(no subject)
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
or
Thursday night, I saw why America is both the greatest and worst country in the world simultaneously.
or
Dr. Technolove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Black Friday Tech Retail Capitalism.
I couldn't decide how to start this entry; I'd thought of each of these three above possibilities as I stood in a line of technology discount-hungry warriors, freezing my extremities off. That being said, the actual post to follow won't be nearly as thought-out - I'm just gonna tells it like I seens it.
My mission originated last week, when I began religiously searching bfads.net, black-friday.info, and a host of other Black Friday ad-related websites for the new TV that would 1) hopefully last me the next 10+ years, and 2) be exactly what I want for a vastly reduced price.
Nothing really spoke to me for the first half of the week. There was a 37" Olevia TV that was going to be sold at Target for cheap, but I went in to have an advanced look at it, and it entirely underwhelmed me. Not wanting to settle, I waited for something better to show up.
And then, on Wednesday, there it was.
40" was the absolute largest TV that I was looking for, as anything bigger would not have looked good in our apartment. I was definitely looking for a TV with a reputable brand name, and Samsung is definitely that. The icing on the cake is that this TV is a 1080p set. Don't worry about what it means, just know that it's the best resolution currently offered in a high-definition television.
My mission now had a target, and the battle plans began to take shape. I would drive to the Best Buy in Willow Grove, a suburb north of Philadelphia near where I work. I figured it would be much less stressful (and ghetto) than going to one within city limits, and there might be slightly less of a crowd. The initial plan had me leaving here at around 10:00 PM, getting there before 11:00, and waiting in line until 3:00 AM when tickets/vouchers for the "doorbuster" items would be given out. The store would then open at 5:00 AM, but of COURSE there would be no mad rush since people would have vouchers...
This remained the plan for all of Wednesday, and most of Thursday. Thursday morning Sarah and I drove out to my aunt and uncle's place in Lancaster County for Thanksgiving, a good 60 mile drive down the PA Turnpike. It was unseasonably warm; my cousin and I threw a football around outside for a good 15 minutes before dinner was ready. After a massive dinner we fired up the Wii for some Mario Party 8. A good time was had by all.
At sundown, I drove 60 miles home. We arrived a bit after 6:00 PM. I thought I had a good four hours before heading back out.
Then, at 8:00, the first call from the battlefield came in. connachtpa phoned to report that she'd just driven by the Best Buy in NE Philly and estimated about 50 people in line already.
That was all I needed to hear. The war was on.
I piled on layers of clothing and jumped in the car to take the 45 minute drive to Willow Grove. Turning into the Best Buy parking lot, I saw about 40 cars, a long line full of people in heavy clothing, chairs, and tents. Tents!
Over time I came to learn that the people at the very front of the line had been there at 3:00 AM. They apparently either didn't have Thanksgiving, or they had it in their tent. Eventually I decided that they didn't celebrate it at all, but that bit will come later...
So by this time the line had gone all the way past the edge of Best Buy's storefront, past the edge of Pier 1's storefront, and had just started going around the corner of the complex. It worked out so that I, who didn't bring a chair, was situated right at a small set of stairs.
So there I sat. And stood. And sat. And just generally moved around when I could to keep the blood moving. It wasn't even 11:00 PM yet when the cold had already started taking its toll. I thought about all of the things I *should* have done. I should have had a chair. I should have had a blanket. A heavier hat. Better gloves. Another pair of socks (I was already wearing two pair). Those foot warmers that you break open and they just generate heat for a few hours. A scarf. I suppose I just underestimated the weather, but I suppose I have a bit of an excuse in that I was outside throwing a football around in near-70 degree weather only hours before.
I was fortunate to be near a bunch of good people. I was initially worried that the entire night would be silent and cutthroat. The guy directly in front of me was a high school senior at Abington. We chatted all night, he had friends come visit him and bring him food and hot drinks, we discussed how we thought it would go when 3:00 (and then 5:00 rolled around). He was there for a laptop for college (which his parents were buying for him, but he volunteered to camp out all night for to save them money). He let me move in front of him (so I could sit on the steps) since I was only after the TV. We became line buddies, kinda. I gave him one of my photo cards since he said he would be buying a camera in the future, and I offered him advice. The people in front of him brought along a generator, DVD player, and TV. They were watching movies all night! The woman behind me was there to buy the cheap eMachines laptop/printer combo being offered for $229. I didn't want to tell her that I didn't think she'd get a voucher - you don't kill the spirit of a fellow shopper on a mission!
It was too cold for it to ever erupt into a party type atmosphere, but there was definite excitement in the air. It seemed like everyone there genuinely WANTED to be there, and they were going to make the best of it. I really thought that more people would be walking the line as they arrived to ask what everyone was waiting for, to see if they would have a chance at getting a voucher (as there were going to be a severely limited number of vouchers for each "doorbuster" item offered). I would not have been prepared to wait in the freezing cold for hours overnight in a line so long that I wouldn't get one for sure. But only one guy ever came down the line and asked, and he happened to be going after the same TV that I was going after. He said that only one person in front of me was going for it, so at that point, I was pretty pleased, and fairly sure that I was not sitting out for nothing.
A bit after midnight, there was an issue at the front of the line with supposed line cutters. The problem? You may have guessed it - someone was there keeping a clipboard with names and numbers on them. It was some snotty high school girl from Hatboro who was more stuck-up than a thumbtack on a ceiling, deciding that she was gonna run this "honor system" thing.
This preceding paragraph will become important later on...
A kind fellow human in front of me eventually offered me his brother's chair, as he had gone to sleep in the car for a few hours (which a few people were negatively murmuring about). So now I had a chair.
Well, at about 1:45, I simply could not take the cold anymore. I could not feel my feet, my gloves were doing a terrible job keeping my hands warm, and my legs were starting to shiver. So I decided to go to the car to warm up a bit, just for 10-15 minutes. I'd informed everyone around me that I wouldn't be gone but for 10 minutes. Everyone was cool with it. So, off I went.
The car battery was dead. No power. Nothing, zero, zilch. I left my lights on AGAIN (second time in a month). I didn't panic, fortunately. I went back to the line and just flat out asked if anyone could jump me. Thankfully, a girl named Cassie (who I will now never, ever forget) had cables and offered to help. She was a saint; it took at least 10 minutes and over 15 tries to get enough juice in the battery to turn the engine over. I could have kissed her. I tried to offer her money for her help; she turned everything down, just saying that she'd been given jumps so many times before, she didn't mind at all, etc.
At her suggestion, and after I got the Club off my car while it was running (had to pry the key off my keyring without taking the keys out of the ignition), I drove around for a while - at least 20-30 minutes. If they gave me trouble going back to line, I was prepared to deal with that. The important thing was that I had heat, and I had a car to get me home when all was said and done. I almost did drive home right at that point, actually. The cold had made me pretty miserable, I'd spilled Gatorade ever so helpfully on my pants so that it looked like I had an unpleasant accident, and I was a little nervous about the battery failing again. I got 100 yards up Easton Road before deciding that I had put too much into this night already to head home now.
So back to the line I went, soaked pants and all. =/
At this point, it was about 2:15, and people had started putting away tents and chairs. So everyone was standing now, and standing in the cold waiting for something apparently makes people very antsy and anxious. The guy who offered me his brother's chair had already gotten into a shouting match with the high school chick about the validity of the number system (he was of the opinion that Best Buy wouldn't honor it, and that he was where he was in line and that's that). You could just feel the tension in a very-close-to-tangible kind of way.
2:45 came around, and I was cold again. But now the adrenaline was starting to build... Best Buy employees started appearing, walking up the line, explaining how things were going to work, answering questions... they honestly did as good of a job as their system was going to let them do. Unfortunately, their system had one major flaw:
It promoted scalping of vouchers.
Best Buy was giving out vouchers starting at the front of the line, up to the minimum number of each item that they had in the store (meaning, for example, that they had 10 vouchers for my TV, and they would give them to the first 10 people who said yes to them as they walked by). There was no limit, however, to the number of vouchers for different items that you could take!
Guess who was at the front of the line with a stack of vouchers a half-inch thick? Yeah, little miss stuck-up high school HONOR SYSTEM chick. We only found this out after my line buddy (who didn't get a voucher for the laptop he wanted) walked up to the front of the line, inquired whether anyone didn't need theirs, and this cunt (not my word, the word of one of the women in front of me who also lucked out) sold a voucher to him for $50. She likely made close to $1000. Turns out that at least three or four people were doing this - taking the vouchers for the most popular items, and then selling them on down the line. On Thanksgiving.
Only in America.
People were becoming REALLY unhappy at that point. I was fortunate that I got voucher #7 for the TV, so I thankfully had what I came for (which meant, though, that probably five people in front of me took TV vouchers just to sell them). The woman behind me, though, was panicking. She had been out all night and all 25 vouchers for the mega-cheap laptop were snapped up at the front of the line. All sorts of haggling and wheeling and dealing (and threatening and calling of names and muttering) were now going on, and I knew I was truly in America. =P
Well, the woman behind me eventually ended up with a voucher after paying $40 for it from a guy that came extremely close to threatening her with physical violence (when she took the voucher (to look at it and then pretended she didn't have it).
Between 3:00 AM and 5:00 AM, people walked the line trying to buy, sell, and trade their vouchers. All of this went on in front of Best Buy employees and police. Next year, they should require you to put your name on a piece of paper that signifies your intent to purchase, or do SOMETHING that makes the vouchers non-transferrable. I called Cassie over and offered to pay for half of what she had to spend for a voucher for what she wanted; she again declined. For that one night, she was the greatest woman in the universe.
A woman in front of me (the one who called the high school chick a cunt for scalping vouchers) took a voucher for something she didn't want just so she could make back the money she had to spend to buy the voucher she wanted. She said she felt like an asshole trying to sell it further down the line, and I believe her, for sure. I am so glad I didn't have to consider doing anything like that. One funny moment - I think she threw her little piece of paper with the line number that she was given right back at the girl as she came up the line trying to sell vouchers, and made a comment along the lines of "your honor system sure worked great, bitch". She may or may not have said "bitch" but I think it sounds better that way!
Alright, cutting to the chase, now... 5:00 came, everyone around me who was really after a voucher had one, whether they lucked out like me or paid for it like the people on either side of me. Best Buy kinda put people into two lines, and opened the door. They did a fairly admirable job preventing a mad rush, and they seemed to be generally successful preventing people from gatecrashing and rushing the door. There were people just sorta milling around by the entrance as the doors opened, but I think they had them pretty well all cleared away in time.
I got in the store, and the first thing I noticed was how WARM AND COMFORTING it felt. I have never before and will probably never again feel that way in a Best Buy, but that's how it was! I tried going immediately to a front register to pay for the TV, but I was directed to the back of the store to the TV department to take care of things back there. So I walked briskly (as everyone was doing) to the rear of the store and found my way through a cattleshoot they had set up through the TV department (it seems like they very masterfully cordoned off the store in ways to control crowds).
I was first in line with my voucher, I bought the TV (I had no problem refusing the Geek Squad installation service that was bundled with the TV - they had insisted when they gave me the voucher that I couldn't separate the package even when the online ad clearly stated I could), and I walked out to my car, not believing how smoothly it went. The crowd and commotion just slid right by as I walked out, mission completed.
Or so I thought.
I got in my car, said a quick prayer, and turned the key - it started! Huge relief, that. So I drove my validated/endorsed voucher to the loading dock in the back of the store, rolled my window down, and told the guys to load my TV.
It didn't fit.
I was SURE it was going to fit. I was almost sure, anyway. Well... it just didn't fit. We tried everything - moving seats around, putting back seats down, putting it in the trunk... it was just not happening. I wasn't that dejected - the most important part of the mission was over (getting the massive discount). My view was: if I have to pay $50 for delivery, that would be the $50 I saved for declining the Geek Squad installation. So I told the guys thanks for trying. I maybe should have tipped them something for giving it a shot. Oh well. =/
So, the bad news - I had to park the car and shut it off AGAIN to go back through the store and wait in the (now) long line for TV service. I really was nervous about it not starting again, but I had to do it.
After waiting in line and talking TVs with the guy who had earlier walked up the line asking if anyone else was going after the 40", I finally made it back to the register. They tried a few times to do a return/exchange (since they couldn't JUST sell me the delivery, it had to go WITH the TV purchase) but failed. Eventually a manager walked me to the front of the store to the returns section so they could pull off a trick that they use where they return the TV to a gift card (so as not to hit my credit card for the TV twice), then sell it to me using the gift card and tacking on the delivery then.
The woman in returns was amazing. She answered all my questions, she was amazingly polite and considerate... it was just a perfect shopping experience (and I do not often have shopping EXPERIENCES).
The best part, and the end of the TV story? She only charged me a penny for delivery since she fouled up the first delivery order. Initially, she tried to send it to me from their main warehouse (at which point I nearly freaked out, because she gave me a delivery date of no earlier than 12/20 - I asked how it was possible that it could be on back order when we had just tried to load it in to my car not 15 minutes ago!). So she changed it so that it would deliver straight from the store - I should have it on Wednesday!
Of course, going back through the store that last time, I picked up a new printer/scanner/copier for $30 and a couple of DVDs (Borat, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Friday Night Lights) at $5 each - they always get you like that, but it was one of the happiest purchases I ever made thanks to the TV working out exactly as planned...
Last night I ordered the 1080p upconverting DVD player that I wanted (through Amazon, also on massive discount). I cannot wait to see the results!
Thanks to freekybitz and emmsythekid and nutellajones for calling and/or texting and keeping my mind off the cold!
or
Thursday night, I saw why America is both the greatest and worst country in the world simultaneously.
or
Dr. Technolove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Black Friday Tech Retail Capitalism.
I couldn't decide how to start this entry; I'd thought of each of these three above possibilities as I stood in a line of technology discount-hungry warriors, freezing my extremities off. That being said, the actual post to follow won't be nearly as thought-out - I'm just gonna tells it like I seens it.
My mission originated last week, when I began religiously searching bfads.net, black-friday.info, and a host of other Black Friday ad-related websites for the new TV that would 1) hopefully last me the next 10+ years, and 2) be exactly what I want for a vastly reduced price.
Nothing really spoke to me for the first half of the week. There was a 37" Olevia TV that was going to be sold at Target for cheap, but I went in to have an advanced look at it, and it entirely underwhelmed me. Not wanting to settle, I waited for something better to show up.
And then, on Wednesday, there it was.
40" was the absolute largest TV that I was looking for, as anything bigger would not have looked good in our apartment. I was definitely looking for a TV with a reputable brand name, and Samsung is definitely that. The icing on the cake is that this TV is a 1080p set. Don't worry about what it means, just know that it's the best resolution currently offered in a high-definition television.
My mission now had a target, and the battle plans began to take shape. I would drive to the Best Buy in Willow Grove, a suburb north of Philadelphia near where I work. I figured it would be much less stressful (and ghetto) than going to one within city limits, and there might be slightly less of a crowd. The initial plan had me leaving here at around 10:00 PM, getting there before 11:00, and waiting in line until 3:00 AM when tickets/vouchers for the "doorbuster" items would be given out. The store would then open at 5:00 AM, but of COURSE there would be no mad rush since people would have vouchers...
This remained the plan for all of Wednesday, and most of Thursday. Thursday morning Sarah and I drove out to my aunt and uncle's place in Lancaster County for Thanksgiving, a good 60 mile drive down the PA Turnpike. It was unseasonably warm; my cousin and I threw a football around outside for a good 15 minutes before dinner was ready. After a massive dinner we fired up the Wii for some Mario Party 8. A good time was had by all.
At sundown, I drove 60 miles home. We arrived a bit after 6:00 PM. I thought I had a good four hours before heading back out.
Then, at 8:00, the first call from the battlefield came in. connachtpa phoned to report that she'd just driven by the Best Buy in NE Philly and estimated about 50 people in line already.
That was all I needed to hear. The war was on.
I piled on layers of clothing and jumped in the car to take the 45 minute drive to Willow Grove. Turning into the Best Buy parking lot, I saw about 40 cars, a long line full of people in heavy clothing, chairs, and tents. Tents!
Over time I came to learn that the people at the very front of the line had been there at 3:00 AM. They apparently either didn't have Thanksgiving, or they had it in their tent. Eventually I decided that they didn't celebrate it at all, but that bit will come later...
So by this time the line had gone all the way past the edge of Best Buy's storefront, past the edge of Pier 1's storefront, and had just started going around the corner of the complex. It worked out so that I, who didn't bring a chair, was situated right at a small set of stairs.
So there I sat. And stood. And sat. And just generally moved around when I could to keep the blood moving. It wasn't even 11:00 PM yet when the cold had already started taking its toll. I thought about all of the things I *should* have done. I should have had a chair. I should have had a blanket. A heavier hat. Better gloves. Another pair of socks (I was already wearing two pair). Those foot warmers that you break open and they just generate heat for a few hours. A scarf. I suppose I just underestimated the weather, but I suppose I have a bit of an excuse in that I was outside throwing a football around in near-70 degree weather only hours before.
I was fortunate to be near a bunch of good people. I was initially worried that the entire night would be silent and cutthroat. The guy directly in front of me was a high school senior at Abington. We chatted all night, he had friends come visit him and bring him food and hot drinks, we discussed how we thought it would go when 3:00 (and then 5:00 rolled around). He was there for a laptop for college (which his parents were buying for him, but he volunteered to camp out all night for to save them money). He let me move in front of him (so I could sit on the steps) since I was only after the TV. We became line buddies, kinda. I gave him one of my photo cards since he said he would be buying a camera in the future, and I offered him advice. The people in front of him brought along a generator, DVD player, and TV. They were watching movies all night! The woman behind me was there to buy the cheap eMachines laptop/printer combo being offered for $229. I didn't want to tell her that I didn't think she'd get a voucher - you don't kill the spirit of a fellow shopper on a mission!
It was too cold for it to ever erupt into a party type atmosphere, but there was definite excitement in the air. It seemed like everyone there genuinely WANTED to be there, and they were going to make the best of it. I really thought that more people would be walking the line as they arrived to ask what everyone was waiting for, to see if they would have a chance at getting a voucher (as there were going to be a severely limited number of vouchers for each "doorbuster" item offered). I would not have been prepared to wait in the freezing cold for hours overnight in a line so long that I wouldn't get one for sure. But only one guy ever came down the line and asked, and he happened to be going after the same TV that I was going after. He said that only one person in front of me was going for it, so at that point, I was pretty pleased, and fairly sure that I was not sitting out for nothing.
A bit after midnight, there was an issue at the front of the line with supposed line cutters. The problem? You may have guessed it - someone was there keeping a clipboard with names and numbers on them. It was some snotty high school girl from Hatboro who was more stuck-up than a thumbtack on a ceiling, deciding that she was gonna run this "honor system" thing.
This preceding paragraph will become important later on...
A kind fellow human in front of me eventually offered me his brother's chair, as he had gone to sleep in the car for a few hours (which a few people were negatively murmuring about). So now I had a chair.
Well, at about 1:45, I simply could not take the cold anymore. I could not feel my feet, my gloves were doing a terrible job keeping my hands warm, and my legs were starting to shiver. So I decided to go to the car to warm up a bit, just for 10-15 minutes. I'd informed everyone around me that I wouldn't be gone but for 10 minutes. Everyone was cool with it. So, off I went.
The car battery was dead. No power. Nothing, zero, zilch. I left my lights on AGAIN (second time in a month). I didn't panic, fortunately. I went back to the line and just flat out asked if anyone could jump me. Thankfully, a girl named Cassie (who I will now never, ever forget) had cables and offered to help. She was a saint; it took at least 10 minutes and over 15 tries to get enough juice in the battery to turn the engine over. I could have kissed her. I tried to offer her money for her help; she turned everything down, just saying that she'd been given jumps so many times before, she didn't mind at all, etc.
At her suggestion, and after I got the Club off my car while it was running (had to pry the key off my keyring without taking the keys out of the ignition), I drove around for a while - at least 20-30 minutes. If they gave me trouble going back to line, I was prepared to deal with that. The important thing was that I had heat, and I had a car to get me home when all was said and done. I almost did drive home right at that point, actually. The cold had made me pretty miserable, I'd spilled Gatorade ever so helpfully on my pants so that it looked like I had an unpleasant accident, and I was a little nervous about the battery failing again. I got 100 yards up Easton Road before deciding that I had put too much into this night already to head home now.
So back to the line I went, soaked pants and all. =/
At this point, it was about 2:15, and people had started putting away tents and chairs. So everyone was standing now, and standing in the cold waiting for something apparently makes people very antsy and anxious. The guy who offered me his brother's chair had already gotten into a shouting match with the high school chick about the validity of the number system (he was of the opinion that Best Buy wouldn't honor it, and that he was where he was in line and that's that). You could just feel the tension in a very-close-to-tangible kind of way.
2:45 came around, and I was cold again. But now the adrenaline was starting to build... Best Buy employees started appearing, walking up the line, explaining how things were going to work, answering questions... they honestly did as good of a job as their system was going to let them do. Unfortunately, their system had one major flaw:
It promoted scalping of vouchers.
Best Buy was giving out vouchers starting at the front of the line, up to the minimum number of each item that they had in the store (meaning, for example, that they had 10 vouchers for my TV, and they would give them to the first 10 people who said yes to them as they walked by). There was no limit, however, to the number of vouchers for different items that you could take!
Guess who was at the front of the line with a stack of vouchers a half-inch thick? Yeah, little miss stuck-up high school HONOR SYSTEM chick. We only found this out after my line buddy (who didn't get a voucher for the laptop he wanted) walked up to the front of the line, inquired whether anyone didn't need theirs, and this cunt (not my word, the word of one of the women in front of me who also lucked out) sold a voucher to him for $50. She likely made close to $1000. Turns out that at least three or four people were doing this - taking the vouchers for the most popular items, and then selling them on down the line. On Thanksgiving.
Only in America.
People were becoming REALLY unhappy at that point. I was fortunate that I got voucher #7 for the TV, so I thankfully had what I came for (which meant, though, that probably five people in front of me took TV vouchers just to sell them). The woman behind me, though, was panicking. She had been out all night and all 25 vouchers for the mega-cheap laptop were snapped up at the front of the line. All sorts of haggling and wheeling and dealing (and threatening and calling of names and muttering) were now going on, and I knew I was truly in America. =P
Well, the woman behind me eventually ended up with a voucher after paying $40 for it from a guy that came extremely close to threatening her with physical violence (when she took the voucher (to look at it and then pretended she didn't have it).
Between 3:00 AM and 5:00 AM, people walked the line trying to buy, sell, and trade their vouchers. All of this went on in front of Best Buy employees and police. Next year, they should require you to put your name on a piece of paper that signifies your intent to purchase, or do SOMETHING that makes the vouchers non-transferrable. I called Cassie over and offered to pay for half of what she had to spend for a voucher for what she wanted; she again declined. For that one night, she was the greatest woman in the universe.
A woman in front of me (the one who called the high school chick a cunt for scalping vouchers) took a voucher for something she didn't want just so she could make back the money she had to spend to buy the voucher she wanted. She said she felt like an asshole trying to sell it further down the line, and I believe her, for sure. I am so glad I didn't have to consider doing anything like that. One funny moment - I think she threw her little piece of paper with the line number that she was given right back at the girl as she came up the line trying to sell vouchers, and made a comment along the lines of "your honor system sure worked great, bitch". She may or may not have said "bitch" but I think it sounds better that way!
Alright, cutting to the chase, now... 5:00 came, everyone around me who was really after a voucher had one, whether they lucked out like me or paid for it like the people on either side of me. Best Buy kinda put people into two lines, and opened the door. They did a fairly admirable job preventing a mad rush, and they seemed to be generally successful preventing people from gatecrashing and rushing the door. There were people just sorta milling around by the entrance as the doors opened, but I think they had them pretty well all cleared away in time.
I got in the store, and the first thing I noticed was how WARM AND COMFORTING it felt. I have never before and will probably never again feel that way in a Best Buy, but that's how it was! I tried going immediately to a front register to pay for the TV, but I was directed to the back of the store to the TV department to take care of things back there. So I walked briskly (as everyone was doing) to the rear of the store and found my way through a cattleshoot they had set up through the TV department (it seems like they very masterfully cordoned off the store in ways to control crowds).
I was first in line with my voucher, I bought the TV (I had no problem refusing the Geek Squad installation service that was bundled with the TV - they had insisted when they gave me the voucher that I couldn't separate the package even when the online ad clearly stated I could), and I walked out to my car, not believing how smoothly it went. The crowd and commotion just slid right by as I walked out, mission completed.
Or so I thought.
I got in my car, said a quick prayer, and turned the key - it started! Huge relief, that. So I drove my validated/endorsed voucher to the loading dock in the back of the store, rolled my window down, and told the guys to load my TV.
It didn't fit.
I was SURE it was going to fit. I was almost sure, anyway. Well... it just didn't fit. We tried everything - moving seats around, putting back seats down, putting it in the trunk... it was just not happening. I wasn't that dejected - the most important part of the mission was over (getting the massive discount). My view was: if I have to pay $50 for delivery, that would be the $50 I saved for declining the Geek Squad installation. So I told the guys thanks for trying. I maybe should have tipped them something for giving it a shot. Oh well. =/
So, the bad news - I had to park the car and shut it off AGAIN to go back through the store and wait in the (now) long line for TV service. I really was nervous about it not starting again, but I had to do it.
After waiting in line and talking TVs with the guy who had earlier walked up the line asking if anyone else was going after the 40", I finally made it back to the register. They tried a few times to do a return/exchange (since they couldn't JUST sell me the delivery, it had to go WITH the TV purchase) but failed. Eventually a manager walked me to the front of the store to the returns section so they could pull off a trick that they use where they return the TV to a gift card (so as not to hit my credit card for the TV twice), then sell it to me using the gift card and tacking on the delivery then.
The woman in returns was amazing. She answered all my questions, she was amazingly polite and considerate... it was just a perfect shopping experience (and I do not often have shopping EXPERIENCES).
The best part, and the end of the TV story? She only charged me a penny for delivery since she fouled up the first delivery order. Initially, she tried to send it to me from their main warehouse (at which point I nearly freaked out, because she gave me a delivery date of no earlier than 12/20 - I asked how it was possible that it could be on back order when we had just tried to load it in to my car not 15 minutes ago!). So she changed it so that it would deliver straight from the store - I should have it on Wednesday!
Of course, going back through the store that last time, I picked up a new printer/scanner/copier for $30 and a couple of DVDs (Borat, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Friday Night Lights) at $5 each - they always get you like that, but it was one of the happiest purchases I ever made thanks to the TV working out exactly as planned...
Last night I ordered the 1080p upconverting DVD player that I wanted (through Amazon, also on massive discount). I cannot wait to see the results!
Thanks to freekybitz and emmsythekid and nutellajones for calling and/or texting and keeping my mind off the cold!