Short-Circuited City
This morning's experience at the Post Office was a walk in the park compared to this afternoon's interlude at Circuit City.
I should have known better. Circuit City has the most onerous identity requirements and lethargic processing system known to humankind. I expect that soon we'll have to provide DNA samples from various sensitive body parts before we can write checks, although I'm not sure that even that would have helped today.
After the clerk scanned my check, the Man Behind The Scanner Curtain informed her that she needed phone approval. She dialed the phone and spent ten minutes mumbling into the handset, punching keys on the register, and entering numbers via the phone's keypad. At the end of this grueling session, she hung up and said "they rejected your check. I don't know why, but they did."
This is not the first time I've seen a check go through this process, but it is the first rejection, and it's a little difficult not to take it personally. As I handed the clerk a credit card, she said, "well, a check and a credit card are the same thing, aren't they?" I didn't bother to shepherd her through the intricacies of our banking systems and all the ways that a check and a credit card were, indeed, dissimilar. I merely replied, "that's not the point; I wanted to write a check." She then proceeded to ask for all the identity information that was included on the face of the check that she'd returned to me. (I was briefly tempted to write another check and tell her that this one would probably go through, because it had a different number.)
I suppose that this is the price one must pay to avoid the crush of the crowd at Best Buy. It's a price that I'm growing increasingly unwilling to accept.
As a part of our commitment to fair and balanced reporting, I will report that one of the salesclerks was able to immediately locate a DVD I'd been unable to find after 10 minutes of browsing the [unalphabetized] stacks of movies. It was the only question she was able to answer during my stay at the checkout counter, but we find our victories where we can, right?
i don't think i'd been to circuit city for over a year when i recently went in to pick up something i ordered over the internet that i could not - unfortunately - find anywhere else.
i had already found the item, purchased it online, paid for it, and printed out a receipt/order confirmation. when i went into the store, they wanted to see the order confirmation, my credit card, and driver's license. then the seemingly 16 year-old kid behind the counter said of my driver's license: "this doesn't look quite like you." i then had to explain the subtle differences of how a human male can look different with or without a beard.
i don't plan on ever going back to circuit city again unless i just have to.
Posted by: kyle at December 17, 2007 07:17 PMWhat's a "Check"??
Is that one of those paper things from the last century?
Posted by: Wallace at December 17, 2007 11:55 PMAfter an non-impressive experience of buying a TV from Circuit City, well it more like a consumer torture experience we never go into the store and that was five or six years ago. Sorry for your public humiliation. To bad this kind of thing isn’t reported more often.
Posted by: Gene at December 18, 2007 08:51 AMGene, it wasn't humiliating -- it was actually amusing in a way, since our checking account balance far exceeds our credit card limit -- but it was definitely aggravating, especially when they couldn't tell me the reason for the rejection.
It's amazing how many businesses remain clueless about the right way to treat their customers.
Posted by: Eric at December 18, 2007 09:00 AMWal-Mart now treats checks almost exactly like credit cards -- they run in through the processor, and then print out a receipt which you sign and they keep, while giving you the check back, now imprinted with the processing data.
The only difference with a credit card is they don't have you signing the electronic touch-pad ... for now. But Wal-Mart apparently has as little desire to be running paper checks through their processing systems in Bentonville as banks are in sending those checks back with your monthly statement.
So the time it takes to get the transaction into the system can't be much, if any, longer than it is by swiping your credit card, and validation should be just as quick. However, given Circuit City's ongoing management problems -- this is the company that fired every veteran sales person who knew anything about the products they were selling in order to save money with minimum wage workers -- it's not surprising that for an electronics retailer, they'd be behind the curve in processing and confirming electronic transactions.
True to form.
I purchased a TV online from CC just before Thanksgiving. I selected to have the TV delivered since it was a free option. When I called to setup the delivery I was informed that it was a special order and I would be contacted in 7 days to learn the availability. That would have been fine except for the little tag on my order confirmation stating that the item would be available in 1-3 days. Of course the employee had no explanation. So, 5 days later I look online and see that the model is available at my local CC for pickup. I call to schedule the delivery and they say that they can deliver it the next day from that same store. on my way home I decide to just pick it up. You can imagine how that went. So much for 24 minute pickup. They ended up canceling my order and inputing a new order since I decided to pick it up instead of them delivering it.
John, one would also think the company would be happy to avoid the credit card fees. But, as you point out, they haven't exactly raised the bar for logical business decisions.
Will, flexibility doesn't seem to be their strong suit, does it?
Posted by: Eric at December 18, 2007 02:00 PMWhile we were casing our mail this morning, the guy I sub for announced that he had been given a gift card for Circuit City.
My response: "I'm sorry to hear that, Doug."
Posted by: Jim at December 18, 2007 06:03 PMBack in the day when CC had appliances, I had to buy washer and dryers there for business. It would take exactly ONE HOUR just to pay for them, they already had been ordered and delivery set up. I rarely set foot in there unless they have some fantastic deal.
Posted by: Bleu at December 20, 2007 10:05 AMAbout the publisher
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Did you see the Fortune 101 Dumbest Moments in Business for the year? Where Circuit City fired all of its employees making "too much money," meaning they canned all of their top performers?
They're not even an option anymore, IMHO, and it's not like Best Buy is super impressive or anything.
Posted by: Bret at December 17, 2007 05:14 PM