We’ve been assembling furniture for our new place since July. Both in the acquiring and putting together sense. We’re finally done the major pieces now, the last of which was a TV. The TV was the piece of furniture that I spent the longest time looking for, AND hardest to obtain. Which was counterintuitive because I’m not a A/V monkey and just want a reasonable TV.

I started looking for a TV in July, even before we had an entertainment stand. I surfed the forums looking for price/feature points and deals, but eventually it got too close to the honeymoon that I couldn’t pull the trigger on one and have it delivered before I disappeared. When I got back in late August, I started looking once again.

In early September, Dell had their Days of Deals and was selling a 42″ 1080p Westinghouse for $800. That’s a pretty good price so I bought one, and a 19″ LCD they had for $130. I got a CC verification call from Dell on Friday and called them back on the Monday to sort things out (since my shipping address is not the same as on file) and the support guy said it would be shipped in 6-7 business days. So I waited a few days, and decided to track my order online. Curiously, I couldn’t bring up the order page, nor had my credit card been charged.

Soon enough, my monitor arrived (no credit check on that one, why was the TV so special?) so I called in to see what was happening with my TV order. The guys from India told me that my order had been canceled! A bit odd considering I got an email saying it was confirmed, the guy verbally confirmed the shipment, and I never would have found out about the cancellation if I didn’t call in. I tried half-heartedly to get the sales guy to sell me the same TV again, but he offered me a couple of 42″ at $1400, and when I mentioned that those were a little more expensive that the one I had previously ordered, he offered me a 32″ for $699. Right.

I took the same $700 and bought from Best Buy instead. They had a sale last week on a Toshiba 42″ 720p for $749, but were unfortunately sold out country-wide. But Best Buy has a Flat-Panel In-Stock Guarantee, so the manager grudgingly wrote me a rain check valid for 30 days, while at the same time trying to relay the impression that they wouldn’t be getting any more stock. Ironically, when I showed up a day after the sale finished to claim my rain check (after checking stock online), he was the one that recognized me and told the sales associate to handle my rain check.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: moving, shopping