staples is a pain sometimes.

[M_Six]

Staples had a pretty sweet deal on a Sony Cybershot P71 in their weekly circular today. I went to the nearby Staples in Mattoon (read: boonyville) at 2PM, two hours after they opened. I asked for the camera but I was told they'd sold out. What a load of crap. The average income in this area is around $15k/yr. I doubt there was a line of people waiting for the store to open so they could buy a $300+ camera.

I don't believe for a second that they had more than one in the store to begin with, and that was the demo model. They had to call all the way to the far western side of the state to find one they could have shipped. I mean, what was there, only five in the whole state or something? How can you advertise something you never had to sell in the first place? Isn't that illegal?

[JacobM5727]

maybe since it isnt such a rich neighborhood, they dont try to keep the nice stuff in stock as much

that sucks though

[TOAD6147]

But when you order on-line don't they pull inventory from the regional stores sometimes?

Or sometimes the employees buy it for friends. I'd write a letter or call Staples Corporate and inform them.

As far as advertising goes even if they have one its OK as long as they sold it that day.

Not worth pursuing. Better to just have them arrange to ship it to you either from the store or call staples.com and have them pricematch the store after explaining what happened.

[M_Six]

I'm having them ship it to the store from the Staples across the state. They said I should have it by Tuesday. It wouldn't have been any better if I had been able to buy it online, but I was really up for taking some pics today. If they make you wait for them to ship it anyway, they may as well sell it online.

Oh well. It felt good to rant.

[bill1971]

M_:

Staples inventory control has never ever been what you might call "stellar." To complicate the inventory picture even more, you have folks like us scooping up the on-line deals via Doc's Deals, Spoofee, Slickdeals, and the like, which really creates havoc for them as well.

That happened to me as well, when I was looking to scoop up a 30GB (huge at the time!) hard drive. I was there when the store opened and they didn't have any. So I did complain via e-mail, and they managed to give me an even better deal a couple of weeks later.

So it does pay to voice your disappointment, in a polite but firm manner, to get results.

The two times that I actually "lost it" while arguing about rebates that I never received, it seems the nouns - "knuckleheads", "idiots", and "incompetents", were somehow incorporated in those two pieces of correspondence.
Needless to say. . .I'm still waiting for those rebates - lol!

At least it seems you're going to get the item that you want. And that's a good thing. And so is the occasional rant!

- Bill

[chris64]

They probably wanted to get you into the store to buy other items, so they had a deal to get a camera at a great price and to make it legit they actually keep one in stock.

[BobOmega]

they do that to get people into the stores.
like a few weeks back best buy had a really sweet deal on a laptop. we called later in the day and i think they said the had 2 at the start of the say but they are gone now, but we should come in a look around.


edit chris beat me to it

[M_Six]

I was waiting for them to point me to something else. I would have dropped a dime on them for bait-and-switch in a hearbeat. But I think they know that's illegal, so they were very careful not to even hint that I look around while I was there.

I just wish Staples online would carry the same stuff as the B&M. I would have loved to have ordered that camera online. I have had bad experiences in the past with their *ahem* *cough* inventory control. In the Urbana store a salesperson swore they had 7 of these bookshelves I wanted, but she couldn't find a single one.

[Richard Cranium]

Inventory Problems are a direct result of "INVENTORY TAXES"

In most of the 50 states, businesses have to minimize on-hand inventory to avoid this most unfair of all business related taxes.

In my singular company, they had to throw away over $6,000,000.00 of inventory. The reason was the length of time since last usage was so long that the inventory taxes would exceed the value of those items. 6 Million Bucks

Keep in mind that small businesses have to endure this as well as large corporations.

Time to start pummeling the Senators with letters.