Let’s get back to our 24 Minute Holiday Shopping Saga. It was time to put Circuit City to the test. Armed with my thin and light laptop and my Cingular UMTS 3G data card I drove to the Lynwood Circuit City and found a nice place to park and start shopping...online.

I had my holiday gift list with me and started browsing the Circuit City website, in their parking lot while in my car...lol. I figured this would be easy, lots of DVD’s and CD’s for friends and family. After finding several of the DVD’s on my list I started to notice that all of them were available for shipping only and not for store pickup...WFT over? This was the same thing with the CD’s; kind of lame if you ask me. All I can figure is that their online store for movies and CD’s is a re-brand of Amazon or some other distributor and not tied to the stores themselves.

It was time to move on to the more expensive gifts on the list. Fist the iPod Nano that I have been getting begged to buy. There it was in all its stunning green glory on the webpage. With the zip code in place the Lynwood store showed it was in stock so I added it to cart. What was interesting was that it also showed nearby stores, so in theory I could shop at all the stores at the same time then drive to the other stores for pick up. Useful if some stores were out of stock.

I have wanted the Harmony remote for the XBOX 360 for some time now. We reviewed the Harmony 688 remote a year ago and really liked it. Lynwood showed it was in stock so I added it to the cart and proceeded to the check out. After making my payment with the gift card I printed the receipt to an image and wrote the order number down. I noted the time the order was placed and proceeded into the store for a little recon. Also I wanted to get those DVD’s I was denied.

I browsed browed around the DVD’s and kept an eye on the web order pick up area. I watched a sales person go to the XBOX area with an invoice in hand looking around at the accessories, frowned then headed off to the home theater section of the store. This had to be my order. They still had about 10 minutes before I would go up to the counter to claim my order.

Stay Tuned for Part 3 of the 24 Minute Holiday Shopping Saga.