Caveat emptor - "Let the buyer beware"

Jen and I are sitting down watching a little tube the other night when a commercial came on for Riviera pool builders. He's in front of the BOB (Sorry it will always be the BOB to me) in a Diamondbacks uniform saying he excited to be a part of the D-Backs blah blah blah... He goes on to say that right now his special is - drum roll please - with every pool built he'll give the buyer 2 free tickets to a D-Backs game.

I knocked over Jen on my way to the phone to get my 2 free tickets. I mean what a deal! Do you know how much D-Back tickets are? They are like eight bucks a piece, and you get 2! Pools start at about $15,000 but with the kickback on the tickets, I'm in. And I thought I'd never be able to afford sixteen dollars for a night on the town :-)

At work today an invoice comes across my desk. It is for some packing tape one of my guys has ordered, before I became the manager again. Get this, he bought 16 - 6 packs of tape, 96 rolls right? The invoice was for $972.45!!! That's like over ten dollars per roll for tape (BTW-I said that in my Napoleon Dynamite voice). I quickly look up Staples.com to find out how much tape is and it's only $2.10 per roll,FOR THE GOOD STUFF!

So I started asking questions to find out how / why he got scammed. If you've been a manager, or an owner, or a buyer you know the scam. Usually a lady calls up, acts very chummy, says she provides some product you order all the time, tells you it's come in off back order, and asks for a purchase order. Sometime they'll offer you a prize or gift for ordering. What A-holes!?!? The guy who gave the PO was new in the department at the time, so I feel like they took advantage of him.

Luckily I was able to call, and after a short fight got the company to take the tape back. When I brought this situation up to all the guys as a learning opportunity, a couple of them sheepishly asked "Do we have to return the Starbucks gift cards too?" WHAT :-{ Grrrrrrrrr. How dumb do you have to be to fall for the "Hey we'll give you 2 free $10 Starbucks cards if you buy a thousand dollars worth of packing tape!!!"

The rest of the day we all teased the guy relentlessly, hehehe...