Please note: This is not only an unsolicited review of service; it is also an account of merciless bargain hunting.
There’s nothing like an online mega retailer to make my day. Or week.
See, I’d been checking out PA system packages for our band, and then, once I’d narrowed my search, I sat idly by while waiting for a sale to come my way. Last Saturday, one finally tempted me, from musiciansfriend.com: $50 off orders of $250 or more.
My order would be $700, though–so after I thought about it, $50 really didn’t sound that great. But oh! I thought to myself. What if I divided my order into two smaller orders? I called my sister, who agreed to place the second order.
Alas, the Internet order form wouldn’t recognize the sale promo code as attempted by my sister, so I ended up calling the store direct, then realized I would have to call from my sister’s phone with her credit card, and so on and so forth.
“Why don’t you just ask them if you can use the sale promo code twice yourself?” M asked. “You know what Mma Ramotswe always says: just ask if there’s something you want to know.”
I called the store back: “Can I use the promo code on more than one order?”
“How many orders do you want to make?”
“Two.”
“That’s fine.”
Yippee! I thought, and stayed up late placing two orders, one for $250.77 (the $50 off meant a savings of 20%) and one for $449.99 (again $50 off, but this time a saving of only 11.2%).
I was pleased as punch–I’d gotten a $700 system for just $600, and with all free shipping, at that. Terrific!
But then on Monday when I checked the mail, I found a one-time-use postcard from the same, dear musiciansfriend.com for 20% off my next order.
Hmmm, I thought. If I would have applied this postcard instead of the original sale to my $449.99 order, I’d have saved an additional $40. I called the store back:
“I know my order has shipped already, but can I cancel the original sale promo I used in that purchase and replace it with the postcard code?”
“I’m afraid not,” the lady said.
“Oh, shucks,” I said. “I was hoping that maybe your 45-day, best-price guarantee would apply.”
“I don’t know. Let me check.”
And after five minutes on hold, I was informed of a re-crediting my credit card for the $40 difference.
Now I was really elated–and when the sound system arrived on Wednesday, I was one excited puppy (no, I didn’t pee all over everything).
But my story hasn’t ended yet. The next day, researching one feature of my new purchase, I came across a price markdown for an additional item that I’d thought about buying but ruled out as “potentially great but not necessary.”
I wonder, I thought…and sure enough, the “one-time-use” 20% off postcard promotion still worked on the marked-down price.
We plan to test the system in the coming week, so we’ll see if it performs as great as I feel about the whole purchasing experience.
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