Brick and mortar stores still suck at the internet

It amazes me that prominent members of the brick and mortar retail industry are still completely clueless when it comes to how they need to be operating online. I remember about a decade ago I had tracked down a specific part for my vacuum via the sears.com website. When I drove 15 miles north to pick it up, they had no idea what I was talking about, couldn't do anything with the online item number I brought from the website, and had no vacuum part. First world problem -- I know.

Over the weekend I have been rearranging the living room and it turns out my 6' TOSLINK cable that pipes delicious audio from my desktop computer to the nice speakers isn't long enough anymore. We have a new furry member in the household that likes to eat wires so I have to do the new wiring carefully and it is somewhat inconvenient to change it later after it has all been bundled nicely and "locked in". With this in mind, I was ready to pay the 100%+ premium (compared to ordering from Monoprice or Amazon) and grab a cable at Fry's.

Turns out I suck at estimating lengths and the longest cable Fry's sells (15' for $30) didn't make it by about 3'. Doh. I checked Amazon Prime for 25' ones (preferably from their quality Amazon Basics brand) and they didn't have any obviously available, so I found what I needed in about 45 seconds on Monoprice for $5 + $5 shipping. I'll take the other one back to Fry's -- done deal, or so I thought.

This morning -- in a mix of curiosity, boredom, impulsiveness, and disappointment with the temporary, shitty wiring job I had to do using the too-short cable -- I decided to check Best Buy's website to see if they have what I need. Hey, with a family member who seems to survive on a diet of about 10-15% wires, it couldn't hurt to have 2 of these around.

I hit up http://www.bestbuy.com and searched for TOSLINK. Wow! A 20' Startech cable for $21 -- that isn't bad at all. I see a trip to Best Buy in my immediate future -- perhaps with an impulsive video game buy, or a replacement iPhone cable (stupid cat).

Best Buy doesn't have the best reputation for being super competent but hopefully they have enough clue to have their online to brick and mortar situation down pretty well.

Green Flag: "Check Stock In Stores Near Me" -- this should be standard at any online store with a significant brick and mortar presence.

Yellow Flag #1: the "BETA" icon next to the in-stock search -- it's 2012 and fairly talented US web developers are a dime a dozen. Find a shop or hire some coders and get the online stock checking perfected now. Fire anyone who tells you it's very difficult or impossible, because it isn't if you don't suck.

Yellow Flag #2: "Marketplace Item, Sold and Shipped by Buy.com" -- fuck this. Best Buy, don't be naive; don't waste your money trying to be Amazon; you will never win. Amazon built a brilliant shopping platform (and an even more brilliant computing platform) and you can't compete without bringing significantly new things to the table, which you aren't. I'm going to go out on a hyperbolic limb and guess Bezos has more innovation in his morning piss than your entire board of directors combined.

Anyway, back to the website and still feeling hopeful I will be making a trip to Best Buy today. Let me put in my zip code -- which is one of the densest neighborhoods on the west coast, with close to 4 million people in the surrounding area, and has at least 5 Best Buys if you go 10 miles in any direction -- I'm sure this relatively common 20' cable from this well known cable manufacturer is available at this store that should have its online shit together. "Go".

"There are not any stores within a 50 mile radius of 98122 with any of the displayed products in stock"

What. The. Fuck. That is one harsh informative message and one grand display of online retail incompetency. Entire floors of marketing, retail, and online sales people at Best Buy's headquarters should probably be fired over this.

If I wanted to order something online, I'm going to go to the place that I already pay $79 a year to for fast, free shipping and order it. They have almost everything I need if I can wait a whole 2-3 days (sometimes less). And if they don't have a sort of specialty item like a really long TOSLINK cable available via Prime, I'll go to a different online site that specializes in high quality cables of every type and size you could imagine at simply amazing prices that really highlight the insulting markup on cables found in most brick and mortar stores.

At no point during my online shopping experience does the thought of going to bestbuy.com and paying for shipping for something that is likely at least a little bit overpriced (and sometimes significantly overpriced, like cables) enter my head, nor will it ever at any point in the foreseeable future. I don't think I've ever ordered anything from bestbuy.com, but I've definitely made about a half dozen trips to the local stores in the last year and spent a few hundred bucks.

The only time bestbuy.com becomes relevant is if I'm being an impatient, impulsive consumer and I want to know if I can get my cable now -- possibly without even changing out of what I slept in or taking one look in a mirror. And it completely fails at this seemingly no-brainer service.

I guess I'm waiting until Wednesday or Thursday when my Monoprice cable shows up. Best Buy lost $20-70 worth of revenue today and won a badge they should be trying to avoid: sucking at being a brick and mortar store with a website. And they are far from alone.

Off the top of my head, one place that seems to be doing it right is Walmart. I honestly don't shop there very often (they don't have a large footprint in the Seattle area), but I recall their site-to-store connectivity being high quality. You've probably been taking lessons from Walmart for years -- here is another one.