unfulfilled by order fulfillment

Thinking I was getting a good deal, I ordered TurboTax from Staples.com for $49. At the time, I didn’t realize that I could have walked into the store and gotten the same price. But, what I did know was that Staples always has hundreds of copies of TurboTax on the shelves – so, I figured, I must as well select the “Pick up from store” option and save on the shipping.

My first surprise was that the site informed me (after I paid, of course) that my order will not be ready for two days. Well, OK, I’m not in a desperate rush to pay my taxes, but that’s a bit inconvenient. There was another surprise on the order slip – it said “UPS shipping, free”. UPS? Why would you need to ship an item to a store that already has it?

When I finally showed up to the store, my order was there - still packaged in the UPS envelope. Why, I ask, why? Right next to the checkout lane, there’s a huge display with dozens of TurboTax boxes – couldn’t I have one of those?

Sure, in 1999, online shopping may have been a novelty. But today, can’t Staples.com and Staples-down-the-street realize that they’re the same company? And that I, as a customer, don’t really care which one I shop at, as long as I get a good price? And that paying an external shipping company is probably not the best use of their budget?