The Diaper Deal
Part of living the lifestyle of “maximizing everything” is learning when you spot a deal that is worth jumping on quickly. Sometimes these deals are published on blogs like this one and sometimes they come and go so quickly that they never make it.
Last year such a deal came to be. A friend sent me a Fatwallet post showing that Kmart had a $25 off $25 coupon with no limit. The coupon was able to be used multiple times per account and didn’t require a minimum purchase. Perhaps this was a mistake and perhaps it wasn’t. Quickly I sprung into action after thinking about what I could buy for about $25.
At the time baby Ellie had recently been born and we did have some diapers for her that were given as gifts, but our supply was running low. I noticed that there were boxes of diapers on Kmart.com for $25.99. I also noticed that these could be ordered for pickup at my local store. I then made a deal with my wife. I would place a bunch of orders if she would go to the store to pick them up. (I am not a fan of the Kmart experience.)
So I did just that. It was a bit tedious, but I placed a total of 28 orders one box at a time. (In different sizes to anticipate Ellie’s growth.) It took about an hour to place all of my orders and a couple of hours for the pickup emails to come. My wife then went to the store to pickup each of her orders. I printed out a list of all of the order numbers on one page to make things easier.
It Isn’t Always Easy
Unfortunately it was’t so easy. While all of the orders were ready, the lady at the Kmart pickup desk wasn’t amused. In fact she kept questioning my wife and ultimately called her manager over. The manager told her to do her job and give my wife the diapers. She did eventually do that but wasn’t happy with the price my wife paid, so she was talking loud and causing everyone in the store to stare.
Such is the life of someone who gets a great deal. Often times people won’t believe you or will believe you cheated or did something wrong. In this case perhaps the code was a mistake, but we also placed a few orders online and those shipped a few days later without getting cancelled so I don’t think so.
This Deal Died Quickly
As you may have guessed, the code only lasted a short time. A few hours at most. I could have waited or placed one order, but I didn’t. Instead I went big and it paid off. There have been many other deals where orders were cancelled too so your time can be at risk. It was a gamble, but a successful one. My philosophy is that as long as I am honest (in this case I placed all of the orders on the same account as to not hide anything), then why not maximize.
Perhaps you don’t care about diapers or about this story, but opportunities like this come around from time to time. In this scenario my wife and I spent about an hour each for 18 months worth of free diapers. (We earned enough SYWR points to offset the $1 we paid per box.) We stayed within the guidelines set by Kmart and walked away with a wall of diapers. Unfortunately we are now down to our last half dozen boxes and my only wish is that I had purchased more! Perhaps I didn’t maximize enough.
What are your craziest deals scored? Feel free to share in the comments!
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Agreed!
Awesome deal! When it comes to saving money in order to travel all options (legal) should be on the table. I’d done the same.
Hurry up and start potty training your daughter then you won’t need more diapers.
Yes! The clock is ticking before the diapers run out. 🙂
Ktoger paid me .65/box of spaghetti that I “bought” with electronic and manufacturers coupons stacked with store promotions when the item was on sale – the clerks let me get 10 (max is supposed to be 5) because I turned them on how to do it and you know they don’t make that much and who doesn’t like spaghetti – especially free spaghetti and pay you to “buy” it spaghetti! Then at Petsmart, i had enough coupons and promotions on sale items that I got an insane amount of cat food and treats – I think it was about $80 bucks for like maybe 10 bucks – if that – and people were impressed even if I did slow them up a bit — and I told them all how to stack and jump on a bargain and use coupons when something goes on sale so they were good. There are lots more instances of this — like the $26.000 in vgc that I got paid to buy… $20 off $300 or something like that) and liquidated fairly quickly – but then we all get a piece of that sometimes
Awesome!
I once ordered a call girl to come to my place, her going rate was $800/hr, don’t ask. I had originally asked her to stay for 3 hours but she ended up really liking me and staying the night. By the time she left the next morning, she didn’t charge my a cent. If you count the hours she stayed over night, we were up for the most part, the whole thing would have cost me over $8k.
So I suppose my craziest deal is that I saved $8k in one night. I did hit it hard so no regrets.
you are really testing the limits of decency on Shaun’s board. Have some respect.
Did you use a good rewards card to maximize your savings?
thats awesome brotha. happy to hear you pulled an Eliot Spitzer. He would be proud of you man. $800/hr is a lot though. i hope she was worth it. next time you have to pay, try to find a hottie who has her CC POS mobile swipe categorized under Office Store so you can use the Ink on her and get 5x.
Maybe you touched bottom here.
🙂
Cool. Now I don’t feel so bad stocking up on 12 boxes of diapers from a few deals I found. My wife thought it was a bit much, but when I showed her this post, she just laughed.
Haha! Thankfully we had enough room in the garage that it wasn’t a big deal, but my wife is used to “stocking up” on items since we do it all of the time to burn our Staples Rewards.