Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Signed Bible

I love to haunt yardsales, thrift shops, and auctions.

I used to see lots of Bibles and often collected them to send to an organziation that ships them to other countries.  http://www.bf.org/biblenet.htm  Of course, since that time the post office has elimiated the economy shiping for M-Bags making shipment to other countries very expensive for books.

Anyway, a few years ago I found a Bible I decided to keep.  (Of course it's also missing part of the New Testament, so not complete.)

The way I remember it, I got it with a few Bibles and my mother opened it, and said, "Wow, look at all these signatures."  I looked over, and recognized all the names.  It pretty much is a "Who's Who" of the WV north district of the Church of the Nazarene from the early 80s to early 90s.  The district superintendant, visiting evangelists, missionaries, pastors of various churches.  I went to a Nazarene church for years as well as spent two years at a Nazarene college, so I recognized many of these names!

I had never heard of Bible signing before I ran across this Bible, although since I've heard it's common in a few denominations.  I have heard everything from "These people are heroes of the faith and people we should look up to" to "No person should sign a Bible because that's God's Word and humans aren't God." 

But still I think the Bible is really neat! 


There are more signatures than this, just took one photo!


Friday, April 22, 2011

My $15 headache

Coupon for $15 off any item no exceptions means no exception.

Went to a website, found an item that was $15, free shipping.  Pearl earrings.  I know that's not much for pearl earrings, but I expected them to be very tiny cultured pearls.  After all it said PEARL EARRINGS, not pearlized or "pearl look" etc.  Or at very minimum simulated pearls that looked like pearls.  (And before anyone thinks I'm living in a dream world, I bought some very tiny authentic pearl earrings once for $15 online.)

Placed an order, received my confirmation that my credit card would be billed 0.00

an about a week later these came in the mail:


Ugly.  Gaudy.  Big.  Definatley not anything that resembled pearls.  And clip ons.  (I ordered pierced)

But I thought for free, my 4 year old niece might enjoy playing dress up with them.

Then this week I open my credit card bill.  $15 charge for these.  I googled and saw this happened to a number of people.

I have my invoice where they were free.

I called the company.  I got hung up on.  I was being very nice because usually the nicer you are the more willing people are to help you.

I call my credit card company.  I was told I couldn't file a dispute beacause the item had to have cost something and they couldn't put 0.00 in their system. (Didn't think at this point to mention they were not real pearls or pierced earrings.)

So I call the company back.  The man got snippy with me.  You know sometimes how it's not what you say but how you say it?  Precisely what happened.

At different points in the phone conversation he told me I had been charged $15, $6.95, and $8.95. 

He told me I used two coupons.  (Not true.)

He told me that because I gave my credit card number when ordering (required even though it should never have been charged -- I've done this with other companies with no problem) -- he said since they had my credit card number, that was giving them the authorization to charge it in any amount they desired.  (I think not!)

He told me I could return the earrings at my expense and the $15 be credited back to my credit card within two billing cycles.

I called my credit card back, told them what happened.  They said that since they were not real pearls that was enough for "item not as described".  Also I was told there was a limit of 60 days from when the charge was made to dispute it.  I was told to return them ASAP and if the credit wasn't made quickly, call the credit card company back.

I wonder how many people they charged the coupon amount to and they never noticed it.  I know I am not the only one, and this time, while $15 is a nice chunk of change, it's the principle behind it.  Unlike what the customer service rep said, just because I placed an order and they had my credit card number did NOT mean they could charge it for an amount I didn't authorize.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Where I've been

I'm going to try to get back into blogging.

My guinea pig was sick for a while, had to hand feed him for weeks, but he has done really well and recovering nicely.  But he's taken much of time time for the last two months.  I'm hoping to get back into the habit of blogging daily again!


My guinea pig before feeding time with the eyedropper a few weeks back.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

21¢ with $2.73 back

I'm not sure how this happened.  After all, I only had two coupons, used no Extra Care Bucks, and bought stuff that was not free for me.  My total before tax was 1¢, at least that's what my receipt said! 

I bought:
Russel Stover's Vanilla Cream Egg
a bag (2.52 oz) of mini Reese's Cups
a bottle of bubbles
Citrus Coconut anti-bacterial hand sanitizer

My total came to 21 cents.

I received back $2.73 in Extra Care Bucks.


Tuesday, April 5, 2011

March shopping totals

March wasn't a great month in the grocery store for me, but was a great month in pharmacies!

In grocery stores, I found items on sale that we use a lot and I stocked up!  That's why there was such a lage amount of groceries bought in March.  I spent $225.01 and saved $85.15  Not only that, I bought a lot of fresh vegetables this month, and there are no savings on them.  In addition, I had a number of mail-in refunds where I got the purchase price back, so that savings will be counted in future months when I receive the refund checks back.  (I believe it was almost $50 in mail in refunds for the month.)

In refunds, I received $18.95.

At Walgreens, I spent $67.48 and saved $208.65.  I bought a lot of frozen food on clearance as well as about 20 packages of feminime items on clearance.  Great prices on both!

At CVS I spent $14.17 and saved $54.74.

At Dollar General I spent $3.30 and saved $13.00

So what I spent for the month was $309.96.  I saved  $364.54

I also cashed in for $25 in gift certificates to Amazon from  Swagbucks   (Very easy to earn, search engine and you can earn points to cash in for gift certificates.)

So far this year my totals are:

CVS:
spent:  $84.48   saved  $245.63

Walgreens:
spent:  $93.39  saved:  $261.75


I'm hoping to not have much spent at the grocery store in April because I did do a lot of shopping in March!