I like to shop with local merchants. The superstores have great prices and the mail-order catalogs are seductively convenient, but there's nothing like the individual attention and friendly service you get from a local merchant. Travails of shopping
with local merchantsSure, dog food costs more at the neighborhood pet store than at the warehouse store. I like having a pet store in the neighborhood, though, so I buy there. I bleed every time a big chain store drives another neighborhood merchant out of business.
But I've got to admit that my faith was shaken by a recent attempt to buy a common piece of computer software.
There were mail-order catalogs from computer software warehouses all over my desk but I was determined to help out the local economy and give my business to a local merchant. I called a nearby computer store.
"Do you carry Software X for Windows?"
"No."
"Will you order it for me?"
"No."
Gee, don't beat around the bush. So much for individual attention.
I called another store. "Do you carry Software X for Windows?"
"We're busy right now. I can't look."
"How can I find out if you have it?"
"We don't like to give availability and pricing information over the phone. You'll have to come to the store and look."
"Come on," I said. "I've been in your store. You can see the shelf it would be on from the cash register you're standing at."
"Oh, alright then. Just a minute." Phone slams on counter. One minute passes.
"No, we don't have it."
"Will you order it for me?"
"We can't take orders."
"You can't or you won't?"
"Very clever, sir. Did you hear that one on Leno or Letterman?" So much for friendly service.
The mail-order catalogs on my desk were calling to me. So was the struggling local economy, however, so I tried one more store. It didn't have my software but, wonder of wonders, the salesman would be happy to order it for me. The only hitch was I had to pay in full before he would place the order.
"No problem," I said, "let me give you my credit card number."
"I'm sorry, but we don't take credit cards over the phone. You'll have to come in."
Deflated, I asked how much they charged for the software. It was more than twice as much as advertised in one of the catalogs on my desk.
Hmmm. My best local option was to drive to the store to order, get grossly overcharged, wait up to 10 days for the software to arrive, call the store and navigate its horrendous voice-mail system to confirm that my order was in and then drive to the store again to pick it up.
Or I could call a mail-order house, get the software delivered to my desk by overnight mail for less than half the price and be done with the whole thing in minutes.
May the Chamber of Commerce forgive me for grabbing the catalog.
The unfortunate postscript is that things worked out so well on the software that I ordered a laptop computer from the same mail-order house. They charged my account $1,000 more than their advertised price and it took a month of pleading, threatening and hair-pulling aggravation to get my money back.
I don't know what to do now except to give serious thought to retiring Zen master Robert Aitken's warnings about the soul-stripping dangers of acquisitive consumerism.
