December 4, 2011

DePhoMo 5 and The Tale of Two LeapPads

We had decided a month or so ago that we were going to buy Connor a LeapPad for Christmas. He already has the Leapster Explorer and loves it, and Sophia is getting a Nintendo 3DS, so we thought we’d upgrade him to the LeapPad so they both got “video games” for Christmas.

For three weeks, I had “Buy a LeapPad” on my checklist of things to do.

After reading some less than favorable reviews about LeapPads that quit working after three or four weeks, I second guessed my decision and figured I’d wait and see if I could find something else to get him. I mean, there were plenty on the shelves in every store I went into, so what was the harm in waiting until the Christmas lists were done?

The thing is, the kid doesn’t want much of anything – or at least not anything in his age range. So we finally decided around Black Friday that we were going to go ahead and buy him the LeapPad.

And then we discovered they were sold out – EVERYWHERE.

So I have been on a mad search for the past few weeks, looking for a LeapPad everywhere I go. It’s been insanity. A few of my “friends” were looking for them too, so I was stalking Toys R Us, Target, WalMart, Amazon, in store and online, trying to help us all find them.

Then, on Saturday, the same one of my “friends” was able to find not one, but two LeapPad’s. She said she was offering it up to friends, at cost, before trying to sell it on eBay. I checked Target.com and saw that it was in stock at my local Target (this was at 7:30 am, mind you). I got up, threw on my clothes, rushed to the store, only to see the woman in front of me grab all three that were on the shelves. I was pissed.

But fear not, my friends, because I told my “friend” I’d buy it from her. Somebody else sent her a direct message about six hours later that they would buy it. She sold it to the other person because “She promised it to them before she saw my message.”

Ok, so I got a little offended here, not because she sold it to somebody else, but because this is one of the women that is constantly chastising me for my spending and asked me “what exactly I was teaching my kids about money if I bought them everything they wanted” so I found it a little odd that she didn’t see my message for six hours and sold it to somebody else. I think, maybe incorrectly but probably not, that she sold it to somebody else because she didn’t think I needed to spend the money on it, because you know, it’s her job to police my spending. These are the same people that told me I didn’t need to buy John a gift because he hadn’t asked for anything specific.

Anyway, on with the story.

So I was in a foul, foul mood all day on Saturday, deleted the facebook group that this woman was a part of from my facebook account, deleted some 30 friends because as John put it “They’re clearly not your friends anyway” and went about my day until some of them asked me to come back that night. In the meantime, I was, rather angrily, refreshing Amazon over and over again to see if it would magically come in stock.

At 7:20 PM, it did!

I quickly added it to my cart and checked out. John asked me why I didn’t buy two, in case somebody I knew needed one, so I tried to add another to my cart. I got to checkout and got the “We’re sorry, an item in your cart is no longer available from the seller requested.” message, and they tried to throw me into a $200 purchase, instead of retail.

That is how quickly they sold out.

But, I got one!

I was super excited! My search was over! I finally had the prize that I had been searching for! But I still wanted to keep looking, almost like an illness to see if they would magically appear everywhere now that I’d finally found one.

This morning, the Target down the street showed they were in stock. I had to be at work at 7:00 and the store doesn’t open until 8:00, so I figured they would sell out quickly. All day, it still showed in stock, and I thought “Surely this must be a mistake.”

I got off work at 2:30 (skipping lunch), stopped and renewed the tags for the car, and the Target website still said “Limited Availability,” so I headed to the store.

Imagine my surprise when magically, I found this at 3:30 in the afternoon:

So now, I have two; one in hand, and one on order.

Now I’m conflicted as to whether I cancel my amazon order, or if I just wait for it to be delivered and sell it to somebody else or plop it on eBay.

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