Since I’m looking to buy a television to replace my broken one, I decided to a lot of window shopping… the online kind of window shopping. I went to all the basic deal sites that I know – Slick Deals, Ben’s Bargains, and the fat wallet forums. I came up empty in those searches. So I moved to on to Amazon, Best Buy and finally to Fry’s. Fry’s was my last stop because I frankly forgot about them. They are a region electronics chain out here on the west coast and my head is often stuck in the east coast.

During my online trip to Fry’s, I realized something… they must really hate customers. I don’t quite understand it, because you’d think they’d want more customers. Alas, they kicked this potential one to the curb. How did they do it? The wouldn’t tell me the price of the television that I wanted to buy. It’s not unusual for stores to make you add a product to your cart to see the price. I know sites do it to avoid the robots on the Internet who scan websites to grab prices and consolidate them (like Google Shopping for example). Online stores dislike these robots as this practice puts them into price wars.

Fry’s takes things a step further and requires you to go a little further than putting a product in your cart. You have to give them all your shipping and billing information as well. I know I’m Lazy, but that’s a lot of work to find out the price of a product. Imagine going to a store and finding out that you have put all the products in your cart and bring it up to check out before they tell you prices of what you bought. That’s essentially what Fry’s is doing. Insane!

Fry’s I would have liked to be customer, but you simply make it too difficult. Send me a letter when you decide you want a customer.

Update: It seems like Amazon does this as well. I think I give Amazon a little more slack because I, like everyone else in the world, have an account with them. This means that I don’t have to fill out a complicated form. A regional store like Fry’s is on a different level.