There was lots of crazy excitement today surrounding my wife, her bike, and a big truck. I’ll leave that to her to detail in her own journal, and just say that she is doing OK.
But, after I picked her up and we had a really nice dinner in the south suburbs, we went back to the famous Best Buy mentioned previously.
To put this trip to Best Buy into perspective I need to point out that I went through a fiasco with the online dealer who sold me a pair of speakers. The long of the story would wind through Klipsch tech support calls, about 27 emails, a threat to take action against this company with paypal, and a lot of checking the UPS website. The short of the story is like this: I bought some speakers from a shady online dealer called AVdepot.net (no link to avoid upping their google rank), they were not the right thing, it was a hassle to deal with these people, I finally was able to send them back, today I was refunded the full amount I paid even for shipping.
So, back to best buy I went. This time with a print-out of the price from said shady online dealers price. I told best buy Best Buy to match the price or I would walk, and they even beat it by a little by selling me the floor model. So, for a pair of speakers that has an MSRP of $450, and sells typically for $400 at Best Buy, and that I could have had shipped to my house by the shady dealer for $347, I bought from Best Buy including tax for $341.
Moral of the story, everything is negotiable, and it is the salesman job to make the most money they can selling these things. Even at a big box retailer. Your job is to get the absolute best deal you can, because you know that the key isn’t how much profit the salesman makes per item, it is more about throughput, or getting the sale period.
Also, I’ve been trying to get both of my brothers, who coincidentally are job hunting at the same time, to realize that everything in determining salary, vacation, and benefits is negotiable. If you are looking for a job, know how much you are worth on the market, and ask for it, and don’t be afraid to negotiate more vacation if they won’t move on salary, and don’t be afraid to ask for signing bonuses if you have to move (or even if you don’t). Fortunately I think David gets it. Aaron is a little awe-struck because he is getting flown places to do interviews, so he feels a little weird trying to negotiate too much. I feel lucky that a lot of my friends got flown places to interview, cuz it sorta took away the ‘cool’ factor of going places to interview for me.
Anyway, that was my fun for the day. The speakers sound pretty good so far. I have yet to try them out with a good DVD, but I will later tonight.