Kenneth tried to get a jump on Black Friday shopping by doing some shopping at BestBuy.com yesterday, but the site’s arcane rules and procedures ended up jumping him. I could try to summarize but I’m pretty sure I’d get something wrong so let’s just let Kenneth explain what happened:

While shopping BestBuy.com this AM, 2 items from my shopping cart disappeared and is showing as sold out online. In haste, I bought another item comparable to the 2 that I had. After a couple of hours, I changed my mind and wanted to cancel my order. So, I called customer service. My order was in process. However, it was a bundled package and one of the item was already “released”. I was told the whole order cannot be cancelled since my order is considered complete if one item was “released”. The rest of the items in the bundle also cannot be canceled. So, when processing and shipping, the bundled items are treated separately and considered complete if one item is processed. But when trying to cancel, it has to be canceled as a bundle and not separately? So, you treat it differently in each situation for Best Buy’s convenience and not customer oriented. Also, when things are in your shopping cart, people should NOT be able to take it away. In brick and mortar store, when you have things in your shopping cart, would you just let somebody else steal them without your knowledge?

Got all that? The lesson to learn here is not to brave the site until you’re exactly sure what you’ll be buying, and not to do hasty alternate-item purchasing should one of your targets disappear from your shopping cart.

If you have a story of an online purchase snafu, please share it in the comments.

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