Sticking it to Lowe's

As my faithful reading public knows by now, I bought a new dishwasher a couple of weeks ago, doing my part to stimulate the economy. I paid full price (ugh!) but it was an excellent price for the brand, features, and exterior finish, IMO.

So Lowe's is advertising 10% off all major appliances over $299 this weekend only. And they always offer a 30-day price adjustment. If you find the same model for less money within 30 days of purchase, you get the difference back. Cha-ching. Let me preface the rest of this story by saying I normally do not shop at Lowe's. I find them high-priced, high-falootin' (sp?), and can never get anyone to wait on me. Plus, they tried to screw me one time out of a $10 gift card, by taking a few cents off multiple items that I bought. Then when I tried to return one of the items, all of a sudden the $10 gift card was not worth $10, but $8.47 or something. Believe me, you'd have thought they screwed me out of $200 for all the hell I raised. I also know of 2 people who have had bad experiences with Lowe's, getting a floor model of a major appliance delivered rather than a brand new one. But they had the dishwasher I wanted, so I made an exception.

Well, being Memorial Day weekend, the state has decided to make it a tax-free weekend for purchasing energy-efficient items. A good weekend to purchase energy star large appliances, insulation, radiant barriers, that sort of thing. My new dishwasher was energy star rated, so it counted as a tax-free purchase. So this morning, I headed to Lowe's to not only get my 10% difference back, but to save the tax as well.

The clerk is a jerk. Remember that. It's always true, no matter what. Nothing they do makes sense, it's only done because "that's our policy" or because "the manager said so." That's not good enough reasons for me to just blindly follow their policy. You get taken advantage of doing that. So I go to Customer Service, and tell the clerk I wanted by price adjustment refunded plus the sales tax. She says she can't refund the sales tax because it was not purchased this weekend. True, i said, but if she refunded me the entire purchase, then re-rang it on sale (10% off), then tax would not be owed because it was rung up this weekend. I could see in her face this made sense, but that it went against the ingrained protocol of her clerkhood. She said "well, that's just a way around the system." I said "yes, there always is a way, isn't there?"

Well, she couldn't think of another way to give me my 10% credit back without refunding the original purchase (and tax), then re-ringing up the dishwasher. And we know what that means: no tax, since their registers were programmed to not charge tax on major appliances this weekend. So I walked out of there about $100 richer and quite satisfied with myself. Then I spent $94 of that windfall on a tank of gasoline. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.