Unearned money

After rushing downstairs to check powerball.com for last night's winning numbers, I was disappointed to find out I only picked a SINGLE correct number. Since the jackpot was at $131 million, I had bought a ticket, since I never buy when the jackpot is less than 9 digits long. Man! I had that jackpot half spent already, too.

Speaking of unearned gains, gather round while I tell you about something that happened over Christmas.

How many times have you had to return something at a store and since you lost the receipt when you washed your pants or stuck your gum into it or, on the rare occassion, was forced to do the unthinkable when you discover that the public toilet you're in has run out of toilet paper... and you REALLY wished you would have bought more stuff to generate a longer receipt! Anyway, I digress. Well, you know how most stores' policy states that if you don't have a receipt you only can get back the lowest amount they've sold it for. You paid full price but went on clearance today for 90% off... you only get back 10% of your purchase. I'm sure you've all fallen victim to this scam at one time or another. Well, for Christmas, I got Margaret a sweater online from a major clothing store. (I'm not putting their name on this post in case they google their own name and find out about this and seek me out. For a clue, profits for the RED sweater are earmarked for AIDS in Africa.) When I bought the sweater, I was hesitant because it cost $265. I finally talked myself into getting it for Margaret, but before I checked out of the online store, I googled "[name of store] coupon." Lo and behold, there was not one but TWO applicable coupons I could use. One was free shipping if my purchase exceeded $50. No problem there. And the other was 25% if my purchase was over $100 and I used their store credit card. Cha-ching! That tipped the scales and I made the plunge, getting the sweater for $198 and not even having to pay shipping. I suffered some guilt over having screwed $67 dollars from AIDS relief efforts in Africa, but that was trumped by knowing I got a good deal. On Christmas, when Margaret opened it, she loved it, but soon discovered that the cashmere was so thick that it overheated her even in UTAH! Maybe that was the point... when you wore the sweater you would think of the sweltering heat in Africa, even if you were currently living in Greenland. If she got overheated in Utah, you can bet she'd get incinerated in Oregon, so she decided to take it back. We went to the physical store in Salt Lake and told them we'd like to return the sweater but we didn't have the receipt. The guy told us the spiel about lowest price, etc., etc. and we told him that if it was under $198 that we'd wait and bring it back in Oregon where the receipt was. He called and told us that the lowest price was $265 and that's how much he'd refund. I repeated that I'd only paid $198 for it and he just said, most of the times the policy works in our favor, but sometimes it doesn't. He proceeded to process the refund, even trying to give us back Utah sales tax, which would have been another $17. I asked him to not refund that... that was going too far. So now, rather than screwing AIDS relief out of $67, I screwed them out of $134! Is that bad?

Of course the refund came in the form of store cradit, so we're going to have to find $265 worth of merchadise there. And there's only so many t-shirts you can buy before you say "enough."