Target: Who Knows What We've Got?

Just a few days ago I praised Target.com's super fast shipping on a headboard. It was, indeed, a great experience... that I need to temper with another experience I had with Target that was pretty lousy.

To go with said headboard we wanted some night stands. We chose a particular model, listed plain as day on Target's website. The site offers a handy dandy "find at a store near you" feature. So I punched in my ZIP code and soon I was told that my local store had just one, and no other store within 20 miles had it. Harrumph.

I had to call our local Target with a question regarding a return so I took the opportunity to ask them if they had any of the night stands in stock; I just wanted to be sure. So I gave the helpful fellow on the phone the catalog number of the item, listed on the website. After a few minutes he came back and said nope, we're all out. Good enough.

You can see where this is going, right?

Off I went to that particular Target to return the other, non-related item. Since I was there I figured, eh, I might as well check if they have it. I went to the furniture aisle to find... two of them!

That was perfect. Two night stands? Wrap 'em up!

The thing that was most bothersome about this was that I had three different inventory levels given to me: one from the site (which was wrong), one from the person at the store (which was wrong), and the truth (which was right - and truth-y.) I understand that Target is a giant corporation with over 2.4 million locations and 93 billion items in stock but this seems really silly to me. Don't they know how many items they've got? I mean, that's a basic part of retail isn't it?

In any case I'm glad that I got my night stands but am way disappointed that to truly find out how many were in stock, I had to actually visit the store. Blah.