Dealing with deals….

After seeing my husband’s blog on his new hair cut, I have decided I am going to remind him of one more experience of ours with deals. These days I get to know his feelings more through his blogs…damn this internet… so why not answer/talk to him here ;) (Best way to talk to someone who sits in front of computer for almost 18 hrs a day… a mouse potato :D as he said)

Well… with the limited number of hours I surf on net, not a single day goes by without these messages/ads on my screen.

‘Congratulations!!! You have won free laptop for details click here’

‘Congratulations!!!! you have won free ipod… click here to claim’

Some times when the speakers are on it scares the hell out of me. Suddenly a voice comes from nowhere saying ‘Hello and congratulations!!!! Why??? Because you are the one lucky winner of our …..’

As though we have learnt nothing from these experiences… we are fooled yet another time. The other day we have been to pier 1 imports to buy a gift for Vijay’s friend. Since it was a house warming party we thought of giving them a flower vase. So, we were looking for nice vases and were trying different combination of vases and flowers. At a point when we are trying to reach some flowers placed a little higher, there comes a good looking sales girl.

Sales girl: are you finding everything alright?

Me: we were trying to reach those flowers for this vase (showing the vase to her).

Sales girl: those flowers??? They don’t go well with your vase. I will show some thing better. Is it for Diwali?

Shocked were we… an American not just knowing about Diwali but also knowing when it is falling is quite uncommon. Impressed with her…

Vijay: it is for a house warming party for my friend

Sales girl: well… then I guess you don’t know the colors of the walls to select a vase which will go with them. Then I will look for something which is simple and can go with any color. What is your price range?

Vijay: around 50 bucks.

She went and looked for some thing in our price range. She tried all the combinations of vases and flowers and finally came up with the best. They had this weird sale of 20% off on the highest priced item. The vase, flowers and some leaves all together amounted $47. It was all very beautiful with the leaves in fall colors. We were quite satisfied on finding something lovely in our price range. Very much impressed with sales girl we finalized the vase. Suddenly she comes up with a new offer.

Sales girl: you get a $20 gift card if you can bill more than $50.

Our faces lit up. We were very glad and complacent with what we got, still we became greedy. We were calculating… a $20 gift card!!!… that would make our beautiful vase just $30??? How could we resist our avidity???

YES!!! We screamed… couldn’t control our amusement. She comes up with some more flowers and leaves and arranges them well in the vase. I was wondering if this added any beauty to the vase. But who cares… my vase is becoming cheaper. This was fine with us until and unless the extra flowers loot the beauty of the vase.

Then we go to the counter and the bill amounts to nearly $60. We paid the bill and then she handles us the gift card. Acute disappointment on receiving it… It was a $20 off on purchase of $50 or above for the month of November. One more lesson on this deals. Or should I say one more feather in the cap ;)