crib shopping made difficult

first I had a nightmare getting my crib. I spent a lot of time poring over the different choices for something that both ryan and I would like and researching various woods. after finding a bunch of options, I discovered that ryan actually liked a different look than I had originally been given the idea of, so I went back and spent more time finding possibilites.
we settled on one, I placed the order online at simply baby furniture and...
I got a call 2 hours later saying that it was discontinued unfortunately. as we didn't have one specific backup, they offered me 5% off a future order and refunded me. well, we picked from the previously rejected cribs, and now the same site was offering guaranteed christmas delivery if ordered by december 14. GREAT! I called them to be sure that this crib was in stock, and they had a stock sheet from only the day before—plenty of them. FANTASTIC! so, I placed my order on december 13, which said it would ship in 1-3 business days. when I didn't get a tracking number on day 4, I called them, and...
it had been discontinued, and between when checking stock and my order, they had sold out of it. wonderful. I complained loud and long about them ruining my christmas (they didn't know I'm jewish!) and that I deserved them to deliver a crib by christmas; otherwise, what the heck is guaranteed??? they laughed me off the phone. I dislike them.

not offered through this site, I discovered the same crib by the parent company, for $200 more. as nuts as it sounds, I actually considered it.

ryan and I found another crib we liked, though, and this one was available through buy buy baby, and they list cribs as "in store only" purchases. I like the idea of being able to walk into a store and walk out with your item the same day (and no one seems to offer that anymore), so I called up the closest one (45 minutes away) the week of christmas (yep, I was that customer) to see if they had it in either finish (virginia cherry or chocolate mist) if we wanted the cherry (which we did), we were in luck, they had one right then. if we wanted the chocolate, they'd have to order it to the store.
so I call the next day and asked them to place it on hold. being a reasonable person, I can understand if they had sold it as a christmas present, but the saleslady tells me that they don't have a cherry one, just the chocolate... and the cherry has been—you guessed it—discontinued! so who knows what the person the day before had been talking about. the finishes aren't really all that different, and I was starting to get desperate, so I wanted it. fortunately, they put it on hold, and though they only usually do that for 24 hours, they were willing to hold it until after the long weekend for us.
nervous that some other clerk would sell it out from under me, I sent ryan and his dad on a 45 minute drive on the friday before christmas after work to pick it up. they deserve a medal.

thankfully, it's all put together, and it's in our nursery. it's officially ours.