{"id":163,"date":"2004-04-19T05:21:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-19T05:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/Rants\/compusa2.html"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T04:00:00","slug":"compusa2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/2004\/04\/19\/compusa2\/","title":{"rendered":"I Knew I Was Right – But I Was Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE:<\/strong> See the end of the post for a retraction. The original post remains for posterity.<\/p>\n

\n

Even though I swore off CompUSA<\/a> several months ago, today I almost caved in. In the end, they just proved me right. You can’t trust them.<\/p>\n

I was browsing the sales ads in today’s newspaper, looking for a large harddrive cheap to put in my TiVo. Circuit City had a 160GB Western Digital for $109 after rebate (plus a $20 gift card), but curiousity made me check CompUSA. They had the same drive for $59 after (multiple) rebates. Being that I didn’t see the ad until late in the afternoon, I figured going to the store was probably pointless… they never have much stock on these kinds of offers; they just want to get you into the store. I’ve been bitten many times.<\/p>\n

This evening, I decided to see if I could get the rebates if I purchase the drive from their website. I’ve read the webpage and both rebate forms, and I can’t really tell. It all implies that you must purchase from the store in order to get the rebate. Of course, the rebates are only good for drives purchased this week, and only from CompUSA. Tempted, I decided to use the “check availability” feature. Naturally, all 5 stores within 50 miles of me had already sold out. But then I looked a little closer:<\/p>\n

\"Product<\/p>\n

The highlighted section tells the story: “availability information is up-to-date as of 4\/18\/2004 3:40:41 AM”. That was before the store even opened on the day the ad broke. <\/p>\n

\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> Never let it be said that I can’t admit a mistake. When I posted this Sunday night, I believed that all 5 CompUSA stores in my area were sold out of this promotional item before the promotion even began. On Monday evening, it occurred to me that I should recheck in the interest of fairness. Sure enough, on Monday all 5 stores showed the drive in stock, “as of 4\/19\/2004 03:36:41 AM”. I can only conclude that they held the items until the sale promotion began, before putting them into stock. To appologize to CompUSA for jumping to an incorrect conclusion, I went today to purchase a drive. They still had it in stock.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: See the end of the post for a retraction. The original post remains for posterity. Even though I swore off CompUSA several months ago, today I almost caved in. In the end, they just proved me right. You can’t trust them. I was browsing the sales ads in today’s newspaper, looking for a large […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jclark.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}