A Blog About Money - The Good and The Bad

The Good Side:
Small Money: This week I went to County Market to pick up some of their coupon items. While there I figured I'd pick up some General Mills Cereal. The cereals were 1.69 and with my 1.00 off two I was able to pick up six boxes of cereal for 1.09 a piece. Not a totally horrible price. Well that is until I got home. Then I realized they had charged me three dollars a piece on two of the boxes. For quite some time I debated over what to do. If I went back to the store I'd be going for about three dollars. It didn't really seem worth it but it was three dollars that was mine and I wanted it back. So the next day while daddy was babysitting #2, #1 and I headed back to the store. I went up to the customer service lady and told her my problem. She squinted her eyes and said, "Well obviously you bought the wrong size." Let me tell you. That obviously really bugged me. So in my best mother tone I said, "I do NOT think so." She gets on the phone and checks with the price check guy. Turns out gruff mom is right. They did overcharge me. So to compensate me for my time and efforts :) they gave me the full price back on both items. I walked out of the store with my six dollars back and the two boxes of cereal were now free!

Big Money: Dr. J has these sketchers shoes that he must really love. He's owned them in brown, black, and dark brown. They hold up well and he often wears them to church or for work related occasions. The only problem is the fact that while the main body of the shoe holds up exceptionally well, the padded heel cuff is made of plastic and flakes off. It DRIVES ME CRAZY! First we threw out the brown shoes but when the black and dark brown shoes started to go as well and the soles had plenty of life left in them I wrote the company a letter stating I thought their product stunk. The shoes were great but that particular part of the shoe made them ridiculous looking and I wasn't going to let my husband wear them to church anymore. Probably embarrassed by the fact that some guy was wearing their falling apart product in public they responded. They sent me a letter stating I could send them the failing product and if they deemed it a manufacturing fault they would replace the shoes. So I packed those puppies up and sent them of to Sketchers Inc. A few weeks later Dr. J got a letter in the mail stating that he needed to call the company. There agreed the shoes had a manufacturing error and told Jason that since they no longer carry that brand he can pick out any two pairs of Sketcher shoes he wants up to 69 dollar a piece (138 dollars total) and they will send them out to us no charge. So for my time and the twelve dollars it took to get the icky shoes to them Jason will get two new pairs of shoes. LUCKY BOY! I'M SO JEALOUS!

The Bad:
Small Money: As mentioned above I made six dollars back on my groceries. The money didn't get to stay long in my wallet though. While we were on vacation I got a letter from the library telling me I had a "very" overdue library movie. Apparently I had forgotten to return Open Season. When Dr. J got home I sent him looking for it and sure enough he found it hidden behind the very back of the couch. Because of the extremely late nature of the return I was charged half the original purchase price! So sad. So those six dollars joined four others in my purse and paid off a library fine.

Big Money: Half way through the drying load on Wednesday night our dryer started making a horrible clacking noise. I finished out the load and Friday morning called one of two dryer repair shops in town. They happened to be still closed so I called the second, a small shop by our home that had been recommended by several people. The owner told me he might be able to squeeze me in that afternoon or not until Wednesday. He came by this afternoon and delivered the bad news. The parts to fix the dryer would be 120. The labor close to 90. I wanted to be sick. We bought this dryer two years ago for 150 dollars. I called Dr. J to see what he thought and he was like forget it, let's just buy a new dryer. Then a thought hit me. I turned to the guy and asked him how much the cost of diagnosing would be if we didn't fix the dryer. 50 dollars he says. I wanted to choke. What happened to Miss Consumer Savvy. Why hadn't I asked him that question before I asked him to come by the house. So we ended up fixing the dryer. It wasn't what we wanted to do but we would have had to have added fifty bucks to the price of a new one and that was just not a cost we felt we could stomach. To add insult to injury I called the other shop after he left and found out they would have only charged me fifteen dollars to come out and then the price for labor would have been industry based. No hourly based on a minimum of an hour. And why might I ask does a dryer repair man get to charge ninety bucks an hour for fifteen minutes of work? The only silver lining is the fact that I watched the Grinley guy like a hawk while I was working so if our dryer ever needs a new fan, new rollers, or a new belt...well I'm going to install them myself...and then maybe I'll buy myself a ninety dollar pair of shoes :) Look people I'm trying to find something positive. It's not every day you screw yourself out of 200 dollars. It really did just make me sick.