My Site-to-Store Delivery Experience

Although it's been a while since last Thanksgiving, I had the pleasure of ordering an Xbox online at that time and thought the whole learning exercise would be worth sharing with you.

I was on the lookout for an Xbox 360 and had been checking out all the Black Friday sales ads — online and in print — hoping that someone would have a great deal. As usual, I kept checking all the price-shopping Web sites along with a number of retailers’ Web sites to see who had the best possible deal at the best price. Lo and behold, it turned out to be Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart happened to have the best deal available on Thursday, Nov. 27. After many hours of research, I decided to jump in and make the purchase on Thanksgiving morning. Wal-Mart's site offered a bundled package for the Xbox — it wasn't unique to see a bundled package, but it was unique in that Wal-Mart allowed you to select the components in the bundled package: assorted consoles, controllers and games.

Everything went well with the purchase on the site, so then I decided to give Wal-Mart’s “Site-to-Store” option a shot. Order online, have your order shipped to the nearest store for pickup and pay no shipping charges. Sounded good to me, so I gave it a whirl.

I identified my local Wal-Mart store during the checkout process. Then immediately after placing the order, I received a confirmation for the four items I ordered in the bundle, each with an expected in-store date between Dec. 9 and Dec. 15. Comfortable, off I went to eat Thanksgiving turkey.

An e-mail arrived on Dec. 3 stating that three of the four items had arrived in the store. The e-mail contained the instructions for pickup: Simply print the e-mail containing the order barcode, find the Site-to-Store pickup area in Wal-Mart, show ID and that’s it. So off to Wal-Mart I went on Friday, Dec. 5. The instructions also noted that most of the Site-to-Store pickup areas are located in the rear of the store and, sure enough, that's exactly where it was.