I ordered it a few weeks ago when they were having an amazing half price offer for 24 hours only, as mentioned by Miss Thrifty on her blog. I had to wait a few weeks for it to arrive as each one is made to order. It was well worth the wait as it arrived, beautifully packaged in a box, and with it's own drawstring dust jacket. It is a lovely specimen. Here's a photo.
I bought the charcoal grey, as I just love the colour grey at the moment. It is the 14.5" size and it is plenty big enough. In fact it is bigger than I expected. I am very happy with it and it was a bargain at £52 including postage. I can't wait to use it.
I wasn't so happy, however, when my credit card bill with this item added, dropped through the letter box a few minutes later. Hmm, back to reality. Actually, I'm not too concerned, as having paid off one credit card completely this month, I will be snowballing this particular card from next month and hopefully it will soon be paid off too. Sometimes a great offer just cannot be ignored.
Talking of offers, I watched a couple of episodes of Extreme Couponing the other day. For some reason, and no one is admitting to it, our TV recorded five episodes so I thought I'd take a look. It is an American TV programme on TLC channel with the Virgin TV Box. It was amazing how using coupons available in newspapers and online, some families in the US were buying up to $1000 worth of groceries for as little as $50. One woman spent 60 hours per week researching in order to do this. Not something that most people would have or want to spend their time doing I'm sure. Some did go to quite extreme measures to get hold of coupons in the first place, ie getting inside dumpsters or taking junk mail from empty properties, but good for the if it is worth it to them.
Whatever did happen to coupons in this country? We don't seem to get them as often as we used to. I only ever seem to get any from Tesco clubcard or receive the odd one at the till in shops after I've done my shopping. I guess online voucher codes and loyalty schemes have replaced them somewhat or maybe I just aren't looking in the right places. I must admit that many of the products that were being bought with them on the programme were not particularly healthy or things I would personally purchase (i.e. flavoured waters, fizzy drinks, etc), but if you have very little money you often can't afford to be so selective and anything that you can get for free is a bonus. It was inspiring that in one episode one couple (the man was a minister in the church) did this to give most of the groceries away to people in need in their community. I can't quite see supermarkets or food producers here being so generous with coupons. Supermarkets would probably pass the cost onto producers and put them out of business or throw perfectly good things in the rubbish rather than give them away. (I know not all supermarkets do this, but some definitely do and sabotage them into the bargain to prevent freegans getting hold of them).
Changing the subject a little, I have just signed up with Quidco, and hope to save some money in the future by way of cashback offers and voucher codes. Most of the brands I normally buy from are signed up with them, so I am looking forward to using the site when internet shopping in the future. I'm just hoping it won't make me buy more than usual.
No comments:
Post a Comment