2011 ~ Heidi's Journal

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

I Could Go On & On

8:39 PM Heidi M Ross 2 comments

I could go on and on about Walmart but I won't. For those of you who haven't read my post about Walmart, you can do so here. Anyway, I have been so sick and tired of getting very little groceries, for my money. Even when I shopped at Walmart, I still didn't do so good. I have gotten so tired of battling the prices of groceries.

So I started to do some research cause I have heard of people cutting their grocery bills. So while doing my research I can across two great sites CouponMom.com and PassionForSavings.com I am hoping that everything I have learned from these two sites will really help me buy more than I could before. These sites teach you to use coupons in conjunction with sales to get an even lower price. Yes that sounds like a lot of work. However, you don't have to do the matching. CouponMom has a database. They do the work for you. They find the sales and tell you where you will find the coupons. Last Sunday, I bought 3 newspapers but the coming weeks I will probably just buy 2. The money I saved this week did almost pay for my 3 newspapers but at $2 a copy now I'm not sure if I want to keep buying 3. Anyhow I also learned something also when I went to Krogers. I'm not going to bother with their digital coupons unless I don't have other coupons. Because the digital coupons you load onto your Kroger card, they don't double. So unless I find a high dollar coupon or it is for something I have no coupons for, I am done loading those digital coupons onto my Kroger card.

Walmart Warning - Please Be Advised

4:29 PM Heidi M Ross No comments

I feel that I have to post this to warn everyone. Just because you buy a new prepaid phone at Walmart doesn't mean that phone hasn't been

activated before. I had this problem just recently.

I had bought my daughter a Blackberry Curve (Virgin Mobile) phone at Walmart. However before buying the phone I asked her what the return

policy on the phone was. Basically I had 15 days to return the phone and I would need the receipt. I had asked just in case my daughter didn't

like the phone. So I get home and we get ready to activate the phone. I had troubles finding the serial number on the phone so I called Virgin

Mobile for help. The live advisor who initially answered didn't know anything about the Blackberries and transferred me to the Blackberry dept.

Now, I find the serial number and surprise the phone had been activated before. She even had us go into the phone settings

or something and double check and sure enough it said my phone number and the number that had been assigned to the phone. I asked the

live advisor if the previous activation could be over rode the phone reactivated. She said yes but it could take up to 3 days to do so. At this

point I decide that I'm going to take the phone back to Walmart.

I get to Walmart and up to the service desk and I tell the associate I want a refund. I hand her the receipt and the bag with the phone in it etc.

She looks at the receipt and tells me the phone cars (VM prepaid minutes for the phone) can't be refunded. The cards were not in there. I had

made sure to get a VM phone cause if I needed to I would have used the minutes on my VM phone. So she takes out the battery to look for the serial number and remarks that she can't see it. I told her where the serial number was and she says she can't read it. After that she goes to a another section of the store to check the serial number I guess or something and she comes back and tells me she can't refund my money because the phone and the receipt don't match. Oh yeah and how would she know when she couldn't read the number. It took her less time to decide that the receipt and phone didn't match than it did for me to read the serial number. I used a magnifying glass to read the number and then it still took a while to read the numbers because they are so small. It is really easy to mix up the 3's and 5's and the 6's and 8's.

So back home I go and call Virgin Mobile yet again. I tell them that I have no choice but to get the phone activated because Walmart would not refund my money. So I go back to the beginning serial number and all. I am told yet again that the phone had been previously activated. So I tell the lady isn't there anything she can do. She tells me to hold on and she will see what she can do. In the meantime while waiting, my call gets disconnected. That was an 18 min. call that resulted in nothing.

So I call VM again. I have them put me through to the Blackberry dept. This time I get a male Live Advisor. I explain my problem and situation to him. So once again I read off this 18 digit phone serial number. He has me double check the phone for the number assigned and all. Then he tells me he will see what he can do. He managed to get rid of the old number and assign a new number to the phone. He did tell me that isn't always possible. Anyhow, once the new number got assigned he had me do some programming to the phone. After all that he had more programming or something to do so that my daughter would have full use of all the features of the phone. That phone call took 40 minutes and a lot of luck.

By now I'm so aggravated that it isn't even funny. But lesson learned I will never and I do mean never buy another prepaid cell phone at Walmart.

Full Price Paid - No Discounts for a Used Phone - Omitting to tell me it was previously used = Scam

See if You Can Top This

9:42 AM Heidi M Ross No comments

I came across a video made by a woman named Beatrice. She is challenging you to top her stash and her machines. The video is 9 to 10 minutes long. If you would like to take up this challenge her video is posted below.

Totally Random Thoughts

7:00 AM Heidi M Ross No comments

Cleaning out the downstairs spare room has become challenging. No boxes to pack stuff up. So I wait until I have some a chip box or something and use it. Then the 1 or 2 boxes I have or full and back to waiting again. What circle. :(

**********

Deciding what to keep, what to get rid of and what to throw away - Totally dreaded.

**********

Things that are being kept but not boxed up - oye, where do I put the stuff.

**********

Lately I have been receiving baby/newbor stuff such as formula, American Baby Magazine and I have gotten an AARP card? What I have a newborn and I've turned 50 or as my daughter say's I'm a senior citizen with a newborn. (*Note: I'm only 40 and my newborn is 14 yrs old)

My New Baby

9:51 PM Heidi M Ross No comments

Last month I was at a yard sale and boy did I find a bargain. My bargain is pictured below. The sellers didn't know anything about the machine but that's ok cause I wanted it anyhow. I only got 1 bobbin with the machine so yeah I need to get more and I need to get needles for it :)

Pincushion Swap

9:19 AM Heidi M Ross 3 comments

I participated in a pincushion swap. Besides the pincushion my partner sent me some goodies. I love it when I get packages in the mail. Here is the card my partner sent me with a short message inside. :)

Here is the pincushion and a small quilting ruler that came in the package. First time I've seen a ruler that small. But I'm sure it will come in handy sometime.