Border's Books & Music, Part Deaux

As promised, an update on what I finally bought for reading material and listening material with my Christmas gift card from Border's.

As everyone is no doubt aware of, I am somewhat incapable of doing things the normal way, and that includes shopping. Saturday, after gathering up the necessary implements of destruction (in store coupon for 50% off of one book, gift card) and asking Joanne to pick two numbers between one and six (she chose 3 & 6), I took off for my local Border's store to purchase my chosen book.

When I got there, I did a brief reconnaissance mission, and after not finding my initial choice or my backup choice, I went to their handy-dandy wayback machine....ummm...internal website to look up my first choice. My first choice, "Effigy" by Alissa York (as suggested by Sparkling Red), was unfortunately only available as an e-book. Since I do not own a Nook/Kindle/Sony E-Reader, that choice quickly fell by the wayside.

Moving on to choice number two was Mark Twain's Autobiography (as suggested by David Cranmer). Unfortunately, that was sold out and there was a backorder wait of about 4-8 weeks.

Betcha thought I was stuck for something else to buy, right? Wrong. My memory that morning wasn't entirely shot, so I looked up what became choice #3, "The Lady Matador's Hotel" by Cristina Garcia (as suggested by Riot Kitty). After a brief two minute search, I found the hardcover copy, which was priced at $24. Considering that I wanted to buy two items with my card, and even though I had a coupon that would've dropped that price in half, I went searching for choice #4, "Blue Highways" by William Least-Heat Moon (as suggested by Lynn), which after ten minutes of searching, I found. The cover price of this edition was $15.99, and since the coupon brought the price down to $7.99, it became the reading material of choice.

Now, doing the brick-and-mortar thing was ridiculously easy, compared to Sunday morning's adventure at Borders online store. After asking Jenelle (my lovely and talented daughter) to pick two numbers between one and eight (she chose 3 & 6), I went online to buy my listening material of choice.

Choice #1 was a band called "A Pale Horse Calle Death" (as suggested by Charles Gramlich), but after a nano-second search that brought up nothing, we moved on to choice #2. Choice #2 was "The Family Jewels" by Marina and the Diamonds (as suggested by Sparkling Red). Apparently this is a rather buzzworthy debut c.d. as this was sold out as well, but being that I'm more picky about waiting for a book than I am for a c.d., I decided to buy the c.d.

Now here's where things immediately went downhill. I figure I might as well set up an account so in case I want to order future things when I actually got money, I could do so. A major problem cropped up the minute I try to checkout. Apparently back when I signed up for the card (prior to 2004), I was living someplace else at the time, so after I put in both a billing address and a shipping address (neither were the same), the little "continue" button vanished, and I had no way of finishing my check out. Even after I refreshed about five times and kept the billing and shipping address the same (among other things), the button simply would not come back.

At this point, I was getting really ticked about the entire process and I was ready to say "F** this Sh**" and move on to something else, when a blinding case of the obvious struck: option #2 was to have the c.d. ship to a nearby store.

Ah la peanut butter sammiches! I clicked on that link, and lo and behold, I was able to purchase the c.d. with about 40 cents to spare on the gift card. Strangest thing happened when I finished though, in that a survey popped up asking about how my shopping experience went.

No, I didn't fill out the survey because I certainly would've given them a profanity laced tirade on how non-user friendly their website is.

In any event, this is what I recommend that you do should you decide to shop at Border's online store.

Don't.

Shop elsewhere. Do Amazon. Do Barnes & Noble. Do CD Baby. Do any other reputable online music or online book website. But don't do Borders online. Too much aggravation for too little reward.

So....the end result of my excursion on Saturday and Sunday was a brand new book called "Blue Highways" by William Least-Heat Moon (which will be stored at work), and a brand new c.d. called "The Family Jewels" by Marina and the Diamonds (of which I hope it lives up to the hype from AMG), which won't be stored at work, but will be played at work, once I finally acquire it.