Fry’s Electronics and “REDUCED” price items

This deserves a royal “OMFG”. I like Fry’s Electronics, I do, it’s much better than Best Buy and the prices are relatively good, even compared to online retailers. In the last four days I’ve had an absolute nightmare, from two different locations! It started when a friend of mine wanted me to build a media center setup for them. If there wasn’t a small time constraint, I would have ordered the parts from Newegg.com and in hindsight avoided this entire dilemma. So I went to Fry’s in Manhattan Beach (California). One side note here, this Fry’s in Manhattan is probably the most ghetto Fry’s I’ve ever been to, with a very “Walmart at 2am” type of crowd parading around in there. This was my first time to this location. I ended up asking “Little Joker” (that’s what was tattooed on his neck) to just grab me a micro atx Gigabyte mobo, and a i5 CPU, and the rest of the stuff that I needed. While I was there I decided to buy a 64gb SSD Torqx drive for my Macbook pro, and install it later that evening or the next day. I went over to the TV section and checked out the Samsung LED 3d Tv, and after 20 minutes of waiting I spoke with a young hispanic guy, told him I wanted to buy it, with the 3d Bluray player, and have them install it. He said he would get the pricing for the install and “be right back”.  25 minutes later, I ended up just walking to the cashier and purchasing the media center components. He just lost my impulse buy.

*Note to self, always check to make sure the items you buy at Fry’s is not “REDUCED” with the orange sticker, this means the shit was open.

We drove back to my friend’s home in Marina Del Rey (15-20 min drive) and I started to assemble the computer. The first place to start when you build a computer is with the motherboard, and as soon as I opened it….Some nice shit-head decided to replace the Micro ATX Gigabyte i5 mobo, with a Full size socket 478 Biostar mobo, and take it back, hoping Fry’s would not open the box and double check….they obviously didn’t. I was pretty pissed, first because I had to drive back to Fry’s which was 20 minutes away and now typical 405 traffic  time, but secondly because I had to explain wtf had happened and hope that they didn’t think it was me trying to pull a fast one.

We hopped into the car and went back to Fry’s in the hood as I conveniently had renamed it and explained what happened to the vietnamese looking lady who told me that “we screen returned packages very well, we do not see how this could have happened“. Luckily I was in “just got off of work clothes” and still suited, and I explained that I didn’t need to steal a $62 motherboard when I just purchased $1,400 worth of other items I was not returning. After some discussion she decided to refund the money and I went to the back and decided to grab an Asus motherboard this time.

**You fcking retard, why didn’t you check to make sure it was a REDUCED price box again…? Whyyyy???

I got back to my friend’s home around 8:00pm and as soon as I started to open the Asus mobo box, I noticed the ugly light orange sticker that said REDUCED price and sighed to myself, but I figured what were the chances this happened twice right? I opened the box and at least this time is was the right motherboard inside it. As I took it out of the thermostatic wrapping, I looked it over carefully and then came the mother f*ck me, the gold pins of the CPU seat have two distinct locations where they were completely bent, from the force of someone trying to shove the CPU in the wrong direction, like Lexington Steel trying to penetrate one of R-Kelly’s underage girlfriends.  I was furious to say the very very least. It was late, I had made no progress, I had a one hour drive home still and my friend was still out of a media center, and she was wondering whether or not if she should have just bought a Dell. I got home late, hopped online and read about my 64gb SSD Torqx drive and debated whether or not 64gb would really be enough space on my Macbook Pro, I fell asleep thinking about my fast boot times with a new SSD (ok not really, I’m not that much of a geek).

The next day after work I decided to stop by the Anaheim Fry’s, a much nicer, and cleaner and better staffed Fry’s, the one I typically go to. I had brought the mobo with bent pins back and again went through a lengthy process explaining that I opened it this way, and these retards thinking I was noobish enough to have bent the pins during a aggressive installation. After 45 minutes of arguing, the manager came out and looked up my telephone number and said to reissue credit. I looked carefully this time for a mobo box without  a REDUCED price sticker and amazingly, it was frackkin hard to find! They were almost ALL opened. Finally I found one. I also swapped out my 64gb SSD with a 128gb SSD while I was there, ate the higher cost and drove out to my friend’s home and finished building her media center and configuring Windows 7 with codecs and what not in about 1 hour. I drove home late again and decided that tomorrow I would install my new SSD into my Macbook Pro.

The following day I had a light day at the office and set the schedule for my employees and decided to cut out early and take care of some personal errands. By 4pm I was home and ready to install my SSD. I hopped online and looked at a “how to” and decided it wouldn’t be to difficult to install it. I spent the next two hours backing up all my data, settings, bookmarks, music etc off my MBP. I flipped it upside down, opened up the unibody MBP, disconnected the battery and pulled out the existing HDD. I began to open the Torqx SSD drive box, when O-M-F-G, it had a REDUCED price sticker on it and I literally cringed. I opened the box now expecting the worst and what the royal fuck do you know…. Some cheeseball ghetto bastard had carefully opened the SSD making sure not to tear the hologram VOID IF BROKEN stickers, and replaced the 128gb SSD with a busted ass IDE HDD, smashed it into the same metal enclosure and sealed the box back up……….

I cannot believe this shit…

Tomorrow I will take this back and boy o’ boy I wonder if they will even believe me.

Fry’s really needs to properly screen items when returned and ship the shit back once returned for a new replacement, this is pathetic.