Gah! Part 2

I'll still Wii-less, and it's driving me crazy. I've never had such a hard time buying something that I wanted...

Rumours were circulating all week that many retailers were hanging onto the Nintendo Wii systems they had received after launch day to put them all out this morning ("Black Friday" in the US). Best Buy soon confirmed this rumour as fact in their case.

Thinking that Walmart would follow suit, I got up early this morning and made it to Walmart a half hour before their 7:00AM opening. The fact that nobody else was around clued me in early to the fact that I was likely out of luck. I sat in my car and played some DS until 7, and then confirmed my fears inside the store. They had nothing. A greeter informed me that they have been putting the Wiis on the shelves as they were received, and "they have been selling like hot cakes," so the chance of getting a Wii from Walmart is nearly nil.

I had spoken to a Zellers clerk on Thursday, so I knew they didn't have anything today, so my only hope was Best Buy. Knowing that they planned to put 100+ Wiis for sale online at 9AM, I went to work and awaited my chance.

And this is where IT fucked me. Because I had to use Internet Explorer. And it crashed.

BestBuy.ca had 124 Wiis this morning, and there was available stock for 4 minutes, but I missed out due to Internet Explorer. Having practiced speed purchasing on Best Buy's site every hour on launch day (see Gah! Part 1), I know that even with extreme server load, I was taking about a minute and a half to get to the end of the checkout process with Firefox. With only 20 Wiis available each hour, this was about 30 seconds too long to get one on launch day. But it would have been plenty fast with the 124 Wiis today. But on the second page of the checkout, Internet Explorer decided to choke entirely. By the time I got back onto the site, the inventory was at 0.

At 10AM, I decided to visit Best Buy's retail location and see if anything remained of the 20+ promised Wiis. I had seen a few people lining up at the store when I was at Walmart, so I didn't feel I had any hope of getting a system, but I was curious. It was quickly apparent when I arrived that Best Buy had already given out tickets to those in line. All 27 Wiis (and 10 PS3s) were sold. But apparently the last few Wiis had sold only 30 minutes earlier, so it wasn't as hopeless as I had originally thought. There were a lot of late comers like myself, and we were all told the same thing: try again next Friday for round 3...

Ebay is tempting me, especially now that the prices are getting more reasonable... if $400 is reasonable for a $280 console. But I'll try to resist. I haven't given up on getting one from Walmart or Zellers either. I'll probably pop in randomly at both stores throughout the next week--and hope to get lucky.

If I continue to come up empty, I have an appointment with Best Buy on next Friday morning.