Gotta tell you my latest retail experience. There are so many reasons I don’t like the bricks-and-mortar shopping experience. Most relate to my impatience, and the way retailers waste people’s time.

A couple days ago, I walked into a Best Buy store to return a defective music DVD — simply to get another of the same title, since mine had nothing on it. (Thank you, Music Industry, by the way, for your swell quality control.) This item was a gift (had no receipt), so returning it by mail wasn’t an option. How long could this take, I thought: 4-5 minutes? In your dreams….

Close to 30 minutes later, I finally walked out with a new DVD (which I can only hope will play), my mind numb from standing, staring, and waiting (no music was even playing!) while the multi-employee/manager process dragged on. And I had to settle for another title by the same artist, since they were out of the one I was trying to replace! About eight people returning God-knows-what more pricer stuff than I came and left while I waited. Wow, what a wonderful, rewarding shopping experience.

I’m a big fan of Best Buy — the company’s based about two miles from where I sit, I know many people there, and myself and my colleague Randy Geise were interim Content Director and Design Director, respectively, on the team that built their great ecommerce site, launched in early 2000 (now clocking $1 billion in sales annually, and growing). But their service sure sucked in this case. And it’s hardly the first time I’ve had a frustrating experience in one of their stores, and many others like them. So I rarely ever go into one, and this experience just serves to remind me why I don’t.

My choice is increasingly buying online, and returning by mail when necessary — the latter having been made pretty painless, thanks to the lead Amazon and others set for the online retailing industry some time ago.

Is it any wonder the growth of online retail sales is skyrocketing? Let’s look at some numbers just reported in the business pages yesterday. For the month of December, Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) had a same-store sales increase of 5.8% over the previous year — well ahead of what analysts thought would be only 4-5%. (That is, from 16% to 45% better!) Also, it was more than double the same-store sales gain in the previous year, which had been only 2.5%. The market reacted very positively, driving the stock price up 8.2% in just one day.

But let’s drill in a little further. According to the Wall Street Journal, Best Buy now defines same-store sales as “those at stores open for at least 14 months, as well as remodeled and expanded locations and from the company’s Web site.” Did you catch those last little three words? I don’t know how long that’s been included in their comparisons, but it’s no small point.

Why? Because, friends, it was also reported by BBY (though not mentioned in most media accounts) that its online sales increased *40%* over the previous December! Sure, there was a nice increase in gift-card purchases, too: 20%. But no increase was higher than online sales (and many of those gift cards were in fact purchased online). You can be sure it had a big effect in driving up the same-store sales figure, and the stock price. Online is where the real growth is in this business.

Yes, BBY is a “buy” in my book — but know why you’re buying it. What myself and my colleagues believed in so passionately back in 1999-2000 is all coming true. Thankfully, then-president and now CEO Brad Anderson believed with us.