Amazing Customer Service

It was Saturday! My husband was out of town for 4 weeks and my car was in a desperate need of new tires. I drove to Wal-Mart and was told that it would be 2 hours before I can drive off with brand new rubber. Since I didn’t want to sit around and wait, I decided to go for a walk. I was walking on my way to Home Depot to check their clearance section.

Approximately 2 months prior to the day that I shopped by myself while my car was receiving new tires, my husband and I passed by the clearance section of Home Depot. Both of us noticed a beautiful facet that had a not so beautiful clearance sticker. The bright yellow sticker had the original price of $120 dollars and marked down price of $89 dollars. After doing a quick calculation in our head, we decided that $30 dollars was not enough savings for us to splurge on a new facet.

Because we liked the facet so much, during the next 2 months I periodically stopped by the Home Depot to check on the price. Unfortunately for me, the price did not budge. I asked a near by sales associate (Lisa) if she knew when the next mark down would take place. Lisa informed me that corporate controls the discount and she was not certain when they will reduce the price again. I explained to Lisa that my husband and I fell in love with the facet but not so much with the price. When I asked if I should continue checking on the item, Lisa threw a surprise at me.

I was thrilled beyond my imagination, when Lisa offered to take my phone number and give me a call if the price goes down. Without hesitation I wrote down my number and thanked my new friend for the offer. After about a week I totally forgot about the offer and a month later I was shocked when I listened to our phone messages. Lisa has called me while I was at work to tell me that the originally $120 dollars priced facets are now on sale for $29 dollars.

The next morning before work I made a pit stop at Home Depot. Our favorite facet was still there, but without a new sticker. The same ole yellow and boring sticker occupied the beautiful package of our future to be facet. I price checked and indeed the price was $29 dollars. My husband told me to buy 3 packages if they had it and I bought the last 3 facets for $29 dollars each. On my way to work I was beaming not only because I snatched a great deal, but also because I walked away from the store with the greatest customer service experience. Lisa didn’t have to take her time to give me a call and inform me that the facets have been marked down again. I am sure it is not part of her job description, but because she went above and beyond her job duty it resulted in a happy customer.

To show my appreciation to Lisa, as soon as I left work that day, I called and talked to the store manager at the Home Depot. I wanted him to know what a wonderful experience I had and that Lisa just blew me away with her customer service. The manager was happy to hear the good news, but I didn’t stop there. As soon as I came home I dialed corporate customer service and asked if my compliment can be recorded and passed on to the upper management. The gentleman was thrilled to help me and it is now my hope that Lisa will receive recognition for her thoughtfulness.
This week I want to encourage you to take a few minutes of your time and find someone to compliment. It only takes a few minutes to call corporate office and give a compliment. Not only will you be able to bless someone, but you too will be blessed.

A recipe for a disaster

I love drinking smoothies, but I have yet to find a good smoothie recipe. So I gave up searching for the perfect smoothie and decided to make my own. I pulled out frozen blueberries, canned pineapple, tropical juice and yogurt. After everything was blended I decided to taste it. The taste…well… it was ok. I figured if I was very thirsty it would taste fantastic. So I decided to make a big (and I mean a big) batch and freeze the smoothie in freezer safe cups.

I was so excited that I would save lots of time on a hot day making a smoothie, that I just couldn’t believe on how homemaker like I have become. Well, I went to pour the “almost ok tasting smoothie” into a cup and ….. well… you can see for yourself. I spent the next 30 minutes scrubbing the floors and white cabinets. Apparently didn’t screw the pitcher very tight and it resulted in the smoothie covered floor and cabinets.

I need your help! Do you have a good smoothie recipe that you would love to share?

Saving Money on Gifts

 

Before you know Christmas will be right around the corner and I do not know about you, but I enjoy spending time with my family, listening to Christmas music and celebrating the birth of my Savior. However, it is easy to feel stressed out when you start seeing Christmas display in the stores in October. In order to enjoy the Christmas season I try to do all the shopping through out the year.

My favorite website for great deals and free samples is hip2save. I have purchased several presents for friends and family because the deal was too good to pass. Some of my family members are very hard to buy presents for so we resort to gift cards. Did you know that you can acquire free gift card? You can read here on how I manage to get free gift cards by simply taking my time to transfer my prescriptions from store to store. For example, this month I transferred my prescription to Kmart. I paid $5.10 for my medication and in return received $25 gift card to Kmart. Because I do not shop too often at Kmart, I most of the time just redeem the card for a retailer or a restaurant gift card. I can then give the gift card for example to Macaroni Grill as a gift.

My other favorite way to earn free money is by using Swagbucks. You can redeem the point for all kinds of gift cards ranging from fragrance.net store to Starbucks gift cards and Amazon.com. In no time, I earned $50 gift card to Amazon.com that I can later redeem for a gift for Christmas.

Now that I have shared my favorite ways to make Christmas less expensive and stress free, I would like to hear from you. How do you save money on Christmas presents?

Let your dishes air dry

Growing up in Belarus the dishwasher concept was foreign to us. We always washed dishes by hand and you can only imagine what it was like to wash dishes after a Birthday party. No paper plates or plastic utensils could be simply thrown away, because not one store carried this luxury. Celebrating someone’s birthday meant that you serve lots and lots of food on the best dishes that you had at your home. And I remember my grandmother would start washing the dishes as soon as people stopped eating so she could get a head start and be done by the time the last guest left the house. When I moved to the US I always preferred doing dishes by hand.

And when Daniel and I got married…well….the dishwasher was our best friend. We were busy and hand washing art was lost until we started our tightwad journey. I began to research ways to save money on electricity and I found out that dishwasher sucks up a good bit of energy. So the lost art of washing dishes by hand became by new best friend. I must admit that there are days that life gets so busy and we do resort to dishwasher, however instead of letting the dishwasher dry our dishes (that is where a lot of your energy is drained), we open the door and let the dishes air dry. The result is that on a busy day we still manage to reserve electricity and enjoy machine washed clean dishes.

Do you air dry your dishes?

Asking for a discount

I love bargain shopping because it gives me unexplainable thrill. As a little girl my mama always taught me to never be afraid of asking question. Her argument was that is you do not ask, you will never know the answer. When my husband and I started our tightwad journey (my poor husband didn’t have much choice), I decided to try my mama’s approach of simply asking for a discount.

My very first attempt to saving money by asking for a discount was in a meat department at a local grocery store. Thinking that the store would love to have my business, I picked up several packages of meat and asked if a department manager can give me a discount. He said yes, and that was the starting point of my asking game. I felt confident and have used this approach every since. Do I get rejected? Absolutely! But I just brush it off and pretend like it never happened.

Luckily I didn’t have to face rejection at Lowe’s when I spotted a beautiful chandelier with a clearance sticker. Every 6 months Lowe’s switches its light fixture display, which means lots of older models of light fixtures are on sale for very cheap. Our local Lowe’s store just made the switch and the next one will be December/January. A few weekends ago I was a little bored and decided to go shopping by myself. I walked through the isles until I saw “the one”, the beautiful chandelier, which was marked down from $200 to $50. Although the deal seemed too good to pass, I wasn’t quite ready to give the store my $50 dollars.

I decided to use my mama’s approach again and ask a sales associate if the price was final. A sales clerk informed me that the manager of the lighting department is at lunch and he will be the one to decide. I asked if the manager was nice and liked to give out discounts. The sales associate smiled and told me that the manager was too nice. Since I wasn’t in a hurry, I made the executive decision to wait for the manager. Five minutes later my conversation with a manager went like this.

Me: Hi! I hear you are the guy with a magic marker who gives big discounts.


The manager (mgmt) laughed.

Mgmt: Who told you that?

Me: I just hear that from your co-workers. (a co-worker picked from the corner and smiled)

Mgmt: they are not telling you the truth.

Me: Well, I was kind of wondering if you can mark down this chandelier a little bit more.

Mgmt: How about I will sell it to you for $30?

Me: Deal! (I was doing a happy dance in my mind)

So instead of paying $200 for a light fixture, I ended up paying $30 dollars plus tax. If I would have never asked for a further discount, I would have always wondered “what if”. But by simply asking a discount, I received a beautiful light fixture and a great deal of savings!

Have you had any success in asking for a discount?

Lead Me to the Cross

Last week I shared with you my personal story of receiving a shoe box. Today I would like to share a story that I came across in the Operation Christmas Child magazine about a year ago.

"While distributing Operation Christmas Child shoe box gifts in a village in Ghana, a member of out National Leadership Team noticed the thickly calloused feet of a young boy. "Please, God, let this boy receive a pair of shoes in his box!" the woman prayed. The boy had never owned a pair of shoes and walked barefoot on a six-mile round trip to school and back to his home each day. When the child opened his box, he found, not just one pair of shoes, but two pair. And both sets of shoes were just his size! The volunteer rejoiced when she saw that God had placed the perfect gift into the hands - and onto the feet - of this needy child." (article from OCC magazine)

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights..." James 1:17

Tightwad's Savings

This week has been pretty slow for me in terms of couponing. Since Daniel was still at the military camp, I didn’t have to buy much for myself. And the best part, I only shopped at one store. Ten pounds bag of potatoes at Ingles was on sale for $2.50 and since we love eating potatoes at our house, I thought that the price was right for the purchase. I then decided to buy 4 boxes of drink mixes to send to my dad in a care package. They were on sale B1G1 and I had coupons for the mixes, which made the drink powder very inexpensive. Olive oil was B1G1 and I also had a coupon for it, so I paid $1+ for the oil. Finally I redeemed a coupon for a free frozen meal and enjoyed it at work the following day.

On Saturday, I received a letter from Newman’s Own with coupons for free box of organic fig cookies. My husband loves them and I was able to buy a box to send it for him to enjoy at the military camp. Finally I picked some breakfast items like eggs and livermush. All in all the week was slow, but the break from couponing was nice.

Total spent: $11.36

Total saved: $30.27