Thursday, March 20, 2008

Whew...saved by the.... receipt?

Note to self... again... don't procrastinate!!

On the previous episode of As the Toilet Flushes...

Well, the exhaust fan in our bathroom was not working.

No, not that kind of exhaust..

We had been having alot of moisture in our bathroom, and were wanting to
get a new fan, and have some other work done. So, I went out and bought
a new fan kit at my local home improvement store. I thought this had been done
only a few months ago.

Since we are on Spring Break, I thought I'd get up and try to take the motor out of
the fan above the toilet! It came out pretty easily! However, when I opened the box
of the new one, it was the WHOLE UNIT - that needed to be installed in the ceiling.
Not really what I needed. It turns out that the same fan is in my laundry room, so I
took that motor out and put it in my bathroom, so we have a fan working in there now.

My brother suggested that I see if I can find a replacement motor by calling the company
who made it! Turns out the company is located in Phoenix, and I was able to pick one up
at a nearby hardware store! I replaced that one in my laundry room, and then
determined to return the whole unit that I had purchased.

A trip to Home Depot - it wasn't their product, should try Lowe's. Finally today I made it
to Lowe's and found that I had the receipt still in my planner. I knew I'd saved it for a reason!
The helpful customer service person scanned the box, "this item has been discontinued." Then she continues to look at the receipt - "this is from Last Year!!" but then.. "let me see what I can do." She talked to the Higher Up Muckity Muck manager type guy, and he said if the scanner recognizes the receipt, then she can still refund it to me.

Well, Praise be to the Almighty Scanner!! It recognized it, so I got my $55 something returned to my account. Then I took a look at the receipt, to see how long ago I'd actually bought it...

Sad to say.. May 2007. For Pete's sake.. I really need to stop procrastinating.
Maybe tomorrow.

4 comments:

Swami said...

Boy are you lucky they took your return! That's amazing!

When we had our masterbath ceiling fan replaced the electrician who installed it said our old one had never worked well because whoever did the work did not install the outside vent properly (it was mostly blocked) so the fan had to work extra hard to clear even normal moisture and thus burned out prematurely.

mtw said...

I've always had really good luck returning things to Lowes and Home Depot.

Last summer, I gather everything in my garage from when we started landscaping the backyard and took it all down to Lowes. I had no receipts for any of this stuff and just wanted store credit. They scanned everything I had, set aside the stuff that wasn't theirs, and credited me for the stuff that was.

Then, I took what was left to Home Depot and did the same thing (most of the remaining stuff was theirs).

In the end, I had credits of close to $200 for stuff that had been sitting in my garage or yard for a *minimum* of two years, and probably as long as four years!

Kelly M said...

One year- that's nothin'! :) Great story Amy!

Kristy said...

Ahhh, procrastination...it always gets the better of me. But it seems like it's always the really important things that we put first!