Circuit City has been heavily publicizing its policy of awarding a $24 gift certificate whenever an order placed online for in-store pickup is not ready within 24 minutes of the timestamp on the order-confirmation email.
Unfortunately, they refused to honor this guarantee when my order was not ready on time.
I placed an order online for a $50 set of headphones and selected in-store pickup from a location where the item was shown to be in-stock. Moments later, at 12:19 P.M., I received the confirmation email saying my order was "now available for pickup" and that my "item has been specifically reserved" and "is available at your selected store."
I left for the store a half-hour after I received the confirmation email. When I arrived at the store, I was told that the item was out of stock (despite the website and the confirmation email both saying specifically that the item was in-stock and waiting for me). When I asked for my $24 gift certificate as per the "24/24" guarantee, I was told by the clerk and her manager that the guarantee does not apply to out-of-stock items. I was also told that someone from the store had left a message for me on my answering machine telling me the item was unavailable at 12:56 P.M. — 37 minutes after the confirmation email was sent, 13 minutes beyond the 24-minute pickup window, and several minutes after I had already left for the store.
There is no mention of out-of-stock items being exempt from the guarantee in any of the fine print for the offer. There is also no mention of phone calls from the store cancelling the guarantee — and certainly not phone calls that come after the 24-minute deadline and after the customer is already on her way to the store.
In the past, Circuit City has weaseled out of it Price Protection guarantee by coming up with new rules. Now they're doing it with their "24/24" guarantee too.
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