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Holy smokes! I couldn’t believe the deal I found at a local Pier 1 retail store today! I had a little time on my hands while my son played drums at the Paul Green School of Rock (Side Note: If your son or daughter plays an instrument or wants to play an instrument, or sing, definitely check out the Paul Green School of Rock in your area–the kids love it!), and I stopped into the Pier 1 to waste some time before having to pick him up.
I hadn’t been in a Pier 1 store in maybe a year. It was nicer than I remembered, however, I was in a store that was in a nicer part of town, so maybe the goods were geared toward a higher end clientele.
I’m into outside decor right now since it’s spring and I love to decorate my deck for the warm weather. I’m also into deals, sales, saving money–you get the idea. I passed a big red hang tag on a cool looking mosaic table/bar with wrought iron decorative legs. I stopped to check out the price and couldn’t believe that it was only $62! That price is awfully low so I thought there must be something wrong with it–especially when the retail price was originally $349! Well, it had been marked down a few times, and the sales price was somewhere around $83. I would have bought it at that price because that’s a great deal too. However, this particular table/bar had a note on it that read, “wobbly leg.”
I pushed the table back and forth to see if the leg wobbled, but I didn’t think it wobbled any more than any other table with skinny wrought iron legs. I walked to the sales counter and told the woman behind it that I would take the table. Well, she couldn’t believe it! The way she reacted you would have thought the ceiling was going to open up and balloons would rain down upon my head as dancing girls in skimpy outfits did the can-can around my new table and me!
The woman wanted me to know that the table was sold “as-is” and couldn’t be returned. “Fine,” I said. She still wanted me to take a better look at it because some people said it slanted a bit downward on one side. “OK,” I said. She wanted me to know that the table had been on the floor a whole year and many people had looked at it but decided against it because of the “slant.” Believe me when I say there was barely a slant (although the angle of my picture makes it look like there’s a slant). It was a mosaic table for my deck and with some potted flowers on it, I thought it would be great. She applauded my open mind, and acted as if I was doing a good deed by “adopting” the poor, unwanted, slanted table. “Whatever!” Just get it in my SUV,” I thought.
So I picked up my son and drove home. When my husband got home, I told him about my score at Pier 1. We took it out of the trunk of my SUV and discovered while taking it out, that the poor, slanted, table was a victim of mismatched pads on the bottoms of the legs. One leg had one pad, one leg had half of a pad, one leg had two pads, and another leg had a SLANTED pad! We took all the pads off and just left one pad on each leg. Guess what? The slanting table is now a perfectly straight table and a wonderful addition to my deck at just $62, down from $349. It sat on Pier 1’s floor for one whole year because no one thought to check out the possible cause of the slanting; not the sales people, or any of the many potential customers that dismissed the table as defective.
So next time you go to a national retail chain store (there seem to be more damaged goods in these stores), or really any store for that matter, make a b-line for their damaged goods or clearance items (if you don’t already do this). Often, employees just don’t take the time to figure out what’s really wrong with an item that isn’t working properly. That’s the store’s loss and your gain! Keep the item for yourself, or resell it for a profit on places like Craigslist, eBay, or Amazon.
Have fun, and happy damaged goods shopping!
If you liked this post, you may like my post, “Make Money Now Selling Broken Electronics & More!
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