Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Presidential Pluses

President's Day sales. Best thing ever. We saved over $1000 on some big purchases this weekend.

Got a great deal on a fridge at Best Buy, and bought all the cabinets, countertops, fridge, and washer/dryer for my mother's carriage house at Lowes. Got a new sofa and loveseat at Ashley on unexpected sale, too.

It almost went all pear-shaped, though...

After doing a ton of research on the best sales and prices, and consulting with my mother on what she wanted, choosing cabinets, laminates, deciding on fridge size, etc., I fought with the credit card company to credit my access line to reflect the payment I made in the morning (I'm kind of a miles whore), and finally settled on using the backup payment. I had squirreled away a 10% off coupon, and worked out that delivery of everything would be free due to the purchase of appliances.

I got it all in the shopping cart, punched in my coupon number and credit card number, felt very smug and pleased with my bargain results... and then error messages came up that they couldn't charge the following items to my card-- 11 of 12 items-- but they had graciously charged us for the washer/dryer AND used the coupon.

Awesome. At 10:30pm. The night the sale ended. And I had no more coupons.

I called the number, what I assumed would be a futile effort. I was prepared for having to ask to speak with supervisors-- assuming I got a human being on the phone in the first place. I was prepared to send screenshots to the customer service email, or march into the store. I was getting geared up to have to yell at someone. Now don't get me wrong, I used to work in retail customer service. I know it's a thankless job. But I know how to be pleasant and reasonable and explain to customers what I can and can't do, and I always offered to let them speak to a supervisor. Always.

Imagine my surprise when a friendly, human voice from a man named Christopher came on the line. He not only got all my items ordered in time for the sale, he applied the now lost coupon, and was empathetic, patient, understanding, and apologetic. It certainly helps that he was able to solve the problem, but beyond that, he was the consummate customer service professional. It kills me that he is probably not being paid what he is worth.

Now the only appliance left is the dog food fridge. We feed our dogs raw-- we have a pit, a pit/shar pei mix, and 2 labs. Home prepping food for 4 big dogs is only affordable if I can buy in bulk, so the upright freezer is largely for this purpose, and the extra fridge is for thawing and storing more immediate meals. And beer. Dog food is taking up the entire bottom shelf of our top-freezer fridge, and much of the middle shelf, as well as pretty much all but the door of the freezer, and most of the chest freezer. I currently have a 40lb block of chicken necks in our chest freezer and no good way to thaw them so I can grind them (I grind for a variety of reasons). I'd love to be able to buy 50lbs of chicken frames (20¢/lb, HEY!!), but I got nowhere to put 'em. To get this kind of stuff cheaply, I need to be able to buy in bulk.

And, well... there's never enough room for beer.

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