Wednesday, October 20, 2010

It Never Hurts To Ask

This would be one of those things my mom taught me..."it never hurts to ask." Usually, I am too chicken to ask for things that I think are unreasonable or when people might tell me "no." But recently, I've been on a lucky streak that's proven my mom right...

1. Our new video baby monitor that Nonna (Casey's mom) got us before Logan was born was really acting up when he was about a month old. We had barely used it, obviously, so I was sure it was just a dud. But, I had already thrown out the gift receipt she gave us because I was certain that we wanted to keep the monitor. I didn't think about needing to return it because of a malfunction. We didn't even have the box or anything. And I knew she bought it at Target...infamous for terrible return policies no matter how much I love that store. I was just sure that they would give me a hard time, but I didn't have anything to lose. As it turns out, the returns clerk just took my drivers licence info and swapped it out for a brand new one just like that! Yipee! (New one works great, by the way.)

2. The adjuster piece on one side of my camera strap broke when we were at the lake house two weekends ago. I don't know what caused it, but I am sure glad that I was holding onto my big fat zoom lens and camera when it did break. I shudder to think of what could have happened if I hadn't been holding it. Anyway, I contacted Natalie at Cotton Candy by Natalie where I purchased my camera strap almost a year ago and asked her how I could get the part replaced. I still love my strap and didn't need to replace the whole thing. I offered to pay for the part, but she replied back that she would send it to me...for free! I didn't even have to pay shipping.

3. I had planned a photo wall with various frames at our old house just before we decided to sell. I even had the empty frames up on the wall. I didn't have a wall in our new house where I wanted to put the same frames up, although I have used a few of them separately. So I still had all these unused, but unwrapped frames from Aaron Brothers from over a year and a half ago. And no receipt. I decided to haul them into the store and see if they would let me exchange them. And you know what?...they did. They only gave me 80% of the full value of the frames because I didn't have my receipt and they were unwrapped. But, for goodness sake, that was way more than I was expecting. After the return and picking out some new frames and mats, I got out of there paying only $11. Sweet.


3 comments:

Emily Cade said...

Very cool! I'm the same way, and have found that by asking for stuff I'm often surprised (minus my Baby Gap return where I returned something 6 months after purchase, with tags and reciept. The manager wanted to give me $6 and a crappy attitude for $40 worth of stuff).

I also didn't know that Target's return policy was bad. I have had a very pleasant experience when returning stuff there.

Also, and I am sooooooooo lucky, but when we were in London we were walking with our cameras, and I had mine around my neck. I had attached the strap insanely wrong, and my brand new expensive camera with my huge zoom lense fell to the cement. From my neck. A three foot fall. (I am probably repeating myself because I put this on my blog). I couldn't believe it. LUCKILY, it was undamaged. Justin things it was because we had the tripod attachment at the bottom and it landed on that and absorbed all of the shock... I don't know, I was just so glad that it was okay. And I'm glad your camera didn't plummet to the ground!

Yay!!!

Lindsay said...

That is amazing!

Christina said...

Good for you. I have the same mentality. I remember returning some clothing I'd gotten as a gift from Old Navy--about 2 years after the fact--and they gave me a gift card in exchange (obviously I didn't have the receipt!). I was perfectly fine with that!