catholicsphere

We’ve been in need of a vacuum for awhile now. This weekend we decided to breakdown and purchase a new one.

First, my wife pulled out a March 2007 issue of Consumer Reports that had a feature on vacuums. We decided on the #4 “CR Best Buy” based on the review, our needs and the pricing. It’s the Eureka Boss Smart Vac Ultra.

Then, the search was on to find some place that sold it. Wal-mart had it online only; they had a lesser model in their stores. My wife suggested I check BestBuy.com. There I found it, and it was on sale for $30 off. With that knowledge I headed to the store …

When I got to the store, I found it listed at $149.99, which didn’t reflect the online pricing. So, I asked a sales associate, telling him what I’d found online. I expected him to tell me something about online versus store pricing to be different, but he didn’t. He proceeded to look it up on their “local store site”, which reflected the in-store price we were seeing and not the pricing I saw at BestBuy.com. At this point, I told him I’d seen it on the “external customer site”, which seemed to confuse him.

For those who haven’t heard, Best Buy has had problems in the past because they have “local store sites” that are different from the BestBuy.com site that you see when browsing from the outside world.

To try to determine what I was talking about, he took me over to the appliances manager, who was able to bring up the customer-facing site, that reflected a $30 savings. He printed it out and we took it up to the checkout counter so that I could be given the price-savings. The original associate that I spoke with was a bit shocked, but thought that was very interesting.

All-in-all its was an awesome deal, and I’m glad that Best Buy handled it this way. And, because of the price savings, we were able to stay within the amount we budgeted before we began to even look — with tax, we went over by about $4.50.

I noticed when I browse BestBuy.com a short while ago that this sale is no longer available. So, I’m even happier that we got it!

When we got it home, assembled and used it, I was even happier still.

[tags]best buy, vacuum, shopping, catholicsphere, deals[/tags]