So we had piano lessons this morning. It was one of the 3 make-up lessons I have to schedule. They have another one on Friday morning. That leaves me with 1 more make-up lesson to schedule.
After lessons, we went to Half Price Books to let the boys spend their gift certificates from Christmas (what was left of them anyway).
We are all ready to check out…and my credit card won’t go through. Now since it is a debit card and I know there is money in the account, I am not pleased. Well come to find out it is was their credit card processing system. It just wasn’t playing nice.
The guy said he could hold it for me for 7 days. I looked at him like he suddenly sprouted 5 heads. As far as I was concerned, at that moment, he did sprout 5 heads. I’ve already spent quite a bit of time in line at this point waiting for the credit card to go through.
Another lady is telling the next people in line that they’d have to use check or cash. Now the guy that was helping me did not give me this option. I looked at the guy and asked if it would take a check. I remembered I had the checkbook in the car from paying the cello instructor. I told the guy I’d run out to the car and get my checkbook. I go through the trouble of writing the check and hand it to him, give him my ID, etc. Evidently, the Telecheck system is down as well as it wouldn’t even process my check.
I was slightly annoyed. OK, so I was a bit more than “slightly” annoyed.
The kids were upset too. I can’t blame them, really.
We had quite the loot piles on the counter and they had very carefully picked out everything. I was paying for the couple of items I picked out plus the birthday gift I found for my niece and the overage on the kids’ gift certificates. I like them to max them out so I don’t have to keep up with cards with various small amounts on them. I gave them permission to go over about a dollar or so and I’d pick up all the tax. This is just my preferred method at Half Price Books simply because sometimes you get to the register and the books ring up a little less than the stickers says they should. This is always nice, but not when you want to use up a gift certificate and do not want to keep up with a gift certificate that has 39¢ left on it. Since each of the 3 boys had done what I had asked, I just combined the entire selection so I’d only have to do my part in a single transaction.
So we left empty handed. They handed me my “wasted” check back. They handed me my gift certificates back. They put a hold slip on the piles of books we had. We left. Lance then continued to ask me about the computer game he had picked out 3x over the course of the evening. I told them we’d go back tomorrow and get the books but that I’d call first and make sure that things were working properly.
It isn’t a big deal, mind you…It is just the fact that (1) they expected me to have that much cash on my person as an alternative form of payment even after I had already tried 2 forms of payment and (2) I have to now drive all the way back down there to get what we should have had this afternoon.
Hopefully, tomorrow things will go without incident. Gee, here I was trying to do my part to stimulate the economy and I was not allowed to do such. We went straight home afterward.
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