When I was in Circuit City buying a new router today I walked past the Verizon Wireless kiosk which happens to be next to the cashiers at the front of the store.  I wanted a new case for my PDA so I grabbed it off a display tree and went to the register.  The clerk looked at my two items and said that he could handle the router purchase for me, but only the Verizon folks could sell me the PDA case. 

I looked over at the Verizon folks and saw one of them talking on the phone while he tried to assist a lady with her phone and the other talking on the phone while he processed the phone order he was working on.  Standing in something that could be loosely defined as a line, since there wasn’t really a "line starts here" place by the kiosk, were three people looking pretty pissed off as they waited for service.  Of course I bought my router and put the case back on the display tree.

The whole thing made no sense to me.  Why wouldn’t Verizon work out a deal with Circuit City to allow the Circuit City employees to process the purchase of peripherals?  I understand not letting them process the phones (i.e. contracts) but why not everything else (ear pieces, cases, pre-paid phones, etc.)?  They have to know that there will be times when their employees are busy helping customers get new phones, which is a long sales and paperwork process, and consequently there will be a long wait for someone who wants to make a simple peripheral purchase.  Verizon might get a lower margin on the peripheral sale if Circuit City processes it, but they could build that assumption into their contract negotiation with the store.  20% of something is still better than 100% of nothing.

And why would Circuit City create a situation that is potentially irksome to customers?   Believe me, when the clerk told me I could only buy the case from the Verizon guys my first inclination was to look at the clerk and say "Are you serious", and that’s what I did.  That gave him the opportunity to show me his surly "the holidays suck" side, and that’s what he did.  Consequently I’m ticked off at Circuit City, not Verizon.

The irony is that it’s probably the Verizon employees who really made the situation worse.  I took one look at them chatting on the phone with their girlfriends while working with customers and knew it was a minimum 45 minute wait to get service. I’m not waiting that long for a $20 case.  Unfortunately that is exactly the kind of service I’ve come to expect from Verizon so I wasn’t surprised, while on the other hand I expect Circuit City to be able to take my money for a simple purchase (I long ago gave up on looking to them for expert advice on anything they sell) so when they couldn’t meet my already minimal expectations I was really put out of sorts.

By the way, I was there at mid-day on a weekday.  Yes it’s the holiday season, but it really wasn’t very crowded at all.  Imagine what it will be like at 5:30 today and how much business Verizon could potentially lose and how many customers might show up at the cashier to be told they can’t be helped?