You Can’t Make This $#!+ Up

The Sandbox General
1

Thread for stuff you would NEVER be creative enough to come up with on your own.

Inaugural Offering:
Order a piece of furniture on Amazon. Price is $174.99 with a $30 coupon “for making a sustainable choice”. Great, for $144.99 I would like to buy this item.

But there’s one more thing I need. No biggie, item I order all the time. Price is usually between $18 and $20… yep… it’s $18.78 today, add to cart, check out, delivery dates look good, submit.

Oh no… no, no, no.

The first item is now $215.00 (list price is $209.99 … a “Prime Day discount” of negative 2.39%), and no $30 coupon. I do not want to pay $215.00 (plus tax). I want to pay $144.99!

Try to cancel the order. Too late.

Look at the item online… it is once again $174.99 with a $30 coupon for making a sustainable choice. (I’ve never seen that before today, but whatever.)

Call customer service. Yeah, the $30 coupon requires you to only have 1 item in your cart. 2 items or more… no soup for you!!!

This was in the coupon’s fine print they assure me. Uh, I guess I didn’t read that, but dang!

Also they will not even adjust the price from $215.00 to $174.99. What they recommend that I do is order the item again and then return the first item. This is not a pair of socks that I can return at Kohls. The shipping weight is 62 lbs and the container is 65”x28”x11”.

Will I have to pay return shipping? No, no, of course not. They will have a UPS label for me. Uh… no disrespect but this is alarming to me. The last thing I want is TWO of this item. Can I have it in writing that I can do this? Sure, sure.

Gal sends me a lovely email confirming the above. I put the item in my cart again. It rings up for $144.99 (plus tax) as it has the sustainable choice coupon applied.

I’m sure it’s very sustainable to order two of an item and ship one back, rather than have them adjust the price on their end, right?

But, uh, job security for UPS employees, so… you’re welcome UPS!!!

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“Sustainable” can mean different things depending on the situation. In this case it sustains your frustration with their company and sustains the delivery service by giving them more business.

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I also thought the negative Prime Day discount was funny.

And it’s only sustainable to have one item per order. Because Lord knows shipping multiple items together is worse for the environment than shipping them separately right?

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My bridge partner and I tried booking the exact same hotel room on a website like Priceline and he was offered a lower price because he had used them recently for something else. So obviously we let him book the room (for us)

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In my retirement I do some food delivering when I feel like it. Today I had to drive 3 miles over to a burrito place, but I was going to get $30 to drive it 10 miles out into the country. I picked the burrito up, and the first three miles took me back to my house. One mile later I was informed that the order was canceled. I was instantly paid $30 and told to dispose of the burrito.

Then I went back over there later to get the BOGO they are having today!

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When STBX and I moved a bunch of years ago we priced storage units. I was getting better prices than him… apparently it’s a thing to charge iPhone users more than Android.

So if you’re an iPhone user and you have an old Android device laying around that still gets WiFi ok, use it to order stuff online.

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August 1994 I left graduate school for a job.
Sometime that year our area code split due to all the cell phones, we got the new one.
Then in August 1995 we moved five miles south to a new area code to a new apartment.
Sometime that year our area code split due to all the cell phones, we got the new one.
In July 1996 we relocated to the St. Paul area
Sometime that year our area code split due to all the cell phones, we got the new one.

First 3+ years of marriage, 7 area codes. Next 25 years, 1 more area code.

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Why not? If you have the ability to identify a customer as someone willing to spend more money on inferior products…

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My understanding is that these “applied at checkout” coupons exist to prevent price scrapers from getting the true price, either to price match for competitors or track best prices with something like CamelCamelCamel. If you’re always $100 with a 40% off coupon, then on Prime Day you can drop your price to $70 and advertise it’s 30% off.

“Only 1 item” is still dumb.