Over the past weekend while we were in Dallas, my brother was looking to buy Mario Kart Wii after he saw how much his daughter enjoyed the game in store. Best Buy either didn’t have it in stock or was holding it back because it was in the ad for the next day, I can’t remember which, but we couldn’t get it there so we went to Circuit City instead for which he had a gift card anyway.

Long story short, we ended up getting the game. But it’s the Circuit City experience that I was really soured with. My brother wanted to get another wheel for the game so that he would have two. Since Best Buy was selling it for $9.99, we figured that Circuit City would price match it and everything would be fine. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. As it was explained to us, in order for them to do the price match it had to be in an ad, they had to call the store to verify it, and the other store had to have it in stock. In our situation, the ad didn’t come out until the next day and they were holding the wheels back so they would be in-stock when the ad did come out.

Keep in mind that it was just the ad that was coming out the next day. The regular price was still $9.99 at Best Buy while it was $14.99 at Circuit City. All this just comes down to poor (very poor) customer service. If these are really the stipulations of their price matching policy (I’m not exactly sure it is yet) then it’s poor customer service from corporate on down, and it’s no wonder that Circuit City’s stock price and financials are tanking. Needless to say, I definitely won’t make Circuit City my first stop when I’m looking for something. The only chance they have of my future business is if they’re the only ones that sell something I really want, which is highly unlikely given their competition.

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