Deals, Deals, Deals

This weekend, we headed out to do some clothes shopping. I wanted to see if I could find some things for my son for kindergarten, he has to wear a uniform, but also knew it was a prime time to stock up on clothes for next summer.

Our journey started at Macy's, which was just a horrible experience. My father-in-law had purchased a couple of items for the kids after his last visit. For my daughter, he sent a dress and shorts outfit that were a size smaller than she currently wears. The dress was a more loosely fitting dress and it works fine - she looks so cute in it, but the shorts set was just too tight across the chest. So, we headed to Macy's planning to exchange the shorts set. A while ago, Macy's introduced a way of doing the "gift receipt" right on the tag with a bar code that when scanned provides purchase information. The cashier scans the tag and says I'm sorry, you can't return this item; it was purchased over 180 days ago. I ask, when does it say it was purchased? It doesn't. My husband called his dad, who confirmed that he bought it about a month ago and paid cash, so he didn't keep the receipt. At our request, the cashier calls over a manager. She looks at it and says, we can't return it since it was bought over 180 days ago. We tell her, no, it was bought about 30 days ago. She says, well I can give you half price back in a store credit or gift card. Okay, this makes no sense to me, if indeed he bought this outfit last November or December; chances are it was last season's dress. Summer clothes come out early, but not that early. If it was last season's outfit, there is no way that it wouldn't be valued at only a few bucks. The fact that they could do 1/2 tells me it was this season and there was just some sort of error with the scan. We say, but he bought it at 20% off and the barcode on the tag is supposed to house this information. After a bit of discussion, the manager eventually winds up just giving us cash back, which after the frustration of trying to perform a simple exchange, we gladly take to Children's Place to buy some new clothes.

I love the Children's Place. You can always get nice stuff there, and if you wait, you can get some great deals on end of season clearance. We got 15 pieces for our kids and for some relatives, all for under $30. We had used our additional 15% off coupon and got credit on our Place Perks card (you get $10 for every $75 you spend). What a deal!

At the shoe store, we found the all black tennis shoes my son needs for his uniform and they were on clearance. (Coincidentally, exactly what we got back from the short set we returned)

Then, we grabbed lunch at Steak and Shake. We had four coupons for free Double Steak burgers coupons from the Akron Aeros game, so we added cheese, ordered one regular fry for all of us to share and a fruit plate for the kids to share and paid $6.33 (plus tip) to feed the family. Another great deal.

Our next stop was JC Penney's, who has all of their summer stuff on clearance. I bought 17 clearance shorts/shirts/dresses for the kids for next summer for $41 plus tax. We also got a pair of shoes for my daughter, swim shorts for my husband and two pairs of pants for my daughter for the fall, all together, it was under $70.

I feel pretty good about all of our deals. We only got the shoes that my son needed for school, but there is a used uniform sale hosted by one of the parents next weekend and if I can't find deals there, Target has some decent prices.