Showrooming online

I'm sure you've all heard of "showrooming", where people walk into a physical store, talk to an expert, try something on, or just hold it in their hands to see what they like, then turn around and order it from an online store for less. I think I may have just taken this phenomenon to the next level. I used an online store to figure out what I needed, then turned around and ordered it from another online store for WAY less.

I was originally online looking for parts for a couple of things. I needed two new top rack adjusters for my dishwasher, so I Googled my model number and searspartsdirect.com came up. They made it super easy to find the part I specifically needed for my model, so I added them to my cart and grabbed a new fridge water filter for good measure. I didn't want to wait (I have a lot of kids, so a dishwasher being down is not good) so I tried to "chat" someone there to see if it was available for pickup locally. 

Naturally that didn't work on my iPad, so I had to log on to a PC (strike 1). Then, while trying to connect back to my shopping cart, I had to switch to compatibility mode in Internet Explorer to log back in to my account -- Chrome wasn't having the login process (strike 2). The customer service rep couldn't see my cart (strike 3) so at the same time I was giving him my parts numbers (a full 30 minutes after I had identified the parts I needed), I was plugging them into Amazon. The parts weren't available locally, but I could do ground shipping for free since my total was over $100 ($107.32 to be exact), but it was already too late. On Amazon, which I hadn't even thought to go to originally, my total was $61.28 for the exact same parts, with free 2-day shipping as part of my Prime membership. 

So thanks, Sears, for being so technically incompetent that I was able to save $45. This is exactly why the old economy will never win.