Went to buy a TV yesterday
So I've been saving up for 2+ years to buy an HDTV. Every $200 work bonus and every best buy gift cert I get, I've been putting into a little pile. After this Christmas, I finally had enough.
So I went to buy this puppy. A Panasonic 42in Plasma HDTV.
First, I called Comcast to see when I could have them come set up an HD cable box. Unfortunately, the woman said that they are all out of High Def boxes and aren't sure when they will be getting any in. She said they were hoping to get some in by February! So she put me on a list and said that they'd call when it came in...
I hadn't bought the tv yet so, I figured I'd go buy it despite the setback. I went to the Bestbuy closest to my house and looked around for a while but, didnt see the one I wanted. After searching for a person to help me out, I asked the guy if they had any and he just shook his head, said they sold them all and then just walked away from me!
So I ended up calling the Cambridge bb (right next to my workplace), and ended up waiting on hold for 10 min. Finally, a woman comes on and says "can i help you?". I ask if they have the tv, and she says hold on.
I wait for another 7 min. Same woman gets back. "Can I help you?"
I said "Yeah, you were checking on that tv for me."
"Hold on"
I wait another 10 min, when some other guy gets on the phone and once again asks: "Can i help you?"
I asked him what the hell was going on as this is the 3rd time I've asked the same question. He tells me that they transfered me to the "Home Theatre" dpt and it must have rung back to them. When I told him I'd been on hold for half an hour, he says that he'll transfer me to a cordless phone and walk over there. So I hear some buttons, then click....call has ended...
So I wasted about 2 hours driving around yesterday.
A better ending I guess. I just called the other BB next to work again and they said they don't have that particular tv in-store but, if I come in and purchase it, they can have it delivered to my house by Thursday. So, I'm walking over there right now to make the buy.
Wish me luck!
Why did you end up buying the TV from Best Buy, after the craptacular service that they gave you? There must be other places in town where you can buy a TV.
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I would take my business elsewhere if I were you
that is some very very craptastic service
This was yesterday?
You look around? If it was anything like the Best Buy in my town, the place was filled to the brim with people... returners, gift-carders... not exactly your "stellar" customers.
Spend a day-after-Thanksgiving or a day-after-Christmas in retail and still treat every customer like they "deserve to be treated" and I'll feel sorry for you.
Just saying these are mostly less-than-college-educated people working for less than $10 an hour... Best Buy doesn't fall into the category of businesses where I expect good service.
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If you haven't already bought a TV, I'd wait a little longer. There's always deals when the Superbowl is closer to happening, I got an Xbox and a Home Theater system free with a TV I bought a couple years ago.
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That is an excellent point. I will hold off on my prospective HDTV purchase until then! Of course, with all the deposits on wedding vendors, the HDTV may have to wait longer than that!
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Yeah, you can make out great around Superbowl time. Although I bought my TV in June and got 18 months no interest financing.
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Bah!
I bought the tv. I would have loved to have taken my business elsewhere but, as I mentioned, I had a bunch of gift certs to the place.
Tale of the tape:
$500 from a winning night in Vegas
$400 from 2nd place in FFL
$1160 in Best Buy Gift Certs (!!!!)
$550 in AMEX gift checks
-----
$2610
TV is being delivered Thursday. I got an extra $100 off for signing up for the "reward club". I wouldn't have been able to buy the TV without those Best Buy cards, so it was BB or nothing.
Waiting is fine, and it would probably go down another 100-200 bucks by the Super Bowl but, I've been saving up for 2+ years and honestly, I really couldn't hold out any longer.
Was it even more on sale? The link you posted shows it at around 2850, after an instant $150 off.
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No, I ended up paying about $200 bucks out of pocket. (forgot to add $500 to my list for a Christmas bonus at work). Sales tax was $145!!!! Plus I bought a $119 HDMI cable. Also, called Comcast back and now they say about a week before they get HD boxes back in stock.
That's a very nice TV, grats on your purchase Belt.
If in the future you really want to take your money where the service is, you can usually sell the BB gift cards for about 85% cash value on various sites. If I were you I probably would have just bought it too, just letting you know the options.
Congratz on the TV. Not so much on the HDMI cable... I paid $12 shipped for a 15' DVI-HDMI cable to hook my HTPC up to my recent HDTV acquisition.
...whoa, that was a bit heavy on H- acronyms.
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I will never understand paying so much money for cables. They're almost always identical to many of their far far cheaper counterparts.
Best Buy marks up Monster Cables over 100% over their cost. Sometimes it's up over 200%.
Totally not worth it. Just by cheaper shielded cables and you're fine.
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ah. I did my research and all the sites I checked said that HDMI was the way to go. I never really thought about shopping around for a cheaper price. Damn. Oh well. Thanks for the info guys.
Mmm...that TV makes me drip mouth juice all over myself. *drool*
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Belt, you can always buy a cheap one online, use your current one, then when you get the cheap one, return the other one. Probably save yourself at least $50.
Tonight on "Taken out of Context" Theater.....
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Sweet TV. Nice choice. I see it has a built-in turner. Where do you live? Have you considered getting your HDTV over the air (OTA). You can go to www.antennaweb.org, plug in your address and they will tell you how far away you are from the digital towers and what sort of antenna you should use.
When I bought my HDTV a few months back I cancelled my overpriced cable service, bought a $30 antenna, mounted it in my attic, and, bam, free HDTV. About all you will miss in terms of HDTV content that your cable provider can give you is ESPN, Discovery, and TBS. As far as I know, there aren't really any other cable channels providing regular HDTV content. I really miss ESPN but that was about the only cable channel I watched.
thanks for the info Coping. I wont have HDTV through cable for a bit longer due to the boxes being out of stock so I'm going to go the OTA route till I get it. I just don't think I could do without cable. I watch a lot of shows there, and was thinking about adding HBO or Showtime to my lineup.
Leaping, I haven't taken the cable out of the box yet, so I might just return it and grab another one online.
I read something for the first time yesterday that freaked me a little bit. Something about not being able to use the channel guide that I currently have with Digital cable. Does anyone know if that's true?
Thanks for all the info guys.
If you mean the channel info bar, that you can scroll through to see whats on, then I think you should be fine. Worked fine with my crt HDTV on both digital cable and now Dish.
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