Zellers - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

I took a bit of a hiatus from blogging and couponing in general for the Christmas season. It was quite a busy one as it s Big B's first Christmas and my boyfriend was able to get Christmas off this year and was home for 18 days straight. I managed to get some more dog food for my big lug of a lab for near free courtesy of stacking at London Drugs. I got some good food deals - near free frozen pizza, cheap pop and juices. But we have such a well stocked pantry and freezer the only time I really ran to the grocery store was for fresh items and we all know that coupons for those things are few and far between.

As for Boxing Day sales - we didn't bother going out shopping that day at all. I'm sure there were some really good deals out there but there isn't much that we need in all reality.

Yesterday night while cruising my favorite forum I came across a popular thread that had stories of people getting Kitchen Aid mix masters for a ridiculously low price - under $100! I wanted in on that for sure. I've always wanted one and since moving out from home and from the one my mom has, I've always thought how nice it'd be to have one. My best friend gave and her Hamilton Beach one when she got a new Kitchen Aid and it is great but starting to putter out.

Zellers, of all places, had a Boxing Week promotion running on their Facebook page. Buy any item for 50% off. They even stated on the coupon that this deal COULD be used on sale items. Zellers had their Kitchen Aid mixer on sale for $189.99 (reg. $299.99). With the 50% off coupon, that would make the mixer around $95. Excitedly, I found the coupon online and printed it out. I planned to get my boyfriend to get a second on for a friend of mine. All is good.

The next morning I log into the same forum to see that Zellers has put out a retraction. They will only honor the coupon on NON sale items. WTH. This coupon has been being used since Boxing Day, so why, now over half way through the promotion, are they nixing it? I phoned the number on the Zellers website and spoke to some women. She stated that they were loosing too much money from this sale and that is why eh are removing the 'can be used with sale item' clause. I basically, and politely, told them that is not my problem. How fair is it that less than 24 hrs ago someone got a get deal from your store and now I won't be able to when we were all under the assumption that this coupon was good until December 31st? She took my name and asked me what location I was planning on going to. She said she would phone the store and speak to the manager there and I would be able to use my coupon on a non sale item as long as I went to the customer service desk.

So, off the three of us went. I found my mixer. They only had one, so the boyfriend grabbed a piece of luggage that was $300 marked down to $60 and off to the customer service desk we went. I got to the counter and explained what I had been told. The girl called her manager who said she did not receive a call and then went to go check her email to say they didn't email her anything either. Mmmm. I showed her my cell phone with the time I called the customer service number. She then called her District Manager who ok'd one transaction for my family. We ended up buying the luggage because we can really use it. And buying the mixer at 50% saved us $95, vr the $30 on the luggage.

The Good - I stood my ground and got my mixer!

The Bad - The way this store operates. I worked there when I was 19 a few nights a week on top of my job at a law firm. It is a horrible place to work. It is a horrible place to shop. It is always dirty, messy and has zero consistency.

The Ugly - because this coupon was offered on a social networking site and because there are numerous forums out there, people have taken this very personally. Facebook, Smart Canucks and now the local news are all calling Zellers on this shady business practice as they should. They are claiming that it was a misprint, yet they honored it for 3 whole business days before 'realizing' their error. C'mon. Zeddy, the Club Zed bear must be rolling in his grave from the amount of negative bad press HBC is getting over this. It will take another deal of a lifetime to get me to darken their doorstep again. The stores of abusive behavior towards customers trying to use this coupon today are mind boggling. I feel sorry for the poor, under paid cashiers working in this chaos. *shudder*

Happy baking I come!