An Engineer

We mostly shop online, and mostly through Amazon Prime. But every once in a while, we need something in a hurry and venture beyond our keyboard. Tonight I needed a small card table. I looked online and the Target store three miles from my house showed an acceptable table as in-stock. I clicked add to cart for in-store pickup, checked out and the drove to the store in the rain.

Here is what Target showed after my purchase.

When I arrived a the store, they told me that the item was not in fact in stock and that I would have received a confirming email if it was in stock. They refunded my money. I sort of assumed that, since they showed the item as in stock, showing up early would just mean waiting for them to pull the item. My bad.

I then walked back from “guest services” and picked out a different table, walked to the register and waited to check out – about six minutes. As I approached the register I realized the item was slightly damaged, a dent in one leg. So we walked back and got another instance of the table. The cashier processed a couple of small “We’re sorry” coupons along with the order (they keep them on hand, because I think they are sorry a lot.).

Upon arriving home, we realized that this instance of the table also had as small degree of damage on the table-top beneath the plastic shrink-wrap. It’s not an expensive item and the damage is not really that important.

My point is that shopping retail is pretty painful and shopping at Amazon is far more convenient and in my experience, I’m less likely to get a damaged item – I nearly never do. The pick-up-in-store experience at Target is terrible. And Target is my favorite big-box retailer! I just don’t know if retail can recover from the current situation.

To be fair, I really should have just driven to Target without checking their website first. The hybrid online shopping/in-store pickup, is far worse than the retail experience itself. And it was nice that they discounted the item I purchased as an apology for the shop-online/in-store pickup experience.