The Aerie
Went on a bit of a trip this afternoon and came back with a lot of stuff for not very much money.
First we needed to pick up a mattress to replace an old one. My wife discovered Twin Cities Free Market and we've been using it for some time. In this case, a family in Minnetonka had exactly the mattress we were looking for.
I headed out and soon found myself wandering what used to be rural lakeshore paths to family cabins, but what was now a set of narrow suburban streets leading to rather run-down former family cabins. I'd called ahead, so the mattress I was looking for was actually positioned outside the garage, waiting. Tossed it in the car, told a child who answered the door to thank her parents for me, and I was away. Total time, five minutes, total cost, zero.
Next I stopped off at the Micro Center, since it was on the way home, in order to see what kind of Christmas returns might be on sale. While their clearance bins were full to overflowing, no combination of need and savings synched up to compel a purchase, and I was on my way out, when I stopped to glance at their advertising sheet. There was a listing for memory for my cell phone, with $30 off with two rebates.
Now, I'd just seen that memory in clearance bin, so I grabbed it and headed over to the customer service desk. Could I get these two rebates on this clearance memory? Yes, the lad behind the counter told me, I certainly could.
So I got in the 15-minute checkout line, and sure enough the cashier didn't want to give me one of the rebates. So there I stood, the prototypical pain-in-the-ass guy-at-the-register, while everyone in line behind me sighed dramatically.
Now, my sister in law is a haggler par excellence, and shares many a tale of how she has browbeaten retailers into practically paying her to remove goods from their store. So with her in mind I held my ground: Look, I went to the service desk before getting in the checkout line in order to assure I would get both rebates. Phone calls were made. Rarely used input fields were adjusted. Eyes were rolled, but in the end, yes, they knocked $10 off the clearance price on the memory.
There then followed a brief comedy as I tried to get the self-service rebate-printer to print the form for the second rebate, but shortly thereafter I left the store. When the rebate comes in, sometime in 2067, I will have paid about $35 for a full Gigabyte of memory for my cell phone. Of course, by that time a Gigabyte of memory for my cell phone will cost 25 cents and come rolling out of the dispenser in a plastic egg, but regardless, I have had my meaningless consumer victory for the day!
Total time, two hours, total cost, $35.
Posted by Albatross at January 2, 2005 4:22 PM