Can you hear me now?

I went to the Best Buy in Bridgewater, NJ near my parent's house because they had a free after rebate 5.8ghz phone advertised two days only. Got there about 10 minutes early. I was in Officemax earlier because they had a $9 after rebate HP CD-RW drive I wanted - especially since I had $4.70 in MaxPerks gift cards that I had to use before they expire. I can't use them online, and the nearest one to me in Baltimore is in York, PA.

At the Best Buy entrance, I saw a guy I had seen in Officemax and BS'ed for a while about computers. We both went in, headed to the phones, and saw that there were none on the shelf. He and a woman grabbed other phones, hoping for a substitute, and I followed suit. Another guy who had been waiting grabbed the display model.

We talked to a couple of guys who said it was there first day there, that they were hired for inventory, and had no idea what was going on. They got another guy, who fetched Dave, a guy who would look more at home as a club bouncer than at Best Buy. He kept telling us that there were 18 phones in the district warehouse and all he could give us was rainchecks - to which we pointed out that 1)the odds of a phone ever getting to the store were pretty slim, since there were only 18 for the whole region 2)there were none on the shelf - we were the first people there. It's one thing to run out, it's another to never have any in the first place 3)even with the raincheck, we would still have to send in the rebate, which would probably be expired by the time we got the phone.

Meanwhile, they were trying to get the guy who had grabbed the display model to give it up with no luck. He kept saying that he would take the display model, and burly Dave and the sales manager kept telling him they couldn't sell it to him because their policy was not to sell the diplay unless it was the last one - and the customer kept saying that if that was not the last one, then where are they, and if it was the last one then they could sell it to him.

Finally, the sales manger pointed to the three of us who were there at the begining and told us that they would give us the phones we had grabbed for free. This was after about 25 minutes of going around and around. So I ended up walking out the door with a GE 5.8GHZ phone for free.

On my way out, the guy with the display model asked me what they had done for me. They had apparently given him one of the phonemates, in box. I don't know if they found it in the back or what. We did notice two sitting at the customer service desk, which they said were for people who had ordered from bestbuy.com - they might have taken one of them.

It was an interesting experience. When I can dig up a scanner that works (I don't think my parents have one, and the three I have are in Baltimore) I'll post a scan.