THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

And we’ve broken even! All but 2 of my rebates have been received by the rebate folks (the 2 that I just mailed in earlier this week). Of those 56 rebates, 48 of them are in “valid” stages, which from my experience means that the check is definitely in the mail.

Of the 58 rebates, 36 of them (including the 2 printer ones which should be accepted no problem) were immediately accepted as valid. 22 of them were initially marked invalid for various reasons, ranging from stupid to realistic. I have been on an email campaign over the past few days and not once have I even had to explain myself. I just email asking the default question radio button which is

“I checked the status of my rebate and it states that my rebate is invalid. What do I need to do to receive my rebate?”

and in a few hours / days I get an email saying something along the lines of

“Thank you for your rebate inquiry. You are a valued McAfee customer, so we are pleased to inform you that we have updated your record. Your rebate submission is now valid. The rebate check should be mailed in the next 4-6 weeks.”

I’m doing them one by one (probably for no good reason, but no need to rock the boat), and I have gotten through 14 of them, meaning only 8 remain invalid (all McAfee). I fully expect all 8 of those to swing to the good in the next few days or so.

So, as I mentioned earlier, the rebate I just got (an upgrade rebate on McAfee VirusScan + for $20.00) put me at $1260 in rebates that are marked as valid. As you may or may not remember, my initial cash outlay was $1,256.49, so I now have officially made money on this deal. Well, I guess I still have to wait for the checks to arrive but I’m not really worried about that.

The 10 rebates (8 invalid and the 2 printer ones not received) are for $375, so my final total should be a profit of $378.51. Then let the eBaying commence!!!

Yes folks it’s time for some laptop updates. I have now sent in all 58 rebates (I sent the last 2 in today). Because I mailed them in a few chunks, some of them have made it to the processing center, while some are still being “processed”. It’s odd in some regards because in some cases, I sent in multiple rebates at the exact same time, and some of them are processed and some are not. I wonder what goes on in the evil realm of “Parago”

So, there were 58 rebates that I have applied for, totalling $1635.00. Some of them I felt like I might not get, due to there only being so many “original” UPCs to go around, but I felt it was worth a 41 cent flier. Here’s where I stand, as of now:

• Checks Received: 0 rebates for $0 - this is normal; they usually take awhile.
• Validated:30 rebates for $845 - once they are in this state, then it means that the check is in the mail (so to speak).
• Rebates not received (processed) yet:14 rebates for $485
• Invalid:14 rebates for $405

Of the 14 rebates that are marked as invalid:

• 5 for $85 are Missing Confirmation Email - this is complete crap as I bought the stuff in-store not online, so I don’t have a confirmation email. But, this is how the rebate companies make money - they deny this, and catch more people that either just take it or forget to fight it. This should get easily overturned when I call to complain
• 6 for $170 are Missing UPC (or similar) - I think I should be able to get most of these, if my past experience with rebates is any indication
• 3 for $150 are Missing Proof of Upgrade - Should be able to get these too.

UPDATE: I emailed one about the Missing Confirmation Email and in 20 minutes or so, lo and behold I get a response saying that because I’m a “loyal and valued customer” they have validated my rebate!! Looks like my theory is right - if you complain, they figure you have the information and so it’s not worth their time to fight it out with you.

Went to the store last night, and one of the items on the list was cottage cheese. Get back to the dairy section and voila, big sign saying Kroger Sour Cream, Dips, and Cottage Cheese, 16 oz, 4/$5. But there’s no cottage cheese in that display. So I go over to the main area where the cottage cheese is, and it’s all listed at $1.85.

I ask the friendly neighborhood Kroger employee which is the cottage cheese that’s 4/$5, and he has no clue and vaguely points to the 16 oz stuff. So I take that, knowing full well it’s going to scan at $1.85. As I take it I sing a little song to myself - “Free, free, free cottage cheeeeese”

Sure enough it does ring up $1.85, and so I head to customer service. I explain things and the CS rep calls back. The person back there must have been looking at the sign near the cottage cheese and says it’s marked $1.85, so I offer to take the CS lady back to show her. We walk back and sure enough it’s 4/$5.

So we go back to Customer Service and thanks to Kroger’s Scan Right guarantee, I get a full refund of $1.85. In other words free, free, freeeeeeee cottage cheese.

Sometimes in the couponing world you just gotta fight for your right (to party). Practice on easy times like this when you’re clearly right, so that you build up confidence to fight in more gray areas.

So I have suspected nefarious deeds of Kroger for quite some time now, but it was only today that I was able to catch them in the act. Unfortunately I did not CATCH them catch them, IYKWIM. I have no proof other than my memory.

If you shop at Kroger (or a Kroger-owned store, which are many), you are familiar with their yellow sale tags. Or I should say “sale” tags, as many of them are things like Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, regularly $1.85, this week “on sale” for $1.79!!! (actual tag from this week)

So, these yellow tags have dates on them. So for instance that goldfish “sale” says Price good through 12/31/07 (I think - something like that anyways). I assume that they do that so that they don’t have to change the tags every week - they can just leave that one up there. But they don’t just leave it up there - I guarantee that when goldfish go on sale in a few weeks for 3/$4 or something, that they’ll take down that tag that is supposedly good through 12/31 and put up a new tag for that week.

And when they are lowering the prices, I don’t really have a problem with it. But now that we have the backstory, allow me to mention what happened this week.

Starting last week, Kroger started a promotion where if you buy 15 participating products, you get $5 off your order. This has been a pretty good deal, allowing me to stock up on things like tortillas, refried beans, spaghetti sauce, tomato soup, and Kleenex, among other things. While I was in the store Tuesday night, I was wandering through the aisles and noticed that Pepperidge Farms frozen products were 50% off and also part of that sale. Garlic bread was on sale for $1.09, and one of the participating products. When I got home, I saw that there were .55/1 coupons around, so I ordered some. Since Kroger will double .55 coupons up to $1, it would make the garlic bread 9 cents each, and buying 15 would get me $5, so it would be a moneymaker. I checked the price and it said “Promotion good till 9/16/07).

So I ordered the coupons. Had the deal only been good last week, I wouldn’t have, because since it was already Tuesday and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get the coupons in time. But “PROMOTION GOOD TILL 9/16/07!!!”, so away I went. Sure enough, the coupons came last night and I went off to Kroger.

But when I got there, the garlic bread was $1.99. The tag now says Promotion good through 10/31 (or some future date - again I forget what it was exactly). They switched the tag on me!!

Now, it is possible that they could claim a loophole that the PROMOTION itself IS still going on, so the tag last week wasn’t a lie, since it said nothing about the price, just the promotion (buy 15 get $5). But I think that this is certainly shady, and possibly illegal. If I had some sort of proof about this (like if I had taken a picture of the price before), I might bring it up to someone. But alas, I do not. And I don’t know how I could ever even prove something like this, unless I go taking pictures of tags that MIGHT change. But I definitely will be wary of sale tags that claim to go further than one week out.

Anyone want any garlic bread coupons? Because, to paraphrase the immortal Ned Ryerson, I sure as heck-fire am not paying 65.7 cents for a loaf of garlic bread.

I’m not. Well, I mean I guess I am. But not quite like I have been in previous years. I’ve always enjoyed football, and the past few years have spent most Sundays watching several games while following along with my fantasy teams.

But, after a recent lesson on keeping the Sabbath Day holy, and some thinking, I’ve decided that I’m not going to watch any football games on Sunday. This kind of goes along with our whole “No TV” policy, although we DO have a little portable TV so I could watch if I wanted to.

I talked with Carolyn about whether or not it would be appropriate to ask God for my fantasy football team to win the Super Bowl as a condition of my not watching TV on Sunday, and our consensus was that no, no it would not

It’s interesting how it’s all come full circle. As a kid, I was not allowed to watch TV on Sundays, a policy I found very annoying. So, naturally, when I left home, that was one of the first things I do. I remember watching my first Super Bowl in my dorm room at UC (49ers over Chargers). And now, here I am… I will let you know how it goes…

My co-worker Kerry (not to be confused with my sister Kerry) and I spent some time at lunch today filling out rebates. We got 13 of them done and mailed off, so coupled with the 7 easy rebates I already did, that’s 20 down (and 39 more to go)

I went down to a UC football game last night. It was a lot of fun. Originally I thought that this was the first college game that I’ve been to since I was in the band, but upon further review, I think that I went to a game or two with Carolyn, but still, it’s been nearly 10 years since I’ve been to one.

Like I said, it was a lot of fun. It usually is when your team wins by 31 points! I went with my co-worker Randy. We had met up with a guy who goes to church with me, who hooked us up with $5 student guest tickets. Unfortunately we got separated before the game and Randy and I couldn’t find him when we went to sit down.

Also we got us some Bearcat bobbleheads! Apparently they were giving them away somewhere, but we didn’t get any. I told Randy that we’d be able to score some after the game, but he was doubtful. But alas, after the game they let everyone down on the field, so we went down, and there was a big stack of them sitting there, so we snagged a few.

So a few weeks ago I got some poison ivy. It was bad times. I got it on a Wednesday, and by Friday it was starting to show. Over the weekend we figured out it was poison ivy, and by that time I figured I would call the doctor first thing Monday morning to get it taken care of.

So I call on Monday morning and they look me up and the lady I talked to told me because I’ve never actually been IN to see the doctor, that I couldn’t get in - they apparently only see new patients on certain days and there’s like a month wait. So even though we transferred our whole family’s records over there 2-3 years ago and everyone else in my family has been seen there tons of times, that didn’t matter.

Armed with that excitement, I drove myself up to the urgent care and saw the doctor there. They shot me up with something and gave me a prescription for a steroid. That worked out very well (plus I suddenly started hitting TONS of home runs!) and the swelling went down. But towards the end of the week I started getting a rash and bumps all over more of my body.

I figured the steroid just wore off or something, so I knew I’d have to go back in to the doctor. I knew I still couldn’t get in to see my family doctor, but I figured that I’d just call them to make an appointment for a physical or something so at least that way the next time I actually WAS sick, I could get right in. But when I called them, they looked me up with my name / SSN / birth-date and the lady said that I was in the system and they had a chart on me. So I got in for an appointment the next day.

4:00 or so the next day I drive in to the doctor’s office and sign in. The receptionist calls me over and apparently there is some sort of problem with my chart - i.e. it doesn’t REALLY exist. At this point I was not really sure whether or not I had been to this doctor or not. Like I said it’s been 2-3 years since I’ve had to go into the doctor and so I couldn’t remember one way or the other. Of course, at this point, sitting in the waiting room, I certainly wasn’t going to ADMIT to them that I had never been there (even if I was sure), because I was afraid that they would just be like “Ooh suerie you can’t be seen”. So I was kind of vague, though really I couldn’t just remember, and without being sure one way or the other, like I said, I wasn’t going to admit to anything. So this receptionist starts kind of badgering me about it like “Well what office did you go to” or “Which doctor did you see” and I’m all like “I’m not sure”, etc. Then she comes out with this classic line (and I quote):

“Well, maybe you need to call your mama and ask her when was the last time you went to the doctor?”

I was stunned. I think my jaw literally dropped. I said “Excuse me?!?!?”, she repeated herself, and I asked “How old do you think I am?!” She had my birthdate right in front of her so she was like Oh 30 years old. But that didn’t faze her - she said something about how she was 43 and she just had to ask her mom last week about something with immunizations. I told her I thought her tone was insulting and she gave me a fake apology.

Really a classic line. In the end, she talked to the doctor and the doctor said it was fine to see me, she gave me more Prednisone and now I am officially in the system (through the back-door).