The Brick = Shithouse

If I've had a worse retail experience in my entire life, I can't remember what it might be.

Okay, so first we bought an air conditioner: a floor model Danby that leaked all over our library. Hey, a dud: happens to the best of us. We called The Brick, and had a new one delivered reasonably quickly...just after the heat wave broke, of course, but oh, well.
So far, so good.
Except the new one didn't work overly well, either, and sure enough, within a month, tops, the red light indicating a full hopper began to flash, and continued flashing after we emptied the hopper, and while that light flashed our $626 air conditioner was reduced to acting as a simple fan.
So we called for service. And it took three and a half eternities, but we eventually managed to line up a service call for a time when one of us could be home. The repairman fiddled with the air conditioner, called his superiors, called Danby, and decided he needed to order a part.
By the time that part came, summer was of course long over. No matter: there's always next year, right? Besides, if this global warming thing gets much worse, it won't be long before we're using our a/c in January.
Repairman II: The Return. He dismantles the whole thing--wow, lots of parts in an air conditioner!--jimmies out a doohickey, inserts a new doohickey, and then reassembles the air conditioner. Of course, the damned thing refused to work, so it was carted out the door in ignominy.
That was October.
Comes the middle of February, and--my wife being the furnace she is--we got to thinking about our air conditioner, and where it might be, and why we hadn't heard anything about it since it left our happy home. A few investigative calls later, we discovered they never were able to find a part, and what's more, they couldn't replace the unit again. Not sure if that model had been taken off the market, or what. Wouldn't surprise me.
By that point, of couse, we'd lost all interest in a Danby floor model air conditioner. But still we had nothing (much) against The Brick, and welcomed the $626 credit we were told we had.
In the meantime, we had consolidated a bunch of debt and closed out our Brick card...no problem, we were told, and given a big long string of code that would entitle us to that $626 of store credit.

Today, we both woke up in a spending-money frame of mind. You know how that is, when you merest whims become wants and your wants transform themselves into urgent needs? Yeah, like that. And hey! $626 was just sitting there begging to be spent. So off we went, devising ways to eat up that credit (mmm, yummy!) Our cordless phone is slowly losing its ability to hold a charge. Our microwave is just starting to get dodgy. The kitchen television--one of the few things of any value at all I brought into the relationship--is really showing its age. And so on and so forth.
Of course, me being who I am, I'd scouted replacements for some of these things long ago. Our next microwave will be a Panasonic, because of that Inverter they have. And lo and behold, The Brick sells what we're looking for. A simple 13" TV is increasingly hard to find, but they've got one left, a Toshiba that looks good. There's a cordless phone. There's a DVD/VCR combo on sale--a Sanyo, no less--for the unheard of price of $48.00.
(In case you're wondering, on many things I really couldn't care less what brand I've got. But on electronics, I've found, you buy no-name, you're just going to turn around and buy another one within weeks. And so I have developed a simple rule: if I haven't heard of the brand, I won't even look at it.)
So, armed with anticipation, we entered the store and started picking out stuff.
Practically none of it was in stock.
Item after item we hunted down wasn't in stock, even though we could see it, touch it, hug it, squeeze it, love it and call it George. The saleslady was apologetic and did a good job of acting exasperated. "We've got a small warehouse", she said. Yeah, I thought, smaller than your store.
The microwave wouldn't be in until Wednesday. The TV, not until sometime in mid-April. Casting around for other things to buy, we happened upon a Dust Devil vacuum broom that might be good for the kitchen, the one place our vacuum won't go. Not in stock. We tried every conceivable Panasonic microwave. Not in stock. A wardrobe/pantry thingy that we really could use. Not in stock. Shades of Monty Python's cheese shop.
See, Wednesday wouldn't be all that bad, except Eva's going in for surgery that day--wisdom teeth--and will be out of commission for some time after that. Besides, it's the principle of the thing. You have something advertised in your flyer, you ought to make at least a token effort at having it available, right? I know that's what I do.
Still, worse things were yet to come. After finally finding three things that ate up at least a good chunk of our credit and which we could actually take out of the store with us, the saleslady went off to complete the paperwork. And came up somewhat flummoxed wondering why she couldn't access the $626 on our Brick card.
"Because there is no Brick card anymore", I told her. "We were told this code here would entitle us to $626 in store credit."
"Well, it's on your account, but I can't access the account. I need to call customer service and I need to have you with me when I do."
At that point I ran out to get Eva, the original cardholder. She saw me coming and started the car, thinking we were all set to drive around and pick up our stuff.
Not so fast.
She got back to our saleslady just as she was hanging up the phone, only to be told that there was nothing that could be done for us today, as their Head Office or whatever was closed.
Nice waste of a couple of hours, eh?
I've decided never to visit a Brick again. And I won't put any stock in anything they tell me until they start putting stock in their stores.