I went to HD today and first checked with the Customer Service department about their match less 10% policy. He asked me exactly what product I was referring to. I showed him the printout from Menards and he asked, "Do we have this in stock? Yes. "Then all you have to do is show this to the cashier when you checkout. We do it all the time." I smiled.
Within the cabinet, appliances, etc area, there's a small stand with the Aspect tiles. We had figured a 3 to 1 ratio with long grained stainless being the "3" and short grained champagne being the "1". We needed 35 sq ft to do everything. (At HD prices, that's almost $700.00) With the 3-1 ratio, that means I needed 27 boxes of LONG STAINLESS and 9 boxes of SHORT CHAMPAGNE. They only had 26 stainless. I took them all.
When I go to checkout, I tell the cashier, who knows me, that I have a price match item. (This is the first time I've done this.) She seems unfazed. She goes through the items and tries to complete the transaction and suddenly the cash register blocks her. MANAGER APPROVAL. I see it on the screen.
She calls a young guy over and asks him to approve it. He starts pushing icons on the screen then walks away. I think we're done. Then the cashier calls him back.
There's a problem.
He comes back, acting frustrated, like it didn't work and he'd have to do it over again. Then he looks at the discount and freaks out! "What's this? This doesn't make sense. How can this be right?"
I told him with the price match savings, the boxes that normally cost almost $20 would be a bit less then $12. He looked confused. "I need to call Rick," he says, (or whatever the superior's name was) and he walked away to a phone.
He returned, still frustrated, and punched a lot of icons on the computer screen and asked me to swipe my card. "Oh, I'm sorry, I see you already did that." Then up came the screen for me to sign on that piece of plastic that has now replaced our actual signatures, like in ink. I'm actually getting that image close to my real signature, I kid myself.
Then I walk out, knowing I just paid about 60% of MSRP, and few stores deviate from MSRP, unless you buy in bulk, then they cut about a dollar off. Whoopee...
Anyway, I got them home and told the SO the story. Then we played around with designs until we realized we needed more champagne tiles that were of the LONG version and maybe even some stainless that were of the SHORT version. So we'll go back tomorrow and get the same deal. Whatever we don't use, HD will take them back and sell them, for a nice profit.
I kind of like feel like Cinderella.
