Windsor Wins One...

[captmojo]

Re-mark-a-bull!

[CathyCA]

I never did get around to telling y'all what I did a couple of weeks ago, did I?

Do share, sir. I'll have to see the story late tonight.
I like my job but I hate to have to work.

Well ......... remember that Sam's Club (and Costco) used to have a policy of customer satisfaction guaranteed, no time limit. You could bring anything back, for whatever reason, and get your money back, if you had your original receipt. Many people took advantage of this, especially on electronics, things like computers and TV's and so forth, so in 2009, they changed their policy to 90 days. I mean folks would bring back three or four year old computers just to upgrade technology - ridiculous things like that... But if you bought your stuff before they made the change, you were grandfathered; you just had to have your original receipt. How many of you have receipts from stuff you bought in 2001? Raise your hands? Keep them up please.

Flash back to the day after Thanksgiving, 2001. Back when I had some money (Y2K was pretty good to me ). I bought a 43" Toshiba HD ready rear projection TV at Sam's Club. Very nice for it's day. Not overly extravagant, but nice. Still worked, even though I had it repaired twice in the last 9 years, roughly every 3 to 4 years, having the convergence chips replaced twice, spending about $750 on it to get it done, and toting the dang thing to repair shops in Raleigh, Rocky Mount and Goldsboro in the process (it weighed about 85 pounds). Anyway, I was talking with the salesman at Sam's and he reminded me about the old return policy, but when I went to the customer service desk and asked about bringing my 9 year old TV back, the sales manager at the store said, "No, we can't do that." Humph. Bummer. That's was in one of the Raleigh stores. A few days later I was in the Durham store, and the salesman in the TV section told me the same thing, and his sales manager told me the same thing. Humph. Well, a few days later, I was in the North Raleigh store, and that salesman called over the sales manager and asked him if I could bring the TV back and he said no. But he asked the sales manager to talk to the "store manager upstairs". The sales manager disappeared for about 10 minutes and then called back to the salesman. I was told to bring back my TV with the receipt. My jaw dropped. "Really?" I asked for the sales manager to come down to the floor and tell me that face to face - I didn't want to come up to Raleigh the next day and make a fool out of myself! He did. The next morning, I got a cash refund, full price including sales tax, back for my ~8 year, 51 week, 1 day old TV! I promptly deposited the cash in my bank that was conveniently on the corner.

I had already done enough comparison shopping (or, as one salesman called it, "Powerball shopping") to know what I wanted to buy and where I wanted to buy it. As much as I like Sam's Club, Costco had the merchandise on sale at a 10% lower price and offers a 2 year warranty for free. I spent about half as much as I got back on a 42" LED LCD TV and a BluRay player. Happy Chanukah to me!

Congratulations! That is amazing.

I don't have receipts for stuff I bought back in 2001. In fact, I don't have much of the stuff I owned back in 2001. See the thread entitled, "Things I Lost in the Divorce."

[fordgrl00]

Windsor... Loved your story! Glad you stuck with it long enough to get results.

Ozzie... How in the world did you keep a receipt that long?? You must not throw anything away?!?!

[OZZIE4DUKE]

Ozzie... How in the world did you keep a receipt that long?? You must not throw anything away?!?!

Important receipts get put in a labeled file folder in a filing cabinet. Boxes for equipment that might get returned or shipped back to the manufacturer for repair get put in the garage, complete with the formed Styrofoam packing pieces.

The picture below was taken a few minutes ago in my garage (note - I have corrected the date and time now that I see it was showing November instead of December!) It is the storage shelf installed two decades ago to store boxes. The HP Scanjet 5e was the first sheet fed scanner I owned - it ran fine on Windows 95, but didn't upgrade to Win 98, so out it (the scanner, not the box!) went. The box on top of the scanner was for a Deskjet printer, vintage unknown, but long out of service. The Dell computer box was Ozziedaughter's college desktop computer, purchased in September 2000. I have absolutely no frigging idea what the other two boxes are for. Note to self: next Wednesday afternoon, all these boxes get thrown out (Thursday is trash day).

[windsor]

Mr. Windsor and I would have receipts from 2001...if it was a)a major purchase and b)we still have it. It goes in a file in the file cabinet along with any documentation (owners manuals, source disks etc) that may have come with it.

When the item is replaced/discarded the folder goes too.

[Ima Facultiwyfe]

FAB__YOOO_LUSSSS story. Windsor, you're my hero!!!!!!

My closest thing to anything Ozzie pulled off came when I got a phone call from Circuit City telling me that the extended warranty on my video camera had expired a month ago, but not to worry because they'd be happy to sell me a new warranty that would go into effect immediately. I said, "Do you mean that it would be a full warranty, one that would replace the old camera if it were dead TODAY?" They said yep. So I bought it and took the old, broken down tangly mess back to them the next morning for a brand new camera." Go figure.
Love, Ima