Thursday, February 1, 2007
Where Are All the Accessories?
Posted by Damion Chaplin in "Zune Accessories" @ 11:00 AM
"I do most of my music-listening in the car, so I was specifically interested in a car adaptor. I went back to the Zune website and quickly found what I was looking for: a Zune car pack with an FM transmitter. Price: $80. Basically you tune your car radio to an unused channel, then tune the FM transmitter that's plugged into your Zune to the same frequency, and vua...vou...vwall...ta-daa, you're in business. In theory. I had questions about how well the thing worked, so I didn't order it right away. I also had a couple of Best Buy gift cards, so I ventured into their local store to check it out. After all, Best Buy had the Zune accessories on their website. Why wouldn't they have them in their stores? Well, they didn't. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. Not a good way to kill the iPod. I don't know why Best Buy wouldn't stock Zune accessories and their associates didn't seem to know either. Shocker. They simply didn't have them and were surprised when I told them their website did."
I experienced this myself the other day. I bought my Zune at a local B&M computer chain store and they carry almost no accessories for the Zune. Three Belkin carrying/protective cases is all you can expect to find. The office supply store down the street from my house however has all the Zune accessories. I find it odd that a computer store would have nil in the way of accessories, but the office supply store (that doesn't even sell Zunes in the store) would. This could mean either the computer store's buyer is an idiot or no one thinks to go to an office supply store for Zune accessories (which is why they had them). Well, I went onto that computer store's website and looked up the Zune accessories. They list every single one (even the ones not yet available for order, like the MS FM transmitter), but all as 'delivery only'. Only the afore mentioned Belkin cases were available 'for pickup'. Looks like they're not going to be bothered wasting merchandising space on an 'unsure' thing. So in the meantime, I buy my accessories from the office supply place.
I experienced this myself the other day. I bought my Zune at a local B&M computer chain store and they carry almost no accessories for the Zune. Three Belkin carrying/protective cases is all you can expect to find. The office supply store down the street from my house however has all the Zune accessories. I find it odd that a computer store would have nil in the way of accessories, but the office supply store (that doesn't even sell Zunes in the store) would. This could mean either the computer store's buyer is an idiot or no one thinks to go to an office supply store for Zune accessories (which is why they had them). Well, I went onto that computer store's website and looked up the Zune accessories. They list every single one (even the ones not yet available for order, like the MS FM transmitter), but all as 'delivery only'. Only the afore mentioned Belkin cases were available 'for pickup'. Looks like they're not going to be bothered wasting merchandising space on an 'unsure' thing. So in the meantime, I buy my accessories from the office supply place.
