Strobist, Best Buy, & Anchorage, Alaska

Every once in awhile something cool can happen…I was surfing Strobist yesterday morning and was reading David Hobby’s latest blog post. In it he mentioned how Best Buy was blowing out the Nikon SB-800 Speedlights for $150.00 ish a piece – “better get them now” was his advice.

About 3 hours later, my buddy who recently bought a Nikon D-300, asked me out of the blue about about the SB-800 and if I could find a deal for him. Interesting. Coincidence? Well, I told him about the Best Buy thing and he promptly called his local store. Of course, they are sold out and seemingly almost every Best Buy across the country.

I thought I would try as well and found out that pretty much from Wisconsin to Florida, California to Maine, the story was the same: “It was a ‘deleted’ item and don’t have any. Would you be interested in the SB-600?”.

I politely said “no thanks” and would try another store. Then the thought hit hit me…is there a Best Buy in Anchorage, Alaska?

Yup, I quickly found it in Google and called the store. I had a hunch they were not selling too many Speedlights up there…the very nice girl on the other end of the phone was happy to walk over to the camera department and gave me a visual confirmation that they had 1 and it was a “display” model. The price was $250.00.

“Great” I said…can you ship it to Chicago? She didn’t know but would have to get back to us. About an hour later, she called back. Yes she could ship it. She was new at Best Buy and just wanted to make sure it could be done. We then asked if they could match the price of our local store who was selling it for $159.95. She didn’t know but would get back to us.

It was clear that she was more than happy to help. That’s an attitude you just don’t get from the average Best Buy dweeb. But this young lady could work for me any day.

6 minutes later she called back and said they could ship it UPS ground for $178.00 out the door.

Done.

Thanks to David at Strobist for tipping us off about the great deal on the SB-800 and probably single handily clearing out Nikon’s entire stock off of Best Buy’s shelves! Thanks to the sweet young lady at the Anchorage Best Buy for making this happen.

Tags: alaska, anchorage, best buy, nikon sb-800, Rob Oresteen, Strobist