I Suck At Target

Tonight, Karen and I went to the local Target. Unfortunately, I suck at Target. Our shopping excursion, however, was actually quite exciting if saving money is your thing. I find Target offers rather good savings in general. Like my BFF (Kerry) has said in the past, you just cannot go to a Target and not spend $50. The savings are that enticingly. Needless to say, both Karen and I were quite surprised by the amount of savings from tonight.

Awhile back before our baby daughter (Briana) was born, Karen purchased a breast pump at Target. For anyone curious, breast pumps are fairly expensive items. Luckily, we had purchased the item during a sale and had an additional coupon thanks to our registering at Target for Briana's shower. Naturally at the time, Karen verified with the sales associate that we could return the item so long as we had a receipt. Sure enough, the sales associate said yes.

Briana was born prematurely on St. Patrick's Day. And with most premature births, our health insurance covered the cost of the hospital grade breast pump that was provided to us while Briana was in the neonatal intensive care unit and the special care nursery. Interestingly enough, our health insurance is covering the cost of the hospital breast pump for nine months.

Needless to say, Karen has been using the hospital grade breast pump because it is more efficient. With her maternity leave over, she returned to work thinking that she would instead use the pump that was purchased at Target. After all, that pump was designed to be portable. (Hospital breast pumps are a pain to lug around if you are commuting.)

As it turned out, Karen's employer actually has different hospital grade breast pumps at work, which actually work with the tubing that she already has from the other hospital grade pump. Thus, she discovered that she did not need the breast pump that she purchased from Target.

Long story short, Karen decided to return the breast pump to Target. We had gone to Target a couple of days ago and were surprised to find out that we actually could not simply return the unused/unopened breast pump because the receipt was too old. Instead, we could do an exchange of products.

As breast pumps are fairly expensive, we were a little perplexed with what we could exchange the pump for. My first initial reaction was an Xbox, but Karen wasn't going to go for that. Truthfully, I would not get an Xbox anyway... with my unfavorable stance on all things Microsoft. And for the record, the Xbox would not have been for Briana because like I have told many people... Briana is not getting anything. Nothing!

So Karen and I took a couple of days to think about what we could get at Target that would add up to a price comparable to a breast pump. Dropping off Briana with my favorite sister-in-law (Janine) and my favorite brother-in-law (PJ), Karen and I headed to Target to make our exchange. We actually ended up borrowing Janine's minivan for transporting purposes.

And in case anyone is curious, Janine's BFF (Gretchen) got a big kick out of my backing Janine's minivan out of the garage. In an effort to avoid hitting Gretchen's car which was somewhat blocking the garage, I accidentally took out a few folding chairs and a mop in the garage. Oops! Sorry Janine!

Anyway, the reason why we had borrowed Janine's car was because we were going to pick up a convertible crib (with changing table) for Briana. As far as dimensions go, the box for the convertible crib (with changing table) would not fit in either Karen's car or my car. That was just the tip of the iceberg. Because the convertible crib (with changing table) was marked down, we had to add a bunch of other items to get the price close to that of the breast pump.

Eventually, we ended up exchanging five curtain rods, a big can of baby formula, a big box of baby wipes, a Bumbo baby sitter seat, a couple of bibs, and the convertible crib (with changing table) for the breast pump. And the funny thing is... monetarily, the sum of all of those items exceeded what Karen had originally paid for the breast pump. After all, Karen bought the pump when it was on sale and had used a coupon.

I believe Karen had calculated that we received over $60 worth of what is essentially free stuff. I thought that was wild. Had Target just refunded the amount of the original purchase like we had first requested, the company would have saved money. Instead, due to their store policy, we had to exchange the pump not for what we originally paid for the breast pump, but for what the price of the pump currently is in their system as. Luckily for us, that price was fairly high and much higher ($60 higher) than what Karen originally paid.

Needless to say, it was a good way to end the night. I debated about assembling the convertible crib (with changing table) tonight, but opted instead to just veg out and unwind.