A Few Hours and $1650.37 Later…
January 17th, 2009 | 11:21 pm | Posted in Finance, Smurfling | 8 Comments »
Today’s shopping trip pretty much went as planned.
We didn’t get to bring anything home, except Chomps the Alligator, like we’d hoped but we picked out and paid for all of the furniture for the new person coming sometime in May 2009.
The crib was on sale. Real bargain at $299.99, huh?
I guess when you compare it to the two dresser type pieces coming in at a cool $519.99 each, the crib was a bargain.
The experience was a lot less stressful than regular furniture shopping. Though you could tell the staff were earning a commission, we weren’t “hunted” or “stalked” the entire time we were in the store.
In fact, I don’t think I even had to utter, “No thanks, we’re just looking…”
But… once the sale was imminent, the up-sell pitch was on…
Going in, I knew it would be a good idea to buy the “ADULT RAILS” that allow you to turn the crib into a full size bed. The salesperson didn’t have to work very hard to get us to jump on that.
It was the mattress that they got us on.
Included in the sale, we were “awarded” a free mattress.
Cool! Well, wait…
He took us over to show it to us and, well, let’s just say that it looked like a couple of pizza boxes stuffed in a white garbage bag. I wouldn’t want to sleep on it.
Next to it, though, was a stunning marketing display for a designer Staph Guard mattress. The display listed all of it’s high end features like… square corners. OMG!
No joke. That was a “feature”.
The crazy part is that in every book I’ve read, babies and square corners go together like drinking and driving. This is apparently not true when it comes to mattresses. I swear, I should write my own book…
We asked for a moment to discuss…
And then we had a pretend conversation, you know, like they do when you’re buying a car and the sales rep claims that they need to ask the manager if they can accept your offer…
“Bruins are looking pretty good this year, huh?”
“Yes, I’d say that they’ve got a decent chance at the cup this season…”
Cutting to the chase, we’d been up-sold. Big time.
We were buying the more expensive “Staph Guard” mattress for the crib.
Ch-ching!
So, though it was “on sale”, the actual cost of the crib, plus the side rails, plus the mattress, and minus the mattress credit was $509.98.
Hmmm… not such a deal. I’m not sure the bed I sleep in cost that much.
And I’m all but positive that my mattress isn’t protecting me from a staph infection.
Seriously, how does that work?
Are we going to die with horrible sores all over our bodies?
Anyway, we charged the whole thing but thankfully I’ve got enough in savings now to cover it. Not sure I’ll go that route, but it’s good to know that it’s there if needed.
And, on the bright side, this gets the BIG expensive items out of the way early…
January 20th, 2009 at 1:33 am
Yikes! Babies can really be expensive, but they don’t have to be. Best wishes with buying the remainder of your purchases! You’ll be able to save on clothes (get used, seriously) and diapers (drugstore deals and coupons are your friend). Or, go cloth and save even more!
January 21st, 2009 at 11:10 am
Hey smurf,
My son was born two days ago, so I have a little first hand experience, although I’m a bit sleep deprived, so disregard the spelling.
Nice job on the crib, and don’t worry about being sucked into the mattress deal.
My best piece of advice is that you should just accept the fact that you’re going to buy a bunch of stuff that you’re never going to use.
Go with the disposable diapers. At 3am this morning it was nice to be able to just throw that sucker in the trash and get on with the deal.
If you’re like me, your wallet is wrapped up tighter than a drum, and at this point in the game you’re worried about saving pennies, which is good. Get all your big purchases made now.
When that kid shows up, something changes and you don’t care about money any more. You could throw thousand dollar bills all over the hospital floor and you wouldn’t even care.
All I can say is that smiles and boxes of chocolates will go a long way with the nurses, and for some weird reason they don’t mind changing diapers.
Good luck!
-Grant
TheCornerOfficeBlog.com
PS: Don’t skimp on the chocolates!
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