Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Darn poetic justice!
Last night we drove around aimlessly for a little while and ended up at a nice little restaurant about 30 minutes away. We had a great dinner. Across the street was a department store and I said "Why don't we go over and look around?" I wandered to electronics and saw that they were having a sale on those portable DVD players. I'd been looking at those now and again since they started to appear, but I never seriously considered buying one because they were too expensive (to me) for what they were.
But I noticed one last night. On sale, $20 off regular price, and an additional $30 rebate, if you can stand waiting 10 weeks to get it. Wow, that's a deal. The box says it comes with everything: rechargable battery, AC adapter, car adapter, headphones...great! One of us can watch a movie while the other drives to the river, honey, won't that be fun?
So I buy it, and we drive the 30 minutes home. All right! It's in a box, inside a sealed plastic clamshell, so no one has touched it since it was packaged in China. Get the scissors, cut it open, open up the box and start removing items. Open up the instructions and start reading the list of items that should be in the box. (You know where this is going, right?) Check, check, check...waitaminute...the AC adapter is missing. Not in the box. Not under anything, not wrapped in anything. Put everything back in box to make sure...yup...there's an empty space in the packaging where it should be. Without the AC adapter, you can't charge the battery, you can't make it work at all. After work today I have to drive 30 minutes to the store to exchange it. Sigh.
I was instantly reminded of an incident that happened when I was a little kid. I, my father, and a friend of my father's were going somewhere, and he had us stop at a bank. This was a Saturday morning, so it was strange. He told us about how this bank had something called an ATM. This was probably the very early 80s, when those machines first started appearing. You use this card to get money out of the machine whenever you want it. It's great. He inserted the card into the machine and the screen went blank. He pushed a few buttons and nothing happened. He never got the money or the card back that day.
But I noticed one last night. On sale, $20 off regular price, and an additional $30 rebate, if you can stand waiting 10 weeks to get it. Wow, that's a deal. The box says it comes with everything: rechargable battery, AC adapter, car adapter, headphones...great! One of us can watch a movie while the other drives to the river, honey, won't that be fun?
So I buy it, and we drive the 30 minutes home. All right! It's in a box, inside a sealed plastic clamshell, so no one has touched it since it was packaged in China. Get the scissors, cut it open, open up the box and start removing items. Open up the instructions and start reading the list of items that should be in the box. (You know where this is going, right?) Check, check, check...waitaminute...the AC adapter is missing. Not in the box. Not under anything, not wrapped in anything. Put everything back in box to make sure...yup...there's an empty space in the packaging where it should be. Without the AC adapter, you can't charge the battery, you can't make it work at all. After work today I have to drive 30 minutes to the store to exchange it. Sigh.
I was instantly reminded of an incident that happened when I was a little kid. I, my father, and a friend of my father's were going somewhere, and he had us stop at a bank. This was a Saturday morning, so it was strange. He told us about how this bank had something called an ATM. This was probably the very early 80s, when those machines first started appearing. You use this card to get money out of the machine whenever you want it. It's great. He inserted the card into the machine and the screen went blank. He pushed a few buttons and nothing happened. He never got the money or the card back that day.
# posted by smacky @ 9:06 AM 
Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home
<< Home
