Sunday, January 10, 2010

Read The Fine Print (and other shopping secrets)

Yesterday Matt and I spent the day relaxing (Borders and a movie) and shopping (Kmart and Lowe's). I am already a big fan of Kmart (the one in Acme). They keep a clean store and have great customer service. We've shopped there a few times when an employee forgot to pull a sale sign. When we were checking out and the prices didn't match the cashiers always honored the sale price (while another cashier ran to remove the sign).

We had the same experience last night at Lowes. They had three types of storage units for sale on an end cap: A, B1, and B2. A and B1 were the same price, even though they were different brands. B1 and B2 were the exact same things, but with different prices (B2 was more expensive). So we looked at the signs above the units. It had the sections listed as A, Clearance A, and B. Obviously, it didn't match what was actually on the shelf.

Long story short: the price tag on B1 was for the price of A, but it was on the "clearance" section of the shelf, so we figured it might actually be on sale. Having had the experiences at Kmart where the honor a wrong price, we gave it a whirl. Sure enough, they honored the price!! (52% off the original price - yeah!)

When we go home, Matt looked at the Lowe's ad from two weeks ago. On ONE PAGE it said that the sales prices were good until 1/10/10 (even though the rest of the ad expired on 1/3/10). Lo and behold - on that page there was a picture of the unit Matt bought last night. The sale: buy the unit, get a smaller one FREE!!

Matt took the ad and his receipt back to the store. The manager double checked everything and gave Matt the free unit (while another cashier ran to the back of the store to double check all of the sale signs). Matt now has two high quality garage storage units. What should have been a 30% savings ended up being a 67% savings!!

So make sure you read the fine print and don't be afraid to show a store their mistakes! It can definitely work in your favor :)

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