SMART | Financial Crooks

I’ll share the moral of the story at the top: Never try to buy a TV on New Year’s Eve or January 2. We did and we ended up testing the Best Buy “Reserve Online Pick Up In-Store” system with mixed results.

Why Were We Buying a TV on New Year’s Eve?

OK, I still think this is SquawkFox’s fault. When I write up my review of our cable alternative antenna I’ll explain why. In the meantime:

My husband like most engineers who are professionals doesn’t get much time off. Sure he gets lots of vacation, he just doesn’t get to take it, nor get to carry it forward, nor get to be paid in cash in lieu of taking it. So when he had a chance to take off December 31, he did.

Immediately, I recognized that meant my strong husband who loves electronics would be available to buy and carry a TV. (I didn’t realize TVs aren’t heavy anymore. Our most recent one weighs over 75 lbs for a 24-inch screen, which isn’t much until you start counting the stairs and the fact it’s a very awkward shape for one person to carry.)

And I’d just done some math and realized I could get a TV essentially for free using some of our mountain of Petro-Points. I wanted to use the Best Buy e-Gift cards but I wanted to spend them almost as soon as they were printed because they say they won’t replace them if they get lost or stolen.

So I printed out the e-Gift cards, and blithely sent him out to Best Buy to get the Sony Smart TV that was on sale that week in the Boxing Week flyer.

Bad mistake. I figure I owe him at least one more Shabu-Shabu and a chocolate cake in recompense.

He ended up back home over an hour later, after visiting 2 Best Buy’s, with some dubious advice and no TV. He said he’d been told we should use the “Reserve Online Pick Up In-Store” option to get the TV. So we did.

How Do You Use the Best Buy Reserve Online System?

It’s a very simple system. You basically just look for the TV online and click on the Reserve In Store button. Then you choose the store you want to shop at. It will advise you of the availability and the total price. You confirm that it’s ok and enter your email address. When they’ve received the order, they will send you a confirmation email saying it’s ready to be picked up. You print off that notice and take it to the store. At our store, they have a separate desk near the front to pickup online orders. You line up, show your order, and pay for your TV.

Of course, by the time we placed our order it was too late in the day to get the confirmation email and get to the store. Everything was closing early for New Year’s Eve, as it should. We did get an email, though, after the store closed saying the TV was ready for pickup. Of course, that meant we would have to wait till January 2 when my husband would be back at work. Fortunately for me, LED TVs are a lot lighter than cathode ray tube ones.

So far our test was proceeding fine. Unfortunately, the next part wasn’t so great.

Picking Up Our TV at Best Buy After Receiving our Reserve Online Confirmation Was Eventful

Exactly 2 minutes after the store opened on January 2, I arrived to pick up our TV. There were 3 people in line ahead of me and there was no sign of a clerk.

After 7 minutes, the clerk arrived back. He spoke to the first customer and explained that
although she had received an email confirmation that her item was ready to be picked up, it wasn’t. In fact there wasn’t even one of those items in the entire store or the warehouse. He promised to phone her when one came in, and she left, understandably not thrilled.

Uneasily, I watched the exact same thing happen, over the next 15 minutes, to the next customer in line. Sorry, despite the email your item is not here.

Needless to say I was becoming unsettled.

The next Gentleman stepped up to the desk. And he was a true Gentleman and very kind and gracious and I will always be thankful to him.

Because he said he had not pre-ordered anything but he would like to BUY MY TV. Ok, he just wanted the exact same TV I wanted. He was asking to place an order for one as there were none on the floor.

The clerk checked a few things and said he couldn’t order one because they were no longer on the online system. Then he said “But wait a sec, I think there’s one back here.”

Darn right, I was thinking. MINE IS.

He brought it out of the back room, and I had to speak up. I asked, as politely as I could, considering I had been waiting for over 20 minutes, “Are you sure that’s not MY TV?!”

There was no reservation code or name on it.

The clerk said his system said there was one more “in the warehouse.”

I was as polite as I could, again, but pushed by asking twice if he was sure.

Fortunately, the Gentleman ahead of me said: “Maybe you could check the warehouse BEFORE I buy this one.”

Off went the clerk. During the 7 minute gap, we inspected the TV, discussed its specs and so on. The Gentleman said he had considered going to the Sony store nearby and asking for a price match to Best Buy.

When the clerk came back, you guessed it, there was NOT another TV in stock.
That’s when the Gentleman really earned my respect. He said he was perfectly willing to put in an order and wait three days for it to come in. He had only planned to do that when he lined up.

And so, I got my TV. But it was thanks to the Gentleman ahead of me, not because of the Reserve Online system.

I think what might have happened is that they picked my order based on the Online request but forgot to label it. It was New Year’s Eve, after all. That would explain why it was at the front pickup counter, not in the warehouse.

Why Did I Pick the Wrong Day to Review the Best Buy Reserve Online System?

My test would have been fairer to Best Buy if I hadn’t placed a reserve online order on what is quite possibly one of their most busy sales weeks of the year. Placing the order on New Year’s Eve was probably even more inconsiderate. Still, Best Buy could have removed the option from its website during Boxing Week if they thought it would become unmanageable.

We used the system on this particular day because that was the recommendation of the sales clerk at one of the two Best Buy stores my husband visited. Both stores had shown the TVs as “in stock” when he checked before driving over.

Apparently, the “in stock” number shown online before you visit the store includes the items that are available through the Reserve Online system. Those items are not necessarily allowed to be sold directly off the store floor.

So while at the store, a clerk told my husband that if he placed a Reserve Online order he could probably get the TV we wanted even though he couldn’t get it by simply visiting the store without a Reserve Online filled order.

Was the clerk correct? I don’t have any way to know. Perhaps a Best Buy retailer will read this and chime in with further information.

For us, it was worth a try. And, in a roundabout way, it worked.

Would I Use the Best But Reserve Online Pick Up In-Store Option Again?

Yes. While the system is only as good as the people receiving the orders, picking them, labeling them and putting them where they are expected until pickup, it could be a good system.

It’s no worse than driving to the store and finding the item is not on the shelf. And if it’s working properly, it could be a whole lot better.

How Is Our Sony Smart TV?

So far, it’s excellent. Of course when you’re comparing to a 21-inch cathode-ray-tube TV from 1986 or one from 1974 that’s only started to colour shift a bit into the red spectrum, your judgment may be different than that of someone who upgrades their TV every 6 months.

I do wonder, though, whether it would have been simpler to just buy another monitor. So far it’s been used 90% of the time to watch YouTube (Captain Sparklez anyone?!) or to watch DVDs. (Downton Abbey Season 3. Yes, we know Matthew dies.) I did mention way back when we decided to cut cable https://financialcrooks.com/why-im-pulling-plug-rogers-cable-tv-cancellation-policy-seems-illegal/ that we don’t really watch much TV.

What Else Do I Have to Worry About: Is my Sony Smart TV the Stupidest Purchase I Could Have Made?

Now, of course, I am brooding about whether my Smart TV will lead me to ruin at the hands of hackers intent on taking over the western world through our appliances. I thought I was so smart having a stupid fridge https://financialcrooks.com/my-stupid-fridge-thwarts-hackers-better-than-smart-fridge/ but perhaps I’m just as mentally-stunted as that Kenmore. Time to start keeping an eye on our internet account, I guess.

The fact that 95% of the time the TV is unplugged (because I refuse to pay electric bills to keep a TV on standby) may help a bit.

Related Reading

Redeeming Petro-Points to Score a New TV

Join In
Have you used this Best Buy pre-order option? Did you have better success than the two people in line ahead of me? Please share your experiences with a comment.

I’ve always owned a Stupid refrigerator. It’s an amiable machine however, so it has never bothered me unduly. Today I discovered it’s actually the unrecognized hero of my kitchen. Here’s why I own a Stupid fridge and why you should too, if you want to thwart the evil-doers who want to hack into your Smart fridge and ruin your life.

What Is a Smart Fridge Anyway?

My definition of a Smart fridge is one that

Has mechanisms to make ice cubes or ice water
Has gadgets like a compartment with a *heater* in it to keep the butter warm and soft
Has a computer in it
Has a LCD screen on it
Is WiFi enabled
Tells you what food is inside and when it will expire

Here’s why I don’t need one.

I Am Quite Capable of Cracking Ice Cubes Out of a Tray

I’ve never understood the appeal of fridges that can dispense ice cubes (and ice water!) from a mechanism on the outside of the door.

Firstly, I am not yet feeble, despite what my children think, and I am quite capable to twisting an ice cube tray to crack out the cubes. Those old aluminum trays with the lever might be a bit of a challenge now but I could probably win a wrist-wrestle with one of them. I’m even dexterous enough to dump the tray over the ice bin without losing most of the cubes all over the floor.

So why do I need a dispenser to pop tiny ice cubelets out into my glass?

For those who say it’s to save room in their freezer, well, ok. I have a feeling you’re losing space in your fridge that is being used to house the ice-dispensing mechanism in the door, though.

I have one of those “you can hide 3 bodies in it” size freezers in the basement. There’s no point in trying to get rid of it, either, as it appears they framed in the house after they carried it down the stairs. The only way it’s coming out is in small metallic pieces.

Why Do You Want a Heater in your Fridge?

Personally, I really have to question who wants to heater to run inside of their refrigerator to keep the butter warm enough to spread.

I really thought this idea was a joke when I first read about it, but it’s true. You can use extra electricity to heat part of your fridge to keep the butter warm while using still more extra electricity to run the additional cooling required for the rest of the fridge to keep the warmth escaping from the butter compartment from heating up and spoiling your milk.

The Fewer Gadgets a Fridge Has the Fewer Breakdowns Will Annoy Me

My personal theory of home appliances is that the simpler they are the longer they take to break down. This is why our coffee machine doesn’t make espresso-lattes and our computer runs on Linux.

I have a friend who got one of those fridges that dispenses ice water. Do you want to know how long it was before she had a fridge that was leaking water onto her hardwood kitchen floor? (Yes, there are two things in her kitchen that I wouldn’t buy.)

I have 2 slender jugs of water in my fridge. One is icy cold ready to pour into a glass loaded with my freshly-torqued ice cubes. The other is getting cold again. Yes, we have school-age children. Yes, they found it possible to grasp the concept “finish all the water in the jug in the front first and then refill it and push it to the back”—by the beginning of kindergarten. (Admittedly, some spouses may be harder to teach.)

Our Stupid Fridge

Our fridge doesn’t really do anything. It just sits there, humming quietly to itself when it gets bored. It doesn’t email me to buy milk. It doesn’t report me to Weight Watchers when I buy Red Bean Paste Tartuffo. It just keeps my ice frozen and my food cold.

The Secret Danger of Smart Fridges

I hadn’t really thought that by buying a Stupid fridge I was saving my family from financial disaster. Apparently, though, I unwittingly have done just that.

According to a story on the CBC news website, Kevin Haley of Symantec Security Response said that internet-connected home appliances “will become a “magnet for hackers.””

Cue the ominous music soundtrack.

The article continues to say that Fortiguard adds hackers may be able to get information about who is home at a given time of day…”This is bound to give cybercriminals new and nefarious ideas around how and when to rob someone’s home.””

Wow.

And here I thought hackers spent their time breaking into big stock brokerages and banks and then rearranging the balances in their personal accounts. Or releasing millions of pages of documents showing that CSIS agents really don’t get paid enough. Or trying to track down cyber-criminals who torment youngsters and releasing their id information for the police to catch them.

Who knew they wanted to know when my milk expires?!

Only a few of my readers (hi, Mom!) are old enough to remember the dreaded “Year 2000 bug.” For those who do, the fear factor of having a Smart fridge is probably right up there with the fear your toaster wouldn’t pop on 00-01-01:00:01.

Still, if it will keep people from over-investing in a fridge, I’ll plug this angle too. Buy a Stupid fridge. They are cheaper. They will likely last longer. And you will thwart evil hackers thus ruining their Tuesday morning plans.