Best Buy: Helping YOU shop ELSEWHERE

Best Buy picked the right place when it set up shop in Windsor, Ontario -- otherwise known as "The Millionaire Capital of Canada."

Windsor's economy is tied so closely to Detroit, Michigan's -- and that solid gold auto industry -- there's no question the citizenry has money to burn. Sales and coupons and "deals" and "best buys" are a waste of time among the monied. All we're concerned with is the most expensive item in the store, whatever the store. And thank Gawd Best Buy is here to do that for us.

Unfortunately for me, I am an abnormal Windsorite -- I am not wealthy.

A few months ago I was shopping for a laptop, and wandered into Best Buy. I had done months of Web research and had narrowed down on the laptop I wanted: a $499 Acer. When I approached a salesman at Best Buy and pointed out the machine I wanted, he immediately walked away, saying, "No, no, I'll show you what you want." When I insisted that I knew what I wanted, the salesman grudgingly went into the back to see if there were any models in stock. What do you know? They didn't have any left. I bought my laptop elsewhere.

Today, I went back to Best Buy with my dad who was looking for a laptop for my mom. We checked out all the models on display, compared specs, tabulated my mom's uses -- e-mail, writing the odd letter, a little Web surfing -- and narrowed on a $499 HP model. Luckily, Chris, the curly-haired salesman, was on hand to steer us away from what we wanted.

First thing he said when we indicated the model we wanted was that it was junk. He warned about its technology being five years out of date.

"So, Best Buy sells merchandise it thinks is garbage?" I asked, incredulous.

Chris vigorously nodded.

I couldn't believe it.

Then Chris inadvertently pointed out a discrepancy between that HP laptop's specs, which were printed on a card mounted on the counter in front of it, and those on the sign above it. The sign stated it only had a 1 GHz processor. The card on the front of laptop said it had 2.1 GHz.

I said, "So, without knowing what this laptop will be used for, you're instantly trying to up-sell us?"

To this Chris tried a crippled, left-footed tap dance that made all involved feel embarrassed for him. "This is what you buy for your kid when you want him off your lap," he said.

"You know, your spiel isn't making HP sound bad," I told Chris, mystified by his bizarre performance, "you're making Best Buy look bad."

To which Chris shrugged.

"Maybe we'll buy the laptop elsewhere," I said.

To which Chris shrugged again.

So, we left and bought a laptop for my mom elsewhere. No doubt Chris had a plethora of millionaires to whom to sell $2,000 laptops, game systems and big screen TVs. Clearly, we were wasting his time.

Shopping at Best Buy (the Bait & Switch Capital of Retail) is like trying to buy a quart of milk in Beverly Hills, California: it's not the errand that's unreasonable, it's the environment that's unreasonable.

Where does Best Buy get its sales staff? These guys should be ushers in a porn theater.