Busted Deals

In my search for savings, I make careless mistakes.

I mailed in a rebate only to find out this week that it was specific to a certain store and since I bought it from a different retailer, the manufacturer would not honor the rebate.

Another rebate was denied because I got the wrong size bag. I normally try to be really careful about this, but I think it was the only size bag the store had, and only one store sold this particular item.

I had been meaning to take a 30-gallon trash bag of old clothes with me to the thrift store to earn a $10 off $20-purchase. Months later, when I finally got around to it, they had discontinued this long-standing deal. They also stopped having their 50% off two different colored tags and replaced it with $0.99 on one colored tag.

Toyota had a buy-3-get-1-free tire deal, and after doing research on tires, I found I wanted a specific Goodyear tire which happened to have a $40 rebate on 4. Unfortunately, Toyota didn't sell those particular tires, so I went to Sears instead. I got the $40 rebate and paid with our Sears card. For some reason, when I got the credit card bill, it was $50 less than the invoice. So even though I couldn't get a free ($120-value) tire, at least Sears appears to have given me a $50 discount.