If it sounds too good to be true… GUESS WHAT?!

Okay. So I thought I was being clever.

I follow several blogs and several of them give hints about money-saving deals and such. (This picture is from savemoneyblog.net by the way. Although I've never been to that site. I just like the little piggy.)

There's a blog that I read occassionally with a section marked "Deals." She tells you about coupons you can print out and all that, and it all seems pretty cool. It's called thehappyhousewife.com

But I’d never actually done more than look at the deals and go, “Huh. Interesting.” And then not do anything about it.

Kind of like how I look at the recipes in magazines, actually. Except then I’ll often go so far as say, “Huh. Interesting,” and then cut them out, put them in my kitchen, and subsequently NOT cook anything with them.

But I digress.

So what happened was, I saw a deal on the happy housewife blog that I thought I couldn’t pass up. It was for half-off on Pampers from diapers.com.

Now, you realize I have twins. That means I buy a LOT of diapers.

And here it says I can get $40 worth for $20! WOW!

According to the site, plumdistrict.com, all I had to do was sign up for their discount program (and its accompanying spam, of course) and then I could purchase deals such as the diapers.com one.

But I carefully checked it out. I mean, I don’t want to shell out the twenty and then realize I can’t use the coupon, right? Bazinga! That would be bad.

So I looked over the prices at diapers.com. I could get a case of 176 Pampers, it said, for $45. And if I ordered at least $4 more (for a total of $49, you get the math here?) I could get free shipping. And it said in red letters, “We now ship to Alaska, Hawaii, and APO/FPO!”

So everything checked out. Nothing was stopping me from giving Plum District my $20, and carting off DOUBLE the diapers! Awesome, right?

Let me point out here, it was a limited-time offer, good only for December 29th “while supplies last.” And it was almost midnight, so I admit my judgment might have been impaired by the late hour. (After all, it was around that time a couple of weeks ago when I thought it might be amusing to post that ill-advised story about my feet...and I sure wish I cold take THAT back!) But I was thinking I could get in on the ground floor here, right after midnight!

Anyways….I paid the twenty and got the coupon code. Then I trotted over to diapers.com to redeem it.

I filled my virtual “cart” with a case of Pampers, and added some wipes to get the total up past $49. I was gratified to see the word “FREE” pop up in the shipping column. I put in my coupon code and $40 was knocked right off the total. WOW!

Then I went to check out.

And BAM! I got hit with THE FINE PRINT.

It was like a little virtual lawyer walked out and cleared his little virtual throat, and said, “Ahem. Additional shipping charges apply for Alaska and Hawaii.”

They wanted an extra $35 to ship the diapers to me.

Yep. That’s right! It was going to cost me almost TWICE as much as I saved on the coupon deal, just in SHIPPING!

Don’t even ASK now much express shipping would be.

I sighed, cleared my cart, and exited. Then I went back to Plum District and tried to figure out how to get my money back.

Yep. You guessed it! “Ahem. Unfortunately, no refunds are possible. Once you buy a deal, it's yours to keep! Our contracts with vendors require us to honor every deal sold, and that's why we're able to offer such good deals to our Plum District members. Be sure to read all of the fine print before you purchase.”

Oh THANK YOU, Mr. Virtual Lawyer! I appreciate the advice.

So basically, what I’ve done here is to flush $20 down the toilet and signed myself up for a bunch of annoying spam.

Bazinga.

Oh, by the way, I don’t blame the Happy Housewife for this debacle. I mean, if I lived ANYWHERE ELSE in the U.S.--except Alaska-- it would have been a great deal. And it was true about the limited-time offer; the coupons were sold out by 10:52 a.m. on the 29th.

No I realize I have no one to blame for my vanishing twenty but myself.

Oh, and that Virtual Lawyer. I HATE that guy!

Traveling is Stressful, Part 1

We are going on a trip to the mainland on Friday. (That’s what they call the rest of the US here in Hawaii, "the mainland." Not “the States” like we did in Germany because obviously, we are still IN the US, even though it doesn’t seem like it.)

So why am I already writing about travel being stressful, when we haven’t even LEFT yet? Oh, so many reasons…

First of all, since we arrived here less than a year ago, our trip to Hawaii is still pretty fresh in my mind. And it was tough. Thirteen hours on a plane with five kids is no joke.

My husband had come ahead of us to get housing, and report to his job, so my mother came with me to help with the kids. Which was a fun vacation for her, as you can imagine!

But they split our seats up all over the plane, so we couldn’t sit together. You can imagine how I felt when I saw the seating arrangements, with Baby Boy and Baby Girl seated far away from me. I was like, Should I just hand some stranger the diaper bag and say, See you in thirteen hours? The people on the phone had said they would be able to fix this at the gate so I could sit with my children, but it turned out the best we could get was three seats together, and then two and two.

So my mom sat with one of the babies, I sat with the other baby and the six-year-old, and the two older girls sat together. I hate flying anyways, but that made the trip so much worse, not being able to see all of my kids and know that they hadn’t killed each other. Yet.

So I have been really dreading this plane trip. And one of the things I was comforting myself with was, At least this time their father will be there to help with the kids, and we’ll all be able to sit together because I made the reservations eight months in advance.

But when we looked over our reservations this weekend, I saw that there were no seat numbers on the itinerary. This made me really nervous, so I decided to call the 1-800 number for Cheap-O Air, the company we made the reservation through, just to make sure.

First of all, perhaps dealing with a company called Cheap-O Air might have been a mistake. In retrospect, the name just doesn’t imply excellence.

So I called them on Tuesday, because I had to spend Monday psyching myself up for it. (I really HATE making these kinds of calls) I waited on hold about fifteen minutes to get a person, and when I finally did the lady told me there were some changes in my itinerary.

They’d shaved an hour off of our hour and 45 minute layover time on the way to Birmingham, and they’d added an hour to our four-hour layover coming back to Honolulu. Couldn’t you have reversed that? I thought.

But anyways, about my SEATS, I said. She said, Oh yeah, since you’ve had these time changes the tickets will have to be reissued, so I can’t tell you that right now. She suggested I call the airline directly to find out.

So on Wednesday (after more psyching myself up; I did I mention I hate making calls like this?) I called the airline. I spent ten minutes wrangling the bad voice-recognition software:

Fake Computer Chick: What would you like to do today? You can say, “Make reservation,” “Change your reservation,” “Check flight status,” or “More choices.”
Me: More choices.
Fake Computer Chick: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Would you like to: “Make reservation,” “Change your reservation,” “Check flight status,” or “More choices.”
Me: MORE CHOICES!
Fake Computer Chick: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Would you like to: “Make reservation,” “Change your reservation,” “Check flight status,” or “More choices.”
Me: ARRGGHH!!!!
Fake Computer Chick: I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.

After screaming SPEAK TO AN AGENT in my most enunciated voice about twenty times, I finally got a person. They said that since I had made the reservation through an outside agency they would have to charge me $15 a person to do anything for me. I’m going, Seriously?

So I hung up and called Cheap-O Air back. I waited another fifteen minutes to get a person, and when I did he didn’t seem really confident in his English-speaking abilities. I’m going to call him Duh Man, for reasons that will soon become obvious. I told Duh Man my reservation number, and my name and address, and he said he would check on it.

After five or ten minutes (he said his system was “running slow” today) Duh Man came back to say my tickets had not yet been issued. Would I like the tickets to be issued?

Uh, YES! That’s why I’m calling you! Duh!

He said to hold again while he spoke to someone in ticketing. After about twenty minutes he came back:

Duh Man: Um, yeah, those tickets haven’t been issued because your reservation was never made.
Me: WHAT?
Duh Man: Um, yeah…
Me: You’re saying I have NO RESERVATION!?
Duh Man: Um, yeah…
Me: But I have a confirmation number! I have an e-mail right here with my itinerary!
Duh Man: Um, that was never finalized or anything…
Me: WHAT?!?! So what am I supposed to do now?!?!
Duh Man: So, um, I’ll have someone from ticketing call you…
Me: When will they call me? Later today?
Duh Man: Um, yeah, today or tomorrow…
Me: They can call me back today?
Duh Man: Um, probably tomorrow….
Me: So someone will call me back sometime? That’s all you can do for me?
Duh Man: Um, yeah… Unless you want to book a hotel or something?
Me: NO I don’t want to book a hotel! Because apparently I’M NOT GOING ON A TRIP!!!!
Duh Man: Well, um, it’s okay…Your reservation’s not until November anyways...
Me: No, it’s FRIDAY! My trip is THIS WEEK!
(short pause)
Duh Man: What was that confirmation number again?

Well, you can see where THIS is going. He spent 30 minutes working on SOMEONE ELSE’S TICKETS!!!

So the good news is, I DID have a reservation, and my seats are together, (I made Duh Man READ ME the seat numbers) and I don’t have to worry about anything, right? Except maybe a HEART ATTACK from the scare this guy gave me!

So traveling is stressful. And we haven’t even LEFT yet!
 
I can't even IMAGINE what the trip itself will be like. Stay tuned for part 2...

I'm Just a Girl Who Cain't Say No, Apparently

Today I got sucked in by the Dead Sea Facial guy. His name was Omar. He complimented my naturally beautiful nails, and then told me how they could look even more natural for only $49.95!



You’ve probably seen these people. They have little kiosks in malls and when you walk by they accost you with, “Can I ask you a question?”



I always say, “No thank you,” but today my resistance must have been low, because the next thing I knew Omar was massaging natural mineral oil into my right thumbnail and speaking to me soothingly in an exotic-sounding foreign accent.



Then he held my thumbnail under the light, and it was so beautiful and sparkly! And so natural-looking! I couldn’t stop looking at my beautiful thumb!



So the next thing I knew I was giving Omar fifty bucks! And part of me is going, Have you LOST your MIND?! You don’t even use the beauty products you already HAVE! But the other part of me was still saying, Oooo, pretty sparkly!



I guess I’m like a magpie with a credit card.



I should have known better than to stop and speak to this guy. I should know I have to just keep walking and ignore the sales pitches like Kate Gosselin going past the paparazzi. My problem comes when I stop and listen to them.



I never used to be like this, but lately I can’t even watch infomercials with out thinking, SHOULD I be teaching my baby to read? or Wow, that chamois cloth is really absorbent! I need that!



Fortunately, with the infomercials I don’t actually succumb, because once I’m away from the TV salesman’s mesmerizing voice I snap out of it. But in person I can’t seem to break away.



I think I need some blinders like they use for horses so I can get where I’m going in the mall and ignore the sales pitches. That or a little device with a recorded voice that says, “No thank you,” over and over while I’m walking.

And by the way, now that I’m at home my thumbnail doesn’t look nearly as good. What, does it wear off like Cinderella’s spell? Or did Omar use some special light to fool me? Oh well. Too late now. At least the special hand lotion smells nice…

What happened to my sales resistance? I don’t know. But nobody better come to my door selling vacuums today, or we are in trouble!