Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Another Best Buy experience

Every time I go to Best Buy, it seems, I have another story to tell. Here it is, as best as I can remember.

I put down my hard drive, and my impulse-buy on-sale Nintendo DS game at the checkout counter. The cashier offers me some special rewards thing that I decline, then lets me know about the 1-year guarantee on the game. Just to make sure, I ask if it's for the hard drive. No, it's just for the DS game in case it goes bad, or "starts skipping". Then came the bump in the road.

Cashier: "What's your phone number?"
Me: "Sorry, I can't give that out."
Cashier: "Can you just make something up so I can type it in here?"
Me: pausing, giving funny look, "...All 5's?"

The cashier types in all 5's. At this point I'm kind of glad that everything's pleasant. I'm actually sort of fond of these ritual conversations. There's just a certain line I won't cross about giving out my personal information. (Related word to the wise: never say, "I'm not going to give you that"; say, "Sorry, I can't give you that." But that's a different story.) The cashier continues filling the on-screen form. "What's your name?" I give her my name, which she misspells. I partially correct her.

C: "What's your address"
Me: "I can't give that out... You need my address?"

She starts filling in a made up address. She keeps prompting me to make things up so she can type them, but I just keep looking stunned. I got my bearings enough to help her make up a zip code. The computer tries to match her nonsense to real addresses, and gives her a list of addresses it thinks are close.

C: "I guess I need a real address."
Me: still looking stunned.

She just selects one, and finishes. Then it says "invalid phone number". She makes up a better number, which the computer is finally happy with. Then, on the credit card swiper, it prompts me that the info is correct. It doesn't just ask if it's correct, though. It says, "Do you agree that the following information is correct:" above a bunch of made up crap. The button I need to click reads "I agree".

Me: "What will happen if I agree to this?"
C: "Nothing... nothing bad."

Then, I clicked it. I swiped my card, which I imagine has all my info embedded in it anyway, and went on my way. But I'll be back.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good for people to know.

Anonymous said...

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Brian said...

um, yeah.