Can’t buy it online. Can’t buy it in the store. Fail.

I was scouring the Interwebs today to see where in Canada I could buy a GorillaPod SLR at a price that wasn’t highway robbery. I stumbled upon the website of a well-known Canadian retailer, which had this exact model in their online store at a great price.

The website very specifically said, “This product is not available for online sale” and to “please visit (a store) near you.” That’s annoying at the best of times. What’s the point of having an online store if it doesn’t sell all of the products listed? (And a quick browse through the online store of this particular retailer indicates that there are lots of products for sale that aren’t actually being sold on the website.)

Undaunted, I drove down to the local outlet of the store, and they didn’t have the GorillaPod SLR. They had two other models (one lower end and one higher end) for sale but not the SLR model. I asked an associate about it, and he said that they don’t stock the SLR model at all.

So, to recap, they advertise a product online that they don’t sell online, tell you to visit the store, and it’s not sold in the store, either.

Epic fail.

I decided in the end that since I’m heading to the U.S. later this year for a few days that I’ll just buy my GorillaPod there.