$$: Another Saturday in Suburbia edition

Posted on | November 22, 2008 |

Total Spent Today: $70.82

Qwest — $51.76
This particular bill is a very mild point of contention between me and The Husband. I say we should consider dropping our land line altogether or, at the very least, our long distance service through Qwest. He’s not interested in either option. *sigh*

Safeway — $19.44
The Daughter used her credit card to fill up the Impreza last night. She pumped 10.992 gallons at $1.769 per gallon; she did not record the car’s odometer reading.

Eddie Bauer — ($19.13)
As much as I hated to do so, I returned both of the hot water bottles I purchased recently. No matter how hot the water I filled it with, no heat actually passed through the rubber. So I got the weight or heft of a hot water bottle but none of the warmth. I was quite disappointed.

Crabtree & Evelyn — $48.64
We were down to our last two bars of soap so it was time to stock up. I purchased two boxes (3 bars per box) each of Aloe and La Source milled soap. I saved 37.5% off each box bring the price to $3.75 per bar.

Whole Foods — $12.24
Okay, this is a bit embarrassing. When I was shopping yesterday, I checked the shelf price on Kashi cereal. It was listed as $3.69 which is definitely higher than last year but, nonetheless, the best price to be found right now. So I grabbed two boxes and went on my merry way.

Last night when I was writing up my Daily $$ post, it was late and I was tired, and my brain went a little wacky. I read the receipt and interpreted the $2.99 as $3.99 and thus concluded I’d been overcharged. Irritated, I went back to Whole Foods today and pointed out the discrepancy. The clerck called for a grocery stocker who checked the price and confirmed that the price on the shelf was not the same as the price charged — but pointed out that I’d been undercharged, not overcharged.

As embarrassed as I was, I didn’t let it go to my head. I bought another 4 boxes and they, too, were rung up at $2.99 per box. Now, that’s a good price. If they’d had any more boxes on the shelf, I’d have bought them too.

Kroger — ($5.11)
What is it with cereal this week? This experience was a surreal as the Whole Foods experience except that in this case I definitely was overcharged. During our shopping trip on Thursday, all of the Cascadian Farm cereals were on sale, Buy One Get One Free. All, that is, except the Purely O’s variety — the one variety I’m not allergic to. Assuming it was a shelf-pricing error, I grabbed two boxes. Then before the checker started ringing up our order, I handed him a box and asked if it, too, qualified for the BOGO sale. He rang it through and said “no.” I asked why not so he called over the manager and she took at look at the shelf. Her explanation, which I accepted but not without feeling profound annoyance at the amazingly stupid “logic” provided — apparently all other varieties were priced normally at $4.99 per box and are currently on BOGO sale effectively bringing the price down to $2.50 per box. But the Purely O’s shelf price is $4.29. Because it has a lower shelf price, it doesn’t qualfiy for the BOGO pricing. How stupid is that?! A BOGO deal does me no good on a variety of cereal I can’t eat and The Son won’t eat, so I bit the bullet and bought a single box of Purely O’s.

Then, that night when I was going over my receipt, I realized I’d been charged $4.99 anyway, not the shelf price of $4.29. So I took my receipt in today and explained the situation at the service desk. The kid was helpful and friendly but probably not at the top of his logics class. I offered to walk away with a free box but I did have additional shopping to do. So, instead, the kid processed a refund and issued a gift card for the full purchase price, plus tax. I explained that with the gift card, I could walk out with two additional boxes — one full price, one BOGO. He shrugged and said whatever. So that’s what I did.

Kroger — $11.62
I bought two boxes of Purely O’s ($2.50/ea.) and two Digiorno’s pizzas ($5.69/ea.). The inital total: $16.78 before the bag credit ($0.05) and the gift card credit amount were applied.

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