11/24/06

Black Friday Shopping

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! And happy Black Friday...

I hate shopping on Black Friday... I do all of it online, which is nice, but it still sucks! Last night at 4AM I placed an order for a 500 GB Seagate Hard Drive for my computer, on special at NewEgg for $149.99... However, there were many issues with processing this order....

First, the system needed me to utilize some "secure banking" thing where I had to create an account (through my credit card company), setup passwords and special lines of text to ensure that "I'm entering information into a legitimate website" and all that crap. To annoy me further, the site was poorly designed, annoying to navigate, had minimal features, and to kick it all off, it was being slow processing my request! Risking my black friday order!!

Then, I was returned to the NewEgg site, where NewEgg said "You have to ship to a confirmed address (billing address) or ship to a secondary address that needs to be on file with your bank. If the address isn't on file with the bank, order processing may be slowed for up to three additional days." I was a little worried that would screw up my processing, since I wanted the stuff shipped to work instead of home, so this morning, I spent half an hour on the phone with my bank, only to come away with, "We're sorry, but there can only be one address associated with your account." GRRR! It'll slow processing down, but at least it won't be a major problem.

Then I got an email from NewEgg... Apparently, I typoed one thing on my order... My expiration date on my credit card. Grrr. The email said that my card didn't process, and it asked me to resubmit my card information, so they could reprocess it. I did so, and then got another email... Same thing -- and even though I put in the correct information, I noticed that it still said the incorrect expiration date, so I tried it again. Third time, it didn't take the updated information as well! So, not to be daunted, I canceled my order and went to redo it from scratch... *OUT OF STOCK* GRRRR!!!! The worst news possible for a Black Friday shopper... Now I know how those 12:01 AM wal-mart shoppers feel!

Luckily, I was able to re-initiate my old order, and get the thing processed. This time, with the correct expiration date, with the "secure banking" already set up, and it seems they have already started doing the address confirmation from my first order request! ^_^ Now, I'll just have to see if I'm in the queue where I was before, or if I'm going to get an email from NewEgg that says, "We're sorry, but that hard drive is *out of stock* now." That would just be the kicker, but things are looking up... Everything seems to be processing though just fine, as the image below shows.

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