Bye Bye Barney

I'm taking a little blog break from critiquing books for a minor announcement. I'm abandoning my dogged loyalty to Barnes and Noble. It turns out that I don't have the patience to wait months for my library to arbitrarily procure the new releases of my favorite authors. Because of this glaring character flaw of mine (which also expresses itself by making me flounce out of Dunkin Donuts when the line is too long) I have bought my books religiously on the release date from Barnes and Nobles, mostly because of their lovely member discount, cushy chairs, and Hot Cinnamon Sunset Tea.

The tragedy of the situation is that I drop more money in books then the average customer. Stores should be fighting for my future business instead of having a bitterly competitive contest to see, who can drive me to shop exclusively at Amazon.com first. At the age of 23, my personal library consists of (at last count) 362 books - over 250 of which are Romance Novels purchased in the last 3 years. Can you imagine what my future business will be if I keep up his pace for the next 50+ years? The current issues I'm having with B & N should not be happening.

For the past couple of months I have been experiencing recurring problems starting with substandard customer service. Where I was repeatedly told that books weren't in stock, when they were just misshelved or in the back room. I was walked away from by a customer service agent who didn't want to answer my questions. Barristas that consistently give me the wrong beverage. And finally being charged over 30$ for a paper back novel selling for 6.99$ and having the clerk refuse to admit a mistake was made.

I would deal with these minor annoyances if for the past couple months another less acceptable problem hadn't been occurring. They haven't been carrying up-to-date stock. The Reno Barnes and Noble doesn't order new releases of books until almost a week has past since they were published. This little problem has had me inching closer and closer to the edge of leaving and taking my business elsewhere. I would have lasted until at least Christmas if Barnes and Noble hadn't given me a helpful shove off the cliff last week.

On the same day, three of my favorite authors (ALL on the new york times best selling list) released books. As I search Barnes and Noble for the 3 novels, I discovered something almost panic inducing. B& N didn't have any of them in stock. As I have described before, Since I'm such a prolific reader and can easily (and later did) devour all 3 books in one evening, denying this avaricious bookivore her next meal/installment is asking for a temper tantrum of Jurassic proportions. Especially since I had called ahead to verify that these 3 romantic delicacies were in stock.

I was willing to put up with it. But when they handed me such an appalling example of bad customer service, and didn't have even 1 out of 3 books in the store on the release date. I couldn't with a clear conscience continue to give them my business.

So I took a stroll-ACROSS THE STREET- where their major competator Borders Books just happened to be located and found that, despite being disorganized, Borders has a Romance section almost 2X's as big as B & N offers and multiple copies of the newly released books that I had been searching for. The service desk clerks were extremely helpful and a barrista in the coffee shop made me the most mind-blowing hot chocolate ever.

I sincerely hope this epidemic of bad service that is running unchecked through the employee ranks of Reno's Barnes and Nobles doesn't infect their others stores. Eventually I would like to return to their plush seats, warming tea, and convenient member discount. But for now I will do my best to enjoy the wooden chairs, lip-smacking caramel apple cider, perky barristas, unparalleled customer service, and product availability that I have discovered at Borders Bookstore.