Stop Being Carbon

Recently I wanted to buy some new headphones. Not quite expensive ones, but also not so cheap (€100+). Just right for a guy with standard audio equipment.

So I went to our local electronics shop, which sucks regarding customer service, and – I wasn’t disappointed. After finding a responsible sales guy, this already took me two tries, he was okay-friendly and looked up the status of the headphones I wanted. Out of stock, for sure. Delivery data? Nobody knows. Awesome.

Next try: Austrian online shop of the retailer. MySQL error – 1045 : Access denied for user ‘atheas’@'localhost’ (using password: NO) (it’s still there, btw).

Ultimate try: Manufacturer’s website. Found my headphones, went to their online shop (which is on a different domain in a different web application, so I had to search for my headphones again, but that’s okay), put the headphones I wanted in the basket and clicked to checkout. Filling out my address data, I noticed that Austria wasn’t in their list of possible countries. Clearly an error, because they say they ship to the whole EU. Contacted their support stating my problem and got a reply within five minutes. Awesome. They fixed their website within some minutes, I proceeded my checkout process and was quite happy. Then I got the next email of their sales person, saying that the headphones I’ve ordered were out of stock and wouldn’t be available before end of March. Really seams that nobody wants my money.

I have to say that the sales person was really friendly and helpful – but still: How can you keep a product in your online shop and make active advertisement for it if it will not be available within the next three months? And regarding the local electronics shop: Why need I even pay for some guys who have no clue, are completely unfriendly and unhelpful?