Best Buy My Eye

So Unreal Tournament 2004 came out on Monday, it's a really sweet game. Bret (the guy who posts random idiocies about mozilla) and I we're torn on whether or not to get it. Best Buy had the $40 regular version on sale for $30. What clinched it for me, however, was that they also had the $60 special edition one on sale for $30. Amongst the many extras in the special edition is a $25 headphone/microphone set. That is a hell of a deal. So Tuesday morning after class I went to find the spot with the UT2004 tags empty. After trying to find an employee for 20 minutes I was informed that they won’t be getting any until Thursday. (Which was clearly spelled out in the flyer, my bad.)

Now as a person who shops almost exclusively at Best Buy, despite my large and ever growing hatred of it, I know how they work. Anytime they have a deal that seems too good to be true there's a catch. Usually the catch is they get like 5 of the items they have the huge deal on so that they sell out 2 seconds after opening the doors the first day and then all week people come in, are told they are out, and think "Well as long as I'm here the regular edition is also on sale." (It's called the bait and switch and it's quite illegal.)
So I decide that I'll be waiting when the doors open at 9 on Thursday. (I have a 9:30 class and I think I ended up actually giving up like 15 minutes of sleep, so I'm not THAT nerdy.) I get there at 8:50ish and like 15 minutes later the doors aren’t open even though there are like 30 cars in the lot. I drive up closer and realize they don’t open ‘til 10. I swore and jetted off to class.

After class I go back there hoping that 2 of the few copies they will get will still be there an hour after they opened. They were out.

I track down an employee she goes and looks in back to find nothing. When she told me this I said something like "I thought they would go fast" to which she said. "Well actually the shipment came early, we put them out yesterday. There were 3 copies left this morning but one of the first people in the store bought all 3."

After I took a few deep breaths and wiped up the blood that was pouring from my ears I asked if they would have any more before the sale was out. She said probably not because they don't even get another shipment before then.

Apparently though, and remember this everyone, no matter what the deal is (unless maybe there's an explicit limit as to how many the store will sell listed) you can go to the service desk and pay for it and when the shipment does come in they hold it and call you. (As opposed to rain checks which have a limited amount of time, usually if you don’t get one on the next shipment the rain check expires).

So Bret and I are now co owners of a piece of paper worth 63 dollars. I think I'll play it tonight. So MAYBE in one week (read one month) and 4 trips later we’ll actually have our game.