Adventures in microwave shopping

10 posts / 0 new
Last post
Offline
Last seen: 5 years 11 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 851
Adventures in microwave shopping

Friday at lunch, my microwave died while warming my lunch. It runs fine, but my food remains frozen. Shucky darn. So I measure the space and resolve to buy a new one after work. The space is pretty small and oddly shaped.

5:30 rolls around and I'm off to Lowes. I really liked the Lowes in Oregon by my house so that's my first choice. Plus they have over 100 microwaves on their web site. Cool. I head up to the new Lowes on Auto Mall Prkwy in Fremont. They have about 8 different microwaves in stock. Pretty much basic stuff. About half are too big and half are too small. None of them tickle my fancy so I move on. Also, I'm starting to regret not bringing a tape measure as some brands don't mark the boxes very well.

I head up to the Sears at Mowry and things take a turn for the surreal. The small microwaves are far from the big microwaves. The big ones are by the ovens, which seems logical. I look and look and finally just about to leave, the vinyl siding salesman tells me the small microwaves are over by the vacuum cleaners and washing machines. I thank him and move on. THey have 16 microwaves. Most are an acceptable size but most are kinda chintzy. At least Sears marks the size on most, but not all, the price tags. Eventually I decide which one I want. No salesman has pestered me the whole time so I wander off to find one. There's one in the next aisle. I flag him down and announce my intentions to purchase one of their fine products.

"Oh, no you need whatsername, I sell washers and vacuums." He looks around and sees the girl helping someone with a sewing machine. He tells me to wait for her to finish. I wait for about 10 minutes for her to finish. Eventually I get frustrated and start asking other salesmen to take my money. Quite literally "I want to buy a microwave, will you take my money?" Nope. Nope. Nope. Not even the vinyl siding guy will sell me a microwave. He does offer to clad my unit of my apartment building in weather resistant plastic though. I'm about to walk when whatshername emerges. I tell her I want to buy a microwave.

"Oh I'm going on my break, can you wait a while?"

"Is there anybody else here that can sell me a microwave?"

"No just me. If you wait here I'll be back in a few."

I say "not interested" and walk off. She smiles at me like she didn't care and goes on her break. I leave. WTF?

I'm back on the freeway heading home and I remember Best Buy has an ample appliance section so I head over to McCarthy Ranch. I walk in and again find big microwaves with the stoves. There's an aisle sign that says Microwaves but that aisle is filled with vacuum cleaners. A cold shiver of deja vu goes down my spine. There's a bunch of small microwaves stacked on top of the aisle in boxes. I can't read the labels though. I find a salesman and ask "Do you have any small microwaves that aren't 20 feet off the ground?" He laughs and shows me where they actually are, 2 aisles over from the vacuum cleaners. There's probably 30 microwaves here tons of brands and new high tech toys. I'm all over all the shiny fancy new toys.

Unfortunately none of them have dimensions listed. I ask the guy if he knows and he runs off and comes back with a tape measure. Cool! We measure a bunch of microwaves and I quickly settle on one much nicer than anything at the other stores. All sorts of cool technology and sensors and programs. The salesman even gets a forklift and fetches a new one from the stack above the floor sucking doom machines. I'm so impressed I tell the salesman and another salesman that was helping out the story about Sears. He tells me Best Buy doesn't pay on commission. It strikes me as odd that someone who gets paid by the sale would ignore me and two guys who shouldn't give a darn if I buy something or not bend over backwards to help me out. I thank them both for a job well done and head out. I'm mildly annoyed by the cashier trying to push an extended warranty though. I tell him, "It's a microwave. If it breaks I'll throw it away and buy a new one."

Anyway, Best Buy just earned future business, and Sears just lost a lot of future business.

I just bought a panasonic NN-T775SF BTW

Offline
Last seen: 10 years 6 months ago
Joined: Sep 16 2004 - 02:44
Posts: 274
Story sounds very similiar to

Story sounds very similiar to my experience when I bought my g5 at compusa. I knew exactly what I wanted but none of the employees would go anywhere near the mac section. I ended up getting the manager to bring it out to the front. Ended up getting them to take another 100$ off the price if I bought applecare. So, I got the last dual 2.5 g5 for 1899$. ON bestbuy, I have found the employees there to be A LOT more helpful than many of the bigger stores.

coius's picture
Offline
Last seen: 10 years 2 weeks ago
Joined: Aug 25 2004 - 13:56
Posts: 1975
wow, I remember stuff like that

at Home Depot, while searching for flooring for the bathroom, I was told the guy that worked there, went home sick, and no one else could help me. After that, I tried Sutherlands and they did the same, except they couldn't find the guy who worked in the department.
At Lowes, the guy was talking on the phone for about 30 minutes, when he got off, he asked if he could help me with anything. I just said "Nope, I already got my answer" and walked off. Apparently, the question he didn't know was "would you help me find [...]"
He never even asked what I was waiting for.
I went to Menards (local Hardware store) and they were all over me, they made sure I got what I needed right away.
I forgot to mention, Lowes sold us flooring before that, but told us wrong about how to apply it, and sent us off with the totally wrong stuff

coius's picture
Offline
Last seen: 10 years 2 weeks ago
Joined: Aug 25 2004 - 13:56
Posts: 1975
Re: Story sounds very similiar to

I knew exactly what I wanted but none of the employees would go anywhere near the mac section.

Yeah, that's y apple banned them from carrying macs

Dr. Webster's picture
Offline
Last seen: 19 hours 29 min ago
Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 17:34
Posts: 1747
Re: Story sounds very similiar to

Yeah, that's y apple banned them from carrying macs

Wha? The CompUSA stores here still carry Macs.

And BTW, Home Depot beats the pants off of Menards any day.

In other news, I had a pretty good experience at the Mall of America Apple Store a few months back when I bought my 12" AlBook. It was right around back-to-school season, so I called ahead to make sure they had the model I wanted (80GB HDD/SuperDrive) in stock. They said they only had a few left, but that they'd put one on hold for me. Drove out there later in the day and the store was swamped. But one of the employees approached me right away and once I told them what I was there for they went back and grabbed my PB and rung me up straight away. They mentioned that the store had completely sold out of iBooks (!!!) and that it was a good idea I called ahead -- they only had a few PowerBooks left. They were quite knowledgeable and didn't even try to pressure me into buying AppleCare (asked if I wanted it, I said no, I'll probably buy it later, they didn't mention it again).

macg4's picture
Offline
Last seen: 11 years 11 months ago
Joined: Jan 17 2005 - 23:33
Posts: 311
yeah compusa here in iowa sti

yeah compusa here in iowa still carries mac stuff as well

gobabushka's picture
Offline
Last seen: 1 month 1 week ago
Joined: Apr 26 2004 - 16:30
Posts: 495
same here

my compusa in melbourne florida is stil selling macs. But they also have an apple rep that works there.

coius's picture
Offline
Last seen: 10 years 2 weeks ago
Joined: Aug 25 2004 - 13:56
Posts: 1975
oops!

sorry, at the time, i thought it was compusa, it was actually circuit city Blum 3 sorry for that. My error..

Offline
Last seen: 16 years 8 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 118
Re: Adventures in microwave shopping

so I head over to McCarthy Ranch.

is it just me, or does "McCarthy Ranch" sound like a creepy old-folks home?

Or the salad dressing from "American Dad"?

Offline
Last seen: 5 years 11 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 851
Or a place where communists a

Or a place where communists are interned.

http://www.gomilpitas.com/McCarthy.htm

Log in or register to post comments