Best Buy and Other Complaints

For my birthday, my parents are having my good stereo put into Francis, so today Mum and I hopped into the car and drive to Best Buy with the stereo so it could live inside Francis's dashboard and play me music that is not shouted by Ke$a (who is appalling) or that woman on American Idol who keeps screaming at Mariah Carey (who is equally appalling).

Guess where the stereo is now?

If you guessed, "In an American Eagle bag in Francis's trunk," you were correct. Have 50 points.

When Mom made the appointment at Best Buy (to surprise me), the Geek Squad man asked what the make and model of my car was, what the year of the car was, and what the stereo was. Then he asked what car the stereo came out of previously. And that was it. We should have been asked just one other thing: what cables we had.

Apparently, there was a cable that hooked into the dashboard, deep, deep inside. When I pulled the stereo out of the dashboard of the Taurus, I assumed (silly me) that I wasn't supposed to grab the handful of cables running out of the back of the stereo and rip them out of dark parts of my car's internals where they were attached as if I were some kind of evil Game of Thrones character. I thought I was supposed to find the middle section where the cables hooked into other cables, unhook them, and take half the cables with me.

I was wrong.

Mum and I drove all the way to Best Buy (1 hour) and got turned away at the door, because we were one cable short of a party, and Best Buy doesn't sell the cable we needed, even though it is the standard cable for every model of Pioneer stereos produced in the last 10 years.

Then I went on Pioneer's website and tried to order the cable. The cable itself was just under $15.00, but then the shipping for the cable was $15.33, making the simple act of dropping a bag of wires into an envelope and popping the envelope in the mail more costly then the process of manufacturing the wires in the first place.*

That is, in the words of my gran, "Ruddy stupid."**

What makes things worse is that I drove all the way to Best Buy and back, spending money on gas just to spend more money on a cable that will be mailed to my house, followed by spending still more money at some future date, when I drive back to Best Buy to have the cable and stereo installed in my car. All because Best Buy Guy didn't ask us all the questions he was supposed to ask.

I find this all quite vexing. And Best Buy Guy owes me 15 bucks in gas.

* I did not buy THAT cable, I bought a knock-off on Amazon, which was $8.00, no tax, no shipping cost. Take that, stupid Pioneer.

** Imagine that in an English accent.