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REI Rocks
When I started going out with Maia she introduced me to Recreational Equipment Incorporated. It's a co-op. Anyone can go in and buy things, but being a member gets one a rebate on purchases (termed a dividend, it's a credit at the store, good for two years) and admission to the irregular "members' only sales.
Those sales are how each store clears out the inventory of returns.
When we broke up, I needed to get a membership of my own. I got it, actually, as part of my coming to Palo Alto to talk about torture. The group that invited me, asked if they could get me anything. I told them there was a hat I needed to replace, and REI carried it. They got me a gift card, and I bought my membership (and the hat).
On the road trip I bought a Oregon 450 by Garmin. Friday, it got run over by a car. My fault, I lost track of it while organising things on the bike, and it fell off.
Ouch. It cost me 400 bucks in Albuquerque. I didn't have the receipt. The poor thing was dead. The only thing keeping the glass in the screen from being all over the street in Santa Cruz was the film of screen protector I'd put on it.
Realistically I was expecting to need to buy a new one. My hope was Garmin having some sort of reduced price replacement polity. Nope.
The guy looked at it, and said... "Wow.", what happened. I told him and he said, "That sucks, let me see if we have one in stock." That was it, no paperwork. He looked up my name, saw that I had bought it, (and that the Albuquerque store was the 30th in the chain), and got me a new one. Then the bad news, because Calif. has a higher sales tax, the change in price meant they couldn't give me the full $50 difference the reduction in price entitled me to.
Right... I bring in a smashed to shit GPS, which I'd paied 400 bucks for, and they were gong to replace it, and pay me 45 dollars.
Boggled. He actually said it was bad news, and spun the monitor toward me. At first I thought I owed them 50 bucks (which would have been massive win, if you'd asked me before I went in).
So I bought the US Topo Map set, and spent 65 bucks.
To sum up. I went in to REI, with a Garmin I'd, carelessly destroyed, and walked, 60 dollars later, with a new and improved version.
That's a $25 membership well spent.
Those sales are how each store clears out the inventory of returns.
When we broke up, I needed to get a membership of my own. I got it, actually, as part of my coming to Palo Alto to talk about torture. The group that invited me, asked if they could get me anything. I told them there was a hat I needed to replace, and REI carried it. They got me a gift card, and I bought my membership (and the hat).
On the road trip I bought a Oregon 450 by Garmin. Friday, it got run over by a car. My fault, I lost track of it while organising things on the bike, and it fell off.
Ouch. It cost me 400 bucks in Albuquerque. I didn't have the receipt. The poor thing was dead. The only thing keeping the glass in the screen from being all over the street in Santa Cruz was the film of screen protector I'd put on it.
Realistically I was expecting to need to buy a new one. My hope was Garmin having some sort of reduced price replacement polity. Nope.
The guy looked at it, and said... "Wow.", what happened. I told him and he said, "That sucks, let me see if we have one in stock." That was it, no paperwork. He looked up my name, saw that I had bought it, (and that the Albuquerque store was the 30th in the chain), and got me a new one. Then the bad news, because Calif. has a higher sales tax, the change in price meant they couldn't give me the full $50 difference the reduction in price entitled me to.
Right... I bring in a smashed to shit GPS, which I'd paied 400 bucks for, and they were gong to replace it, and pay me 45 dollars.
Boggled. He actually said it was bad news, and spun the monitor toward me. At first I thought I owed them 50 bucks (which would have been massive win, if you'd asked me before I went in).
So I bought the US Topo Map set, and spent 65 bucks.
To sum up. I went in to REI, with a Garmin I'd, carelessly destroyed, and walked, 60 dollars later, with a new and improved version.
That's a $25 membership well spent.
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