I finally broke down and decided to get surround sound for our family room television; the speakers that came with our cheapo screen are terrible and with my poor hearing I’m always saying, “eh? Whatdidshesay?”  Which, understandably, drives my wife nuts.  But she doesn’t want eight ugly speakers strewn around the room and neither of us wants to spend too much money on another audio system, so I did some research and bought separate pieces rather than a HTIB (home theater in a box).  I ended up choosing a cheapo Onkyo receiver and three small Boston Acoustics speakers: right/center/left.  I figure I can get the subwoofer later.   Onkyo and Boston Acoustics are both good value brands and this is a decent setup given our constraints.

The receiver came the other day; setting it up was wholly daunting.  The back of the thing looks like engine room of the Millennium Falcon.  But today, the speakers arrived, just in time for track & field at the Olympics this weekend.  And beer!  Woohoo!

I was a bit surprised when the UPS driver told me there were two 70 lbs boxes plus a small box for the center speaker; I was going to try to hang the right and left speakers on the wall and they were advertised as bookshelf size.  But it turns out that Boston Acoustics shipped me two surround sound systems (each with five speakers plus a subwoofer) instead of two speakers. I checked my credit card and they had billed me correctly, but they had shipped the wrong items, a $1,500 mistake.

So, being the nice Catholic boy that I am, I dutifully called up Boston Acoustics and said that they’d made a mistake and that they should come and get their equipment.  I told them, though, that I wanted to open up one of the big surround sound system boxes and pull out the L/R speakers that I had, actually, ordered. And the very nice CSR, who I think understood the situation, said that I couldn’t do that because it would reverse the polarity of the dilithium crystals or something.  Sigh.  She wanted my username and password to login to my account and re-order the speakers because the return would have to be handled as a refund and on and on.  You know how it goes.  I got stuck in a script.

So instead of being evil and making money on this deal — keeping a whole surround sound system for myself and selling the extra one on eBay — I get a hassle.  I’ve got the damn boxes sitting unopened in my entryway, taunting me.  And, worst of all, I’m going to say, “eh? whatdidhesay?” through another round of Olympics swimming.