In Praise of MicroAge

OK, so everyone with a blog who doesn't actually have an interesting life always ends up blogging about blogging and blogs and what they might be good for. No one has figured it out yet, except for one thing: Cranking about local businesses.

Well, I'm going to swing the karma the other way and say that I really really like MicroAge here in Charlottetown.

When I decided to finally bite the bullet and get a new laptop battery I went looking around various websites trying to find the part that I needed. It was hit or miss, by any standard. Whether a site would have it listed, whether it would be in stock, what the final price would be, and how much shipping would cost were all very sketchy.

So, instead of trusting my credit card to some site I'd never heard of before, I just went down the block to MicroAge, showed them my battery, and they just went and ordered the equivalent part for me. The best part was that they were actually able to get it for $10 cheaper than the best retail price I could find by ordering it through the service department. As a bonus, the thing arrived in two days, and the shipping cost to me was $0.00.

Pretty much the same scenario repeated again just this week after my power adapter melted and nearly set my room on fire. I couldn't even find its part number listed because, surprisingly, it had been discontinued (and now we know why).

But it's all good. I'm out one arm and one leg, but it's not their fault, they actually sympathized with the ridiculous cost of laptop parts, but they did their thing and beat the heck out of Internet shopping in every way possible.