DH is the love of my life, but he can be SUCH a pack-rat. Most of the time it's useless papers - a receipt from lunch at Hobee's from 2006, or a memo about a fire drill that was held in 2003, for example. Sometimes, though, it's a little nugget, like last week's find.
So he's cleaning out a pile or two in the Batcave (his office) and I see a pretty green display envelope. Being nosy (natch), I open it up to find a gift certificate to Tuttle. A gift certificate from his ex-wife. A gift certificate from his ex-wife from sometime before 2004. Yep; 5 years ago. And not just a gift certificate, though - a $250 gift certificate. "Sweet!" I say to him. "Hm? What? Oh, yeah," he says to me. After I roll my eyes for dramatic effect, I ask him if I could shop for him. "Sure; have a blast."
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! $250! We bought him a new suit last year to go with his new (unintentional) consultant status, but haven't done much other clothes shopping, so I was looking forward to getting him some new jeans, pants, shirts. I logged in to their website...
...and damn near cr@pped in my pants. $198 for a pair of jeans?? $245 for a cotton sweater??? Are you sh!tt!ng me? I went to the women's department, thinking that the women's clothes would be a little cheaper. HA! So I found their 'sale' section... and I do use 'sale' in quotes, because things there were still more expensive than we would pay at other stores, even Nordstrom.
I eventually found 2 pair of socks, 2 pair of pants, and a polo shirt where the total after shipping came to $249.95. Gift certificate was for $250 - cool! We'd get a nickel back! But when I tried to check out online, there was no place to enter a gift certificate number. Getting any further in the ordering process required a credit card number, so I left the order page, and instead sent an email to their customer service department, asking (1) how to use the gift card, and (2) if they could confirm that the gift certificate was still valid. (I know they're not supposed to expire, but at these prices, I wasn't going to risk it!)
I got an email back confirming that I had a valid gift certificate, and to just put the certificate number in the comments box on the ordering page. 'Okay, I'll do that tomorrow,' I thought. When I opened my next email, though, it was also from Tuttle... saying they had noticed that I put stuff in my shopping cart but left without placing the order. Perhaps a 25% off offer would make me go back and order? Perhaps... perhaps... Hell, yeah! So I went back and found one or two more things that figured in nicely with that discount and went to check out again.
It wouldn't take my 'special customer' code. So I called. The very nice lady took my order, and at the end, she read me the total I owed after applying the certificate. It was something like $175. No no no no no... When we went over each item one at a time, it turns out she was looking at paper catalog prices and I was looking at online catalog prices. When we finally reconciled everything, here's what we got:
3 pair cotton lisle socks
2 pair cotton slacks
1 genuine, authentic Lacoste polo shirt
1 silk/cotton crew sweater
Full retail price for these 7 items = $438.50 (the socks alone were $19.50 EACH!)
Total of the order at the online sale prices = $302.00
Total with the 25% discount = $226.50
Shipping = $17.95
Grand total came to $244.45. Apply the gift certificate and they'll be sending us a check for $5.55!
The clothes arrived today and they do seem to be well-made. But know this, Tuttle... For things made in China and Vietnam, your clothes are outrageously and ridiculously expensive and I will never order from you again. Ever. (Unless, of course, DH finds another gift certificate among his papers and piles....)
And now, some knitting news: I finished the back of Picchu-Picchu and cast on for the two fronts! The neat thing about this pattern is that it's a little like a bat-wing sleeve (without the '80s overtones) so you knit it at the same time you're knitting the back and fronts. That means once I'm done with the fronts, there are just 2 underarm seams and 2 three-needle bind-offs. (And picking up around the collar, but I like picking up stitches definitely more than setting in sleeves, so I'm not really counting the collar.)
I also ripped out my Diagonal Lace socks because they were 'waaaay too big around my foot. They would have given Harlot's cross-dressing Sasquatch socks a run for her money. I whacked off about 18 extra stitches (what the hell was I thinking?? On size 1 needles, I do NOT need 74 [or even 66] stitches around!). I decided to cut back to my known number - 56 - and make the instep plain, then get to the right number for the pattern up the leg. These are in the lovely and luscious Malabrigo sock yarn (thanks, KB!) in pur-pur-purple ("Violeta Africana"), and now that I have the right number of stitches on the needles, they're going faster. Another 1/2 inch or so and I'm ready to do my Bordhi increases.
I'm itching to cast on for my Cosima, but have so far resisted, knowing that I'm SOOO close on Picchu-Picchu, and am almost done with Hibito, too. This concept of finishing things... After my success with Hey Teach!, I'm really starting to groove on it...
No comments:
Post a Comment