Big Picture Big Sound

Earlier this month, Circuit City sent us a gift card in order to check out their new 24/24 in-store pickup guarantee. Now when you make an online purchase at Circuitcity.com, you can pick up your order at a local store within 24 minutes. If your order is incomplete or not ready within the 24-minute window, you'll get a $24 gift card for your trouble.

For those who enjoy the convenience of online shopping, but need our items the same day, this is an extremely compelling offer. So I browsed Circuit City's Web site, found a few office supplies and a digital camera that was on sale (which we are donating to a local non-profit organization), put the items in my cart and selected "pick up from local store" (in my case, the Union Square location in Manhattan). During the shopping process, I noticed that I could not add more than 8 unique items to my online shopping cart, although it was possible to specify a quantity of more than one on each of the eight items (which I did). I'm not sure if they do this to limit fraud or to make the 24/24 guarantee more attainable, but I was a bit surprised to see this limit. To be fair though, this is unlikely to affect most online shoppers.

While shopping, if you have signed in and provided your zip code, the item listings display stock status of your desired item in the three nearest Circuit City Stores. This was very handy for me, as I wanted to pick up all the items in one location. So I ordered only items that were available locally. Originally I had placed a DVD in my cart, but saw later that this was only available for shipping (no local pick-up) Not sure why they do this, because the store had dozens of copies of the title in stock when I got there.

With my selections complete, I checked out, selecting local pick-up, and then dutifully waited for my confirmation e-mail with time stamp (it took about 5 minutes to receive the e-mail). Printed copy of the e-mail in hand, I dashed off to the subway so I'd reach the store in less than 24 minutes.

Order Placed: 7:33 PM.

Arriving at the store at approximately 7:51, I waited in a short line, presented my e-mail to the clerk and said "the clock is ticking!" I'm sure after a long hard day behind the counter, this may have ruffled some feathers, but, to her credit, she didn't let it show. In fact, Helen (who helped me) was quite pleasant throughout the whole experience, even laughing at my jokes which clearly were not that funny.

But I admit, I was a little worried when she disappeared after I presented my receipt. 7:57 - no Helen (time's up!); 8:00 - no Helen; 8:05 - still no Helen... wait! There she is!

Order Received: 8:06... well, mostly.

Helen returned with a smile, but the news was mixed. Apparently the online "real-time" stock display is not 100% accurate. In fact, out of my nine items ordered, only four were in stock. Helen dutifully issued me a credit for the missing items and pleasantly handed over a $24 gift card since they were unable to meet the 24-minute guarantee.

There was some confusion as to when the clock starts on the 24-minute countdown. One Circuit City associate believed it started once you "sign in" at the pick-up desk, but the Web site very clearly states that the clock starts at the time stamped on the confirmation e-mail.

All in all, it was a positive experience, but it would have been better had all of the items I ordered been in stock, and had I been able to add items like DVDs to the order. Incidentally I was actually able to find 2 of the 5 "missing" items in the store, a couple of feet away from where they should have been, so part of the stock problem was caused by human error. But other items were clearly not in stock, despite the Web site's assurance that they were.

It may be a good idea to call the store before placing the order online to verify that they have the items in stock, particularly if it's a popular or hard-to-find item. Or just head over and hope for the best - worst case you'll end up with a $24 Circuit City gift card, and that's a pretty nice consolation prize.