This is company I have never used before.  In my excitement to save 2% on a number of companies I chose to go through ebates.com.   I have done this in the past with Hotwire.com and it worked so perfectly, so I was not worried at all about doing this again.

I found the best deal and it was with Priceline.com.  I needed a room for 6, which I had specified.  All the companies had nearly the same price for the exact same room, so I chose the cheapest, and the best % cash back.

The Hotel I booked only has a King or 2 Doubles.  Before I booked the room I had called the hotel and asked how many could fit in a room with the breakfast and was told of the 2 room types and that yes, 6 people could fit into one of the rooms.

Once I was in and booked I had to do a double of take of what I booked.  I thought I had booked 2 doubles, but it was not.  I had actually booked a room that Embassy Suites doesn’t even list on their site or advertise and the reservation office didn’t even know they had.  After much investigation into the matter I discovered that although Priceline offered 5 different room options (for the one I booked) the Hotel only has a couple of these rooms.

I have booked a lot of hotel rooms, but never have I been so confused.

I immediately contacted Priceline.com who told me I needed to take it up with the Hotel.  The Hotel told me I needed to take it up with Priceline.  I again went back to priceline and kept getting canned messages of “sincere apologies”.   Each one saying “we don’t offer a service where you can select how many people”,  followed by “we hope your customer service was a pleasant experience”.

I had to back up and see for myself so here it is:

Priceline does NOT allow you to pick how many people you would like to put in a room.  Sure enough, if you go straight to their website that option is not available.  Why would anyone book a hotel room without specifying how many people you could put in that room??

Priceline does contract with other companies (ie, ebates, Kayak.com, BookingBuddy.com, Travelzoo.com, plus others I am sure) that do offer the service of selecting how many people you will have in that room. What they DON’T do is honor that request.

Also in my latest dealing with Hotwire.com I became aware that I could cancel the whole thing and be reimbursed.  That is very reassuring, because there are times when we make mistakes or things come up.

And last but not least the BIGGEST FAIL of all – I could have gotten the whole thing cheaper directly through the Hotel itself!!  Yep, now I am stuck with a wrong reservation, it will cost me more later.  I thought for sure these companies were saving me money every time.   Can you read the word SUCKER written across the top of my head?

I pride myself in giving pretty creative gifts.  As you can see HERE I like to make the whole thing, including the bag, part of the gift.

Today was almost the same challenge as always, the only difference is I needed to buy a baby gift.

My kids are teenagers, and all my friends have older kids too, no one is having babies right now.  I can’t even remember the last time I went to a baby shower.  Well, let me think maybe 3 or 4 years ago.

That’s fine, I knew I could search the store and find some outfits, look for a cute bag (even if it was for a 2 year old girl) that it could all go into.

Ok, let me back up just a bit and let you know, I have waited to the last minute to put this together.  Well, the last 3o minutes to be exact.

I wander the store and there is nothing…nothing at all.

I don’t even know where to look for those cute little girl bags, can it really be that hard?!?!

I seriously came up empty handed.  In my defense I did have 2 of the cutest outfits, but not the cleaver looking original bag.  I had thought ahead at least and put in a hot pink gift bag.  Wasn’t until I got to the car that I realized it was definitely recycled, like noticeably recycled.  UGH!!

So now my cleaver idea of giving a great gift at a super affordable price and making it look cute has turned into total failure.  So best I can, I manage to put it together with some (new) tissue paper and send it to the party.

By now it’s time for the shower to start, and I am minutes away from the school and I realize that I didn’t put a card or anything in it.  Seriously, now I’m a bit embarrassed. Then I get to the school and see that all the gifts need to be placed up on this table in front of 40ish people.  My HOT pink bag stuck out like a sore thumb, with all the baby pink bags wrapped either in new bags or the boxes that come with Nordstrom purchases.

This gift is for a teacher, so I quickly ran over to my son and tell him to just write on the outside of the bag.  You should have seen how cute that looked. *insert sarcasm here*

There is no picture attached to this because there was nothing to be proud of and one of those moments I don’t want to remember.

I know it was such a small thing, but I hate when silly little things like that happen.  I am sure it was much bigger in my mind, but it was a complete FAIL.

Oh forgot to mention I had to make sure they knew who the gift was from since they couldn’t find a card.

I know I am not alone, check out more Friday Fails here.

Seriously how do these things always seem to happen to me?  Does anyone else have as many issues as I do at the registers?  I am not mad or frustrated, I just have to laugh because the most illogical solutions are given to me nearly every time.  And every time I walk away ask, what just happened?  I paid too much for that, but not enough for that, I guess it evens out in the end.

I was so excited to go to the store to get my Charmin and Bounty.  After searching all through the store and even on the tops of the frozen isle (read that idea somewhere) I gave up, there was no Bounty in the store.

As I am checking out, having bailed on my whole shopping plan, which was…

buy those 2 things for $26, then get $25 worth of frozen food and get to use my $10 off coupon and score 2 $10 Catalinas and use other coupons I was carrying.  Beautiful, brillaint plan…than never panned out.

Anyways, checking out I see the Bounty in the front of the store.  Woohoo, so I quickly grab it, gather the Charmin and start my power shopping for the frozen food.  I have to hurry because I am going to be late picking up my son from school.

I head to the register and no catalinas print…at all.  What went wrong this time?

I go to customer service, where she does the math and I missed the frozen Catalina by $.05, yep, stupid pennies, I was rounding up, that and my bad math, I really thought I was at $26.  So I run back grab a veggie and she rings it up again…still no catalina, finally she realizes she doesn’t even have a catalina machine.  Really?   How did you not know this?

So again they take everything off, ring it up again, 1 catalina prints the other does not.  Finally for some reason he hands me cash back and a coupon to use later.  Completely confused I walked out, what just happened?  Why is there cash back?

Anyways I ended up with over $70 worth of groceries for $32 and $10 for my next trip and a few dollars.  Hmmmm.

Last week I had a coupon for B1G1 FREE, the poor guy didn’t know how to do the coupon, so he just didn’t ring up the FREE stuff.  Just plopped it in my bag.  I never quite know how to deal with those situations.  I was running late for a doctors appointment and didn’t have time to explain.

Let’s here your FAIL story.  We all have them.

My self portrait skills hard at work

Careful what you request for FREE.

How on earth did I end up with a T-shirt 3 times my size?

If this were the 80′s and my hair were bigger I would be set.  I really wanted to blame it on my husband but it was my name only, right there on the package.

What did you get in your mailbox?  I hope you did better than me.

So last week I was gone for the week.  I have worked so hard to really cut back on our food budget and I have worked really hard on a good stockpile so I am able to go into store and get only what I have on my list.  Things were going really well, my husband was proud of me and the few times he had gone with me he was impressed.

In my absence I planned a few meals that were super easy.   Here is a little side not to you young moms out there.  Teach your children to cook, even if it means making a big mess and taking longer than you are willing to spend.  I don’t have a lot of tolerance for something taking twice as long as it should and I just didn’t want to deal with the huge mess after my kids had “helped” so I didn’t let them help often.  Yes, I just confessed to you a bad mom moment and a regret.  Fast forward 10 or so years and my kids ages 14 and 16 and don’t know how to cook.  Just a few weeks ago my oldest asked how to make a grilled cheese.  I feel like I am being demeaning when I say “bread, butter and cheese”  but I don’t know how else to say it.  Anyways, back to my sad story, I had planned a few easy meals for my kids and husband (who is not much better than the kids) to fix.  First off was the Beef in a Red Wine Sauce.  I had everything cut up and ready to go stored in the freezer.  All they had to do was add the wine and boil the noodles.  They did it!  I also had planned for them to eat Spaghetti.  Simple enough, I had all the directions written out..”put hamburger in fridge the day before, boil noodles, heat Ragu and make salad out of bagged lettuce (that I got for $.47)”  Well, instead they left the meat unused in the fridge for days then they went to Costco and bought the $8 Cesar salad, which was still unused by the time I got home.  So now the meat is bad and going in the garbage and the salad needs eaten ASAP.  Oh and that was all they tried to cook, so they instead went out to eat the rest of the time.  And by the way there was a coupon laying on the floor of one of the restaurants that they went to.  I have my work cut out for these guys don’t I?

I have seen quite a few blogs about how these ladies have been doing some Freezer cooking.  I am thinking that is the way things are going to have to go if I want to leave town and not have them eat out every day killing our food budget.  The good thing is I love my husband and kids a ton, so I will forgive them because I guess in the end it’s all my fault anyways.

Today I was back at the shopping, and I got some great deals and I was able to use my Walgreens RR’s before they expired, so that’s all good.  I am going to really try and get things down to a science so I only have to shop once or twice a week.  Some days I find another great find and make my way back to a store.  The one good thing is I can drive 3 miles and be to a Walgreens, Safeway, Albertsons and Target.  That clump of stores has been a life saver.  Well off to figure out dinner, like I said I am back at, but not quite in the meal planning mode.  But not to worry I have a great stock pile and a few cravings.  It’s shaping up to be another great meal!

]]> http://money4thisnot4that.com/2010/02/back-at-it/feed/ 0 http://money4thisnot4that.com/2010/01/wheaties-fuel-vs-chocolate-cheerios/ http://money4thisnot4that.com/2010/01/wheaties-fuel-vs-chocolate-cheerios/#comments Sun, 24 Jan 2010 05:56:34 +0000 Amy http://money4thisnot4that.com/?p=498

Ok I did a taste test of the 2 new cereals that are out there.  I tried the new Wheaties Fuel and I also tried the Chocolate Cheerios.  First off I do really like Wheaties and was pretty bummed that these were really nothing like the original Wheaties.  But I did think they were OK.  I won’t purchase them in the future unless my kids like them.

The chocolate Cheerios were so bad I threw them down the drain.  My kids said they thought they were like Cocoa Puffs, so if they will eat them great, but unfortunately I won’t be buying these in the future unless my kids show a great interest.  Today was not promising as they reached or something different even though I left both out on the counter just to tempt them.

There are some great coupons out there for both, so make sure you don’t pay full price to try them.