Buying a Netbook - Part II - The Quest for a Battery

Okay... the hunt for a spare battery for my Netbook continues.

After doing some research (as detailed in Part I), I figured ordering from HP.com and shipping to the US, then having it re-directed up here would be a pain (although at $59.99 US, before shipping, it is the lowest starting cost). Shipping from HP.ca was not going to happen, at least, not for a while.

So now what?

I went over to Best Buy last night to "discuss" the matter. I tracked down my sales rep, B., a nice fellow who, when I found him, was busily fiddling with an iPhone. He immediately recognized that my return visit so soon after a major purchase was probably not a good sign. He was right... the new Netbook was great BUT... there's always a "but" and he knew it.

I explained the situation to B., and he was a little incredulous that I was unable to order the part from www.HPshopping.ca (where I had been re-directed to for Canadian sales); it seems that when situations like this come up, and Best Buy cannot order a particular part from their usual suppliers, a rep will get the store credit card and simply order the part on-line and have it shipped to the store (where, one assumes, vast quantities of mark-up - to cover the vast cost of shipping and handling and such from HP - would be applied). He was also a little chagrined that HP would have the audacity to send customers to places like Best Buy, Staples and Future Shop to buy such items when none of them had such parts to begin with!

B. then decided to take this to a higher level and brought me over to meet not one, but two, HP reps who just happened to be in the store that evening. J. and S. were both very nice and explained quite a bit about the whole situation. Basically, the highlights are as such: the stores can only carry so much inventory; HP likes to sell accessories (mice, keyboards and such) but they make more money on the batteries (and have less competition too) - however, for whatever reason, they don't seem to push the stores to carry them (it might cut into mice sales, which they don't sell a lot of...); and it seems that certain aspects of marketing and sales are lost on both companies.

After all, when you order a burger from a fast food joint, what is the key phrase that Philosophy grad students have been rattling off for years...? Right. "Would you like fries with that?" So, why, when a laptop or netbook is purchased, can't Best Buy and others simply say "Would you like a spare battery?" It's not that hard a concept. They push extended warranties, neoprene sleeves, carrying cases, wireless mice, and lots of other gadgets when you buy one... why the fuck not batteries? It's a fucking consumable, people! If you do buy the extended warranty, what is almost always NOT covered? Right - the battery! It wears out. You charge it a few hundred times and eventually, it won't charge any more. So what do you do? Throw the laptop out? No (although some might if it's been a few years), you buy another battery! Wow. What a startlingly original concept. I should patent or trademark such, 'cause sure as shit the morons at Best Buy and Future Shop Corporate haven't thought of it...

Anyway, the chat with the HP reps went well and they were as helpful as they could be. I gave them my business card and they said they'd check into the situation and find out what was going on. Around this time, M., a friend from the Mighty Circle of Geekdom (like just about everyone else these days), showed up, approached the HP reps and began his own tale of woe in regards to the HP Canada website and how he had to use Google to find a page within the site (he was actually there to buy a copy of Snow Leopard for his Mac, but Best Buy - and everywhere else in the city it seems - was sold out... jeez, Best Buy not having a product that someone wants to buy - wow, that's a new one...). And so the miscellaneous chatting went on for some time...

One of the suggestions that came out of this discussion (and from others, such as C., who also made an appearance) was to check other places and websites for batteries. I found out, for example, that Costco had the exact same model for $379 (plus a $50 instant rebate bringing the total down to $329) and theirs were equipped with the mythic 6-cell extended life battery I'd been looking for! However, I would have had to renew my membership for $50 and I'm not going to do that - I don't need to start buying 5-gallon drums of pickles and 100-box crates of toothpaste again.

I did some more checking around and found that CDW did indeed have the much sought after battery... for $149! Cripes! That is literally half the cost of the fucking netbook! Fuck that. I might as well order from the US site and go through the routing hassle. There were a few other sites that had the battery listed, but they either wanted astronomical amounts, had nasty shipping costs or restrictions, or were a little bit iffy looking.

**SIGH** It's just a fucking battery, people...

So, now I am going to sit back and wait a day or two and see if the HP reps get back to me. I might order from the HP.com site and send it to friends in the US and get them to send it here... I just don't know yet.

One thing's for sure: next time I get something like this, I'm going to make the sale conditional on getting a spare battery for whatever I buy. No battery, no sale. And I encourage anyone who reads this to pass that idea along. Enough people do so and that'll send a message to the dumb fucks at head office.

Fucking battery tyrants.

Here Endeth the Rant.