Office Depot deal this week, etc.

Posted on | December 12, 2011 | No Comments

Popped into Office Depot today to pick up a couple of things — needed ink for my Kodak printer and a new cordless phone setup that is more compatible with our new Vonage service than we had before.

I was feeling a deal coming on, because I had a coupon/card for $10 or $15 off purchases of $50 or $75. I also had a rewards card from a prior purchase. But first, they have a current promotion going on that gives you batteries for “free,” in the sense that when you purchase a 20-pack of AA of AAA batteries, they then send you a rewards debit card to spend there that is equal to the price you pay for the batteries.

So, my experience and a couple of lessons learned:

-It seems like 3:30 to 3:00 was a huge rush today here locally, on the roads and in Office Depot. They went from one checker, who had some sort of complicated transaction, to a 2nd, who also had a slow check out process, to a third, where I was, also not too fast. Finally they sent some people in line to the copy center. I don’t know if it was a process problem, a technology problem, the nature of our individual transactions, or an issue of staff/training, but it was nice for them to add more checkers, although frustrating when each one they added seemed to bog down in succession.

-You can’t use the $10/$15 off purchase cards on technology/software/consumer electronics – they are only good for office supplies, ink, etc. Just FYI. Read the fine print on the back of each card/coupon.

-I wish Office Depot formatted its receipts in a clearer way. Instead of an item and a price, and then the discounts, they do some sort of math and take the discount/reward card off in various chunks from the items you purchase. You need to know the original price of each one, and what your discount/credit totals are, to tell if your items were rung up correctly.

-Confession: I bought the extended warranty on the phone system I bought. I know. I never, ever do that; but this time it seemed to make some sense. The system has four cordless phones, each with a battery. The extended warranty, at around $15, is two years of coverage for anything going wrong with any of the phones, including batteries. Have you priced rechargeable batteries for cordless phones lately? I plan to make sure that between months 20 and 24, if they have not already gone bad, that I use that policy to replace the batteries in each phone.

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