Why is buying a GPS so hard?

I wanted to get a Garmin Nuvi 880 for Rita for her birthday. She really likes our 276c, and I initially was just going to get her one of those since she already knew how to use it, but after a bit of research I decided on the Nuvi 880. It has voice recognition, Bluetooth for phones, "where's my car", etc. I found one on Amazon for about $550 & ordered it. Several days later it still hadn't shipped, so I gave them a call. The customer service guy was very apologetic, said that it had been "oversold", and they should be getting more in the next week. I decided to cancel the order, and they were gracious about it. Eh, no big deal, I'll find another one, call them to make sure they had them in stock, problem solved, right? Hah, silly me. I did some more research, found one for $390 at a camera shop in NYC, gave them a call, ordered it, figured I was done, then the fateful question: "do you want the 2008 maps for that"? What do you mean do I want the updated maps, doesn't it come with the updated maps? Oh, no says he, the maps are 2007 maps, and don't you want have the latest maps? I demure, ask him to just complete the order, but he won't let go. I tell him that I don't want to be upsold, which triggers a "oh, so you're in the industry" response from him (actually I learned the term at MSFT when our VP was talking about the difference between XP Home & Pro), but he still didn't let up on his spiel. I asked several times if he could just finish the sale, and he kept trying to sell the updated maps. Finally I just told him to cancel the order, now he launches into his full on New York accent & accuses me of being stupid for not being willing to pay less than half of what Garmin's selling them for (I didn't point out the obvious that nobody in their right mind pays MSRP), and that I should do more research, blah, blah, blah. Once I got him stopped long enough to confirm that he'd canceled the sale, I simply hung up on him mid-sentence. I searched around for a while & found another place that had it for $405, I decided to simply order it online & skip the phone conversation. No problem...for about two hours, then I get an email asking me to call them to "confirm" the sale. Crap, what could they possibly want to confirm unless I blew my own address when I filled in the form, not overly likely. So, I give them a call, and he "confirms" my address, which was exactly right, then "OK, well let's just finish up your order". "Did you want to get the memory card for this so you can store extra maps on it?" No thanks, I've already got a card that fits it" says I. Well, this is on special this week, usually it's $136, but it's on sale for $62, that's over half off!. Sigh, here we go again. Can you just complete the sale I ask? Don't you want the latest maps" sez he. By now I'd already checked Garmin's site & knew that at worst if you bought an "old" unit, you could update for $54, so any price he was offering beyond that was pure bullshit. I asked him if he could just confirm the sale, 3-4 times, when I could get a word in edge-wise into his spiel. Finally I just told him to cancel the sale. I'm pretty sure this guy and the previous guys were related somehow because I got the same response. Once I got a confirmation from him, I hung up on him too...mid sentence. So, now I've ordered & canceled three of these things. I found an electronics place I've done business with before, that also wasn't located in NYC, and ordered it online, it should be delivered late next week, a week late for her birthday.

Oh, and the $62 memory card the last guy was trying to sell me? I bought 3 of them from Woot! for $13 or so yesterday.