Retail Experiences – Page 3 – Not Content to Crawl

Bath & Body Works

Posted onJuly 18, 2022July 18, 2022

Sometimes I want to buy all of the things, which is counter to my desire to own less stuff in general. And sometimes it makes me really happy to get new stuff even though I really don’t want to be that way.

In any case, here’s what I got at Bath & Body Works today after I learned their rewards program is changing on Wednesday, July 20th. Instead of getting a free item after spending $75, you’ll now have to spend $100, and I was only $7.50 away from $75 so I wanted to snag my free item before they moved the goal post.

Therefore, last night I placed an order online for in-store pickup since the soaps were on sale for $3.25 each (and it’s a good thing I did since the sale ended yesterday). I got two White Tea & Sage and one Kitchen Lemon since both scents are neutral ones that can be used any time of the year. I also had a coupon for a free body care item $15.50 or less. Of course one of my favorite scents, Marshmallow Pumpkin Latte, was $16.50 so I couldn’t get that. Warm Vanilla Sugar will have to do, then.

I got a text this morning at 8:39 saying my order was ready for pickup. That didn’t seem right to me, so I called the store. Surprisingly, an employee picked up, but they confirmed what I already suspected – they weren’t open yet. Luckily I thought to confirm that or I’d have been pissed showing up to a closed store. I guess they prepped the pickup orders early which prompted an automated text/email. They really should add some verbiage to them saying to check to make sure the store is open first, or program the system to delay sending the notification until the store is open.

I got there at 10 am when they opened and saw that Halloween stuff just came out. After picking up my order, I refreshed my app a few times until it updated with my free item reward so I could get this cute glow-in-the-dark skulls candle holder.

I’m pretty sure this is the first home décor item I’ve purchased this year. Wow, I made it an entire six months without buying a decorative item. Halloween stuff always gets me, though!

I also picked up a new wallflower scent – wicked vanilla woods – to try. I hope it’s good! I had to smell the body lotion to get an idea of the scent and sometimes the wallflowers don’t end up smelling the same. I already have two wallflowers I want to take back and exchange for a better scent once the fall ones are completely out.

Here’s my total “haul”.

I spoke to a very nice employee who helped me with the free reward situation (I wasn’t sure if it would appear immediately or whether I could use it right away) and let me know my favorite scent, Honeycrisp Apple, should be showing up in stores next month.

This place really knows how to drive demand. Every single day it seems there’s a new limited-time sale, and they restrict scent availability to certain times of the year so you can’t stock up on your favorites in a single shopping trip. If you like seasonal scents they have a guarantee you’ll be shopping there at least 3-4 times annually. Who else does this? I’m pretty sure you can get any Yankee Candle scent at any time of the year.

It’s my fault for giving them my business, though. I can’t help myself, especially when everything I get is actually free thanks to gift cards I get via Discover’s cashback bonus rewards. I have a problem.

No Lemonade or Tomatoes

Posted onJuly 7, 2022July 7, 2022

There’s a reason I rarely go shopping by myself – I hate it. Joe is the cart guy and I can focus better when I’m not worried about the cart at the same time. That being said, Tuesday I decided to make a trip to Aldi to grab a few things for dinner. I kept my shopping list short so I wouldn’t have to bother with a cart.

On the way home I stopped at Starbucks because they are offering 50% off iced drinks every Tuesday in July. I ordered my favorite – iced green tea lemonade. Imagine my surprise when I got home and there was NO lemonade flavor at all.

Tasted like an iced green tea instead. I checked my mobile order and the sticker on the side of the drink and both said iced green tea lemonade, so I don’t know if the barista forgot the lemonade, or like Dunkin, Starbucks is being stingy with the flavoring now.

Needless to say, I had to add some powdered lemonade mix to make it taste better. Since I already have Starbuck’s tea, what was the point of even going there? I originally planned on going every Tuesday but I’m not going to bother now.

Also, the tomato I bought at Aldi disappeared. The bag didn’t tip over in my car, but I checked all over just in case and it wasn’t there. I didn’t find it anywhere in the house either, so I guess I somehow left it in the cart the cashier threw it in after scanning it?

OhSnap Grip

Posted onFebruary 17, 2022

In May 2020 I backed the OhSnap Phone Grip on Kickstarter and received it in October of the same year. I loved it! It’s comfortable to wrap around my finger, it can be used as a stand, and it’s magnetized so the phone can stick to metal items.

Unfortunately, less than a year later, in April 2021, cracks started forming in the corners of the plastic piece in the middle. I went to their site and saw they have a lifetime guarantee, so I filled out the form to request a replacement.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from them stating they couldn’t afford to replace it for free and offered me a 20% off coupon instead. That really pissed me off, and I wrote back to them that if they aren’t going to honor a lifetime guarantee then they should at least take that verbiage off their site. They wrote back with another sob story and completely missed my point. I had to explain to them once more I’m more angry that they won’t remove the guarantee from their site than I am about them unwilling to replace their inferior product.

Anyway, I happened to look at their site recently and there’s still a guarantee on there, but only for their new and improved version which they now are asking $30 for (I paid $15 for mine).

About a month ago the corner cracked off mine and makes it a bit harder to use. The problem is I’ve yet to find a better alternative, but I really don’t like the idea of giving my money to a company that doesn’t appreciate their customers. If not for people like me they wouldn’t have had the funds to create their product in the first place, and I’m salty about how I was treated in response.

Wookie’s Portrait

Posted onOctober 28, 2021October 28, 2021

Isn’t this the cutest thing ever? It looks just like her! I am amazed by the talent of this artist.

So let me explain…

I heard that if you contact Chewy around your pet’s birthday to request a portrait they will send one for free, so I emailed them. Their response was friendly, but apologetic stating they can’t meet all requests, but to send a photo just in case, which I did.

A month passed by without anything so I figured they just weren’t going to do it, so I was intrigued when I saw that a package from them was coming in the mail as I hadn’t ordered anything. This showed up last week.

I posted her portrait to Instagram and Chewy responded!

Internet Issues, Barn Owls & Pool Parties

Posted onSeptember 20, 2021

Friday (9/17) we woke up and our internet was down. I don’t know if I wrote about it, but a few months ago after our Comcast contract expired, and they wouldn’t give us another deal, we switched our internet service to T-Mobile. It worked pretty well, although not quite as fast, but for $50 per month (no added taxes or fees), we figured it was worth trying out.

When Joe called T-Mobile they really couldn’t do much to help other than offer to send out a new device, aka trashcan (nicknamed as such by the T-Mobile internet community on Reddit).

The problem? They estimated it would be a week. Unacceptable! Joe warned them that he’d be cancelling if it took that long and they called his bluff, so he immediately contacted Comcast and sure enough, we were able to get 200 MBS for $50/month for the next 12 months, so we signed up. We have our own router and modem so it was all done online, although Joe did have to chat with someone for them to do something on the account to get it to actually work, but we were up within a half hour.

A manager at T-Mobile called around that time to say they were expediting the device but Joe explained we were cancelling and not to bother. T-Mobile ended up giving us a $25 credit for our trouble anyway, and I guess they couldn’t stop the shipment because UPS is saying we’re getting something from them today. I guess we’ll have two devices to send back to them now.

If only Comcast had given us a better rate months ago, we would have stayed with them.

I feel like T-Mobile needs to do more work on their device/service before it’s a viable alternative to cable internet. Just like with their failed T-Vision streaming cable service, which they never invested in because the user interface sucked, they are rolling stuff out that is inferior to their competitors and consumers are paying the price in frustration. It could just be a coincidence, or Apple TV being particular, but we could never watch Ted Lasso on Fridays (the night new episodes are released) under T-Mobile because halfway through an episode it would lock up and crash the Roku. We tried it Friday on Comcast and had no such issues. I think it’s still partly Apple, since none of the other streaming services ever give us issues, but it’s also T-Mobile for being too slow as well. Perhaps in a few years it will be different. I hope so, since there are a lot of rural customers who would benefit from 5G internet and we personally do not like giving our money to Comcast.

Saturday (9/18) we decided to check out the local plant nursery’s open house. Not before stopping at White Castle for breakfast, however. I got a sausage slider, but also wanted to try the chicken and waffles slider based on the description on their website:

Imagine my surprise/disappointment when what I got was this:

So of course I had to go online and air my grievance with them. We’ll see whether they reply back.

(I contacted Meijer well over a month ago to complain about the quality of their broccoli and cheese stuffed chicken (the broccoli is really hard/sharp recently) and they never bothered to acknowledge it, so hopefully White Castle is more responsive).

Barn Owl (the nursery) wasn’t too crowded when we first arrived, so we ate our breakfast in the car and then took a look around. They had a whole building of just bird houses and bird food! I ended up getting this cute hummingbird palm feeder.

I doubt I’ll get any birds to feed directly from my hand this year, but maybe next year when I’m planning on putting everything up in April. As it stands now, we’re already seeing fewer visitors to the feeder as they start their migration south. *sad*

They had live owls on display which was really cool!

Yesterday (9/19) we decided to check out the community garage sale at the nearby park. They also had a car show and craft fair going on at the same time so we figured there would be a lot to see. Not so much. Joe wasn’t very thrilled with the cars, there were hardly any craft booths, and only a few garage sale booths. With the amount of cars parked in the area you would have thought more was going on than there was. Oktoberfest in a tent further back is going on right now too, but that doesn’t open until noon and we were there just after 10 am. Needless to say, we were back at home by 10:30.

At one of the booths the owner trapped me in an impromptu demonstration of her product and forced me to take a business card. I can appreciate people wanting to sell their creations, but I really think they should ask you first. I didn’t want to be rude by walking away, so it was very uncomfortable, not to mention a waste of her time since I wasn’t interested.

A good thing came of our little excursion, though! On our way back to the car we ran into our friend D who was walking over (she lives a few blocks away from the park) to check things out and she invited us to come over for a swim later. I enthusiastically agreed knowing it was due to be very hot that day and I have been wanting to go swimming one more time before it gets too cold to do so. We went home to do some light cleaning, ran to the store to grab some snacks to bring over, and took a shower. After getting everything packed up and ready to go I went to use the bathroom and BAM, the time of the month said “SUPRISE, I’M HERE!” It couldn’t have waited just a few more hours, right?

We still had fun hanging out with our friend, but I was only able to deep my feet into the pool. She made us some cheeseburgers and we lounged on her awesome patio furniture under a big tent away from the blazing sun. It really made a difference since my weather app said it was 85 and felt like 95 yet we were very comfortable.

We interrupt this entry to display pics of our friend’s two dogs who love getting pets, particularly the all brown one.

D’s ex, a guy we used to all go to Bingo with back when they were dating, hit her up later on since he was also at the nearby park, and she invited him to stop by, so we ended our afternoon chatting with him before taking off around 6 pm so we could walk Wookie before sunset.

Speaking of, she was so unbelievably excited when we go home she was literally vibrating and panting a lot. She’s been fine being left alone for hours but this was perhaps just a bit too long for her liking (5 hours). Usually she’ll sleep when we’re gone which is what she did most of the time since I checked in our her once in awhile via the cameras. About an hour before we came home I noticed her pacing around the house, however.