Purchasing a Wii

Nothing, I mean nothing, stands in my Mother’s way, especially when a special gift for a grandchild is involved.

At such times she is a woman on a mission.

The mission: purchasing a Nintendo Wii.

And as you might have read, the availability of Nintendo Wii is scarce.

First of all she had a page of retailers, their phone numbers and their web sites. For at least a week she called each of the stores and asked when they expected their Wii shipment. Then she planned the shopping excursions. Keep in mind, this is a woman with a chronic health problem which prevents her from walking long distances, being around crowds and enduring the hassles of holiday shopping. Her first tactic: hit the 5:00 am sale at K-Mart on Thanksgiving Day. Yes, Thanksgiving Day.

Well, no luck on Thanksgiving Day. K-Mart handed out 15 vouchers (to purchase a Wii) to the first 15 people in line. Everyone else left the store without a voucher (or a Wii).

The next tactic my Mother tried was arriving at the Target or the Wal-Mart or the EBGames on shipment day. Her thought was that if she could time the shopping visit to right after the UPS driver leaves, she’d have a better chance of purchasing right off the shelf.

Sounds good, but she learned some stores have a policy that customers must wait until the next business day. My assumption is that each store needs to process the shipment and log in to their inventory before some mission-crazed customer grabs the item?

Well, it worked. Mom was able to buy the first Wii at Target on a Sunday morning at 7:00 am. The shipment arrived on Saturday evening. The Wiis were on the shelf at 7:00 am when the doors opened. And, yes, Mom grabbed one of the 3 Wiis.

Mission accomplished?

Well, no, not exactly. Now it was a game. The thrill of the hunt.

Now she embarked on a mission to get a second Wii (and the third and send a tip for the fourth).

She had looked on eBay, Craigslist, and thought she had hit the jackpot while on the Wal-Mart web site. It was too easy.

She found the Wiis online, added two Wiis to her shopping cart and went straight to online checkout. "Yes," (2) Wiis in her cart, shipping was added; "yes," confirm purchase. What? Oh, no? She noticed that shipping was $1.98 for two Wiis? This can’t be right. THEN she noticed that in the fine print on the bottom right-hand corner of the page that she had ordered (2) GIFT CARDS for Wiis (specific to Wii) but no Wii. What a deception! And there’s no way to cancel the order now.

Again, don’t mess with my Mother.

She was on the phone to Wal-Mart corporate - who knows how long and how many voice mails or prompts she had to endure. Anyway, she finally explained the situation and was promised that if she brought the cards to a Wal-Mart store, she could redeem them for (2) Wiis.

The trouble is, there are no Wiis in the store.

This story goes on and on, but it has a happy ending. My mother ended up saving the world, or perhaps providing relief to at least 3 sets of parents (knowing that their children would have that special gift on Christmas) and even a Wii for Grandmother’s house.

One of the happy parents is our own Dean Wagner, seen here in victory mode.

Yes, Mom called our office with a tip to run to the Wal-Mart on Cone Boulevard where there were (3) Wiis available. Yep, Dean flew out of our office, drove like a maniac to Wal-Mart and grabbed one of the three. And believe it or not, Mom arrived a bit later where by now she was so familiar with the store clerk that said clerk held one (the fourth) Wii for Mom, the one that will stay at Grandmother’s house.

The things we'll do when we set our minds to it.