FUCK OFFICEMAX!!!

Once again, it never ceases to amaze me how fucked up the business world is these days.  All the time, you look at a situation with a use of common sense, and it just leaves you wondering....what in the fuck happened here?  I mean, these are supposedly intelligent people that run these businesses, and yet, this jackassery that makes absolutely no sense happens, and no one wants to do anything to fix it.

So, a while back now, the company I work for worked out some deal that we order office supplies through Office Max.  Since I do a lot of ordering of stuff for our department, I was given a login to a corporate Office Max site. 

Ok, so far, so good.

So, the other day, my supervisor needed me to order a gigabit POE switch.  She had searched on officemax.com to find an item I would be able to order, and sent me the item name, since she doesn't have a login to order.

This is the switch I want to order:

http://www.officemax.com/technology/networking-equipment/network-switches/product-prod4040083?R=23369604&ssp=true&useSessionResults=false&searchTerm=MjMzNjk2MDQ=&csRedirectSearchString=23369604&csSearchTag=true&csRedirectSearchResultCount=1

Note the pricetag of $194.99.  That is the price right there.  You, I, or anyone else, can go to this site as of the time I am writing this, add it to our cart, complete the transaction, and purchase this switch for this price.

ANYONE CAN DO THIS!  THIS PRICE STANDS FOR EVERYONE!

So, I login to the officemax site, search for the item, place an order, and today a switch arrives.


Wrong switch.


uh....wtf?

Seems in my rush, when I searched for a very specific item, which had the word gigabit in the description, officemax returned one item it felt was close enough, and went directly to that page, without alerting me that it returned something that didn't meet my search criterea, just the closest thing it found.  And me, being 5 minutes from needing to be out the door, just assumed since it went directly to the item, and I saw it was a switch, that it was the right switch. 

"Ok, so you didn't look at what you were ordering, and ordered the wrong thing, and you want to blame someone else for it, way to go, jackass," is what you're probably thinking right now.

No, not at all.  While that is a minor annoyance, and I felt the site could have dealt with it better, this is not the point of this rant.  This is just building up to it.

So, I go back to the site, and try to figure out, why my search didn't find an item that my supervisor had found right on their site, when searching with the exact name.  My supervisor helped by looking it up again and giving me the item number, which I searched on.  Nothing.

Ok, well aparently the everyday site, and the corporate site, are different.  But, this is all the same company.  They have this item in stock they want to sell for that price, we do business with them....it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this is a pairing that should result in a sale and exchange of money in our free market system.

So, I called up their customer service department, and explained the situation to her.  After some searching, she finds the item in the system, and tells me it will cost $265.


WHAT


THE


FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I explained to her, no, it will not, as it is clearly listed and advertised for $194.99, and I didn't appreciate her trying to cheat us out of $70.  She went on to insist there was no way she could sell the item for that price.

I pointed out to her, I was on their site right now, with this item and price right in front of me, which I could easily add to my shopping cart and purchase for that price, and pointed out how ridiculous it is that they cannot sell it to us for this price, when clearly they can.

She said there was nothing she could do.



I have to ask....when did it become the norm for business to be ok with making it as difficult as possible for you to make a purchase from them.  I mean, we need an item, we have this account specifically for the purpose of purchasing items, our login and their site was setup specifically for the purpose of allowing us to easily purchase from them.  Meanwhile, this item they are offering all customers at a certain price, they don't want to sell us.  I could place the order myself with my credit card, and fill out an expense report to be reimbursed, so clearly it is possible for us to make this purchase of this item at this price.  They can't block us completely from doing it.  Yet....they don't want to make it easy for us to make this purchase.

I can't comprehend how this is acceptable as any way to run a business.  Isn't the point of business to make things easy for the customer?


What really gets me though is that, this shit would never happen if the business wasn't as big as it is.  I have found, more and more, that with a passion, I really, really hate big business.  Businesses have been allowed to grow bigger than they should ever become.  If some guy running a small store tried to pull this shit, he wouldn't be running a store much longer.  But, these big businesses become too big to fail, and then customer service goes right out the window, but that's ok.....they have enough business, they don't need you.  And if they fuck up, well, they're too big to fail, so our tax dollars will bail them out, so they can continue selling us things with no care or quality customer service, and run all the competition out of town!

I am sick and tired of big business ruining this country.

And yet....where else am I going to go if I want to buy a gigabit POE switch?  I can't go to bob's discount switches on the corner, no such store exists.


I really don't understand how we got to this point.  Are people really that stupid?  Every time I think, surely mankind can't be nearly as dumb as i think they are, I'm proven, once again, I was wrong....it's much worse.

Is there any intelligence left out there?

Hello?