Why I now hate Office Depot

On Monday we went to get the laptop I wanted, but first we looked around town to see what other deals there might be for that were in our budget.  First stop was Staples, and low and behold they had the Acer Aspire I'd originally wanted.  We should have stopped here, it would have saved a lot of anger and time, but no we decided to make sure it was the best deal out there.  Next stop Office Depot, we found 2 really good deals on fullsize laptops instead of a netbook.

We grabbed one of the slips of paper and took it up to the counter.  After checking their system, we find they only have the display model.  Ok no biggie, we'll get the HP netbook, so we grab that card and they call back to storage to have someone grab it, no response from anyone, but we're thinking they are looking for it.  We then decide well the other laptop is within budget so we ask them to check stock, its also a display model only.  So we go back to the HP Mini and they call back to storage as there has been no response.

Cashier helps another customer, and then places 3rd call to storage, still no response so she continues helping other customers with purchases.  After helping other customers she places the 4th call back to storage with no response, not even an I"m working on it, or I'm pulling another request, I'll be out with your request in a few minutes.  No it's dead air.  So cashier helps yet another customer, at this time she has said nothing to us about why it's taking so long.  So in a fit of anger and impatience we leave, we're not about to wait around another 20 minutes and not get anywhere.  So off we go, check 2 more places and then head back to Staples.  We tell the salesman what we want, and with about a 2 minute wait, he's walking us to the cash register.  In all we spent about 10 minutes in Staples before we were out the door with purchase in hand.

It sure made us realize the value of allowing your salesmen to pull items from stock themselves, not depend on some stockperson, who apparently has better things to do, at least in his book.  So here's to Staples, we're now more likely to go to you for items we might purchase that we can't take off the shelves ourselves.  To Office Depot, we'd like to say, learn customer service, fire your stockperson and empower your cashier's and salesmen to pull stock themselves.  Also Office Depot, make sure you keep someone informed about the status of their request, instead of letting them stand there for 20 minutes and only overhear your calls to storage.