the    sides

I think the last time my mom and dad bought a television was during the Reagan administration. Yesterday we went to Buckley AFB in Aurora to look at TVs at the Base Exchange.

Couple things you need to know about BXs or PXs. The prices on stuff is good but you make up for it in other areas…like…sanity.

We pick out the TV, go to pay for it and this is when you begin paying the difference on the price of the TV.

They had a 42″ plasma on sale for half the price you can find anywhere else plus you get a $150 gift card in return. Of course, you can’t use the gift card on the purchase. You can use the gift card on another purchase if you’d like. So buy the TV, get the gift card, then use gift card on all the other stuff you have in your cart that day since…you don’t live in the state. Right?

Cashier in the front didn’t have the authority to authorize a gift card. They did in Customer Service. We go to Customer Service. Pay for TV but then have to go to the next counter (the Cashier) for the gift card.

All of a sudden, I have a sudden desire to speak Croatian…if I knew any.

The Cashier gets a bag with special gift cards in them specifically for the ‘flyer deals.’ I know this because there are stacks and stacks of gift cards in every nook and cranny of the store but he has to go to the back room and look for the special ones. They are just like the ones in the nifty display case in front of me.

Instead of one gift card with $150 on it, we are to get 2 gifts cards, one with $50 and the other with $100. The $50 one will not read. He can’t get it to read. He pages his supervisor. Supervisor doesn’t answer. He calls someone else. No, he can’t get one of the gift cards in front of it and put $150 on it. He has to use these but these don’t work.

He keeps calling and paging. 30 minutes later, his boss shows up. She is “serious.” She doesn’t believe the man and repeats what he’s been doing for 30 minutes.

“You know, John…these $50 cards don’t work.”

We all look at each other…speechless.

“Can you come back tomorrow?”

They live in Kansas. No.

“Well, you can always use your cards online.”

???????? We’re going to use the cards today. We have other shopping.

“They won’t work today, it takes 24 to 48 hours for the cards to activate.”

Let me get this straight…every store that has electricity has the technology to issue a gift card and be used that minute and this store on an Air Force Base can’t do that?

Right.

Eventually we get the General Manager of the store and THIS is where I have to leave the scene because I can’t take the stupidity anymore.

We’ve done this song and dance for over an hour now and the GM walks up, grabs a card, puts $50 on it (we already had the $100) and says – “There you go, you can use this today.”

!@#$#%%$#@Q%@#$!Q@!$@#$R!@#$!@#$RQ

Do they know how much grief that would avoid if they would empower their clerks and cashiers to take care of customers instead of following rules?

So…my parents have a new TV for an incredible deal and I promised to never, ever under any circumstances buy anything from Buckley AFB ever again.