Pay Attention Before You Pay Money

With our hectic, rush-around lives today we often put ourselves in a vulnerable position. Most of us probably put a good amount of thought into making our purchases. I know that I will research items and brands to find out about a product's features, compare prices, and read reviews by others who have tried the product already.

Unfortunately, we go through our day making purchases with barely any thought at all. How much are you losing when you zone out and trust the cash register to ring up the correct price? My dad was big on watching as items were rung up at the store. He taught me to pay attention to sale prices and to make sure they showed up that way at the cash register. He also explained that stores are regularly checked for their accuracy and that mistakes are always found. Nobody is perfect and some stores seem to avoid programming in sales prices intentionally.

It's only a few cents, right? Why bother making a big deal out of the 15 cents they overcharged you on something? Because that one item is the only one you caught and there are most likely many, many more. If you don't say anything, they will happily overcharge you over and over again.

I had another experience with this on a higher level today. I needed to buy tires for my car and I checked ahead of time on prices at the specific store I was going to. We were also smart enough to take advantage of a daily deals offer that allowed us to get $50 vouchers for $25. I also saw that the store was running some rebate deals when buying sets of 4 tires. Armed and ready, I headed into Big O Tires to make my big purchase. The quote I was given for the tires was $20 per tire more than I was expecting. When I challenged the clerk, he printed out a list of all the tires that size with their prices from their store's website. Imagine his surprise when I showed him that the tires I was shopping for had a lower price on the website than what he had in his computer database.

It doesn't end there. When I came to pick up my car with the pretty new tires, the original clerk was gone and he didn't put my vouchers with the work order. There was no way I was going to let $200 in vouchers just disappear! Fortunately, the clerk who was there did a serious search and found the vouchers. Paying attention and standing up for myself saved me more than a few cents today.