My family is frugal -- sometimes to a fault. We're the kind of family that will spend $5 in gas to drive across town just so we can take advantage of a sale and save 25 cents off a 2-liter bottle of Coke. I'm no mathematician but I don't think you actually save money when you do stuff like that.
Nevertheless, in keeping with tradition, I decided to compare the price of the exact same tennis racket at Dick's Sporting Goods to one at Wal-Mart. Whenever I go to the Wal-Mart near my house, it's always an adventure -- The lines are horrendous and it is rare that I'm able to find or speak to an employee who understands English or Spanish. But Wal-Mart's price for the tennis racket was approximately a dollar less than Dick's, so I bought the racket from them.
Fast forward a few weeks to today.... I have this dilemma involving a set of golf clubs. I've never learned to play because I'm left-handed and until recently, none of my right-handed, golf-playing friends had the patience to teach me. Just when I was about to give up on learning to play, Tim gave me a set of left-handed golf clubs that used to belong to a friend of his.
I've got a trip coming up to see my brother in Missouri and he's going to hook me up with a bag for my new set of clubs. He's also going to give me a few lessons. So the problem was trying to figure out how to get the clubs up to Missouri without a bag and then how to return to Chicago with the clubs AND the bag. I checked a bunch of package-supply places but no place seemed to have the right kind of box. It didn't seem worth it to spend a lot of money on a travel bag for the clubs since I'm probably not going be taking them on a plane very often. At $100, a round-trip ticket on Southwest Airlines was cheaper and more convenient than it would be to drive my Jeep 6 hours each way. So I was left with trying to decide between driving up to Missouri instead of taking a plane or possibly forgetting the whole idea of bring my clubs up there to begin with.
As a last ditch effort, I went into Dick's Sporting Goods to see if someone there would be able to give me ideas of how to transport the clubs without purchasing one of their expensive travel bags. The guy I spoke to bent over backwards to take care of me. He wound up searching all over the stockroom for several minutes. He then came back and gave me a carton that was used by one of their vendors to ship some golf clubs to the store.
So what's the point of my long-winded post? I LOVE doing business with places that provide great customer service. So next time I need to buy something sold in a sporting goods store, you can bet I'll pay the extra dollar and buy it from Dick's.
I am with you... Treat me as though I am your future best customer, and I will be! I'll drive accross town spend an extra buck or two to be treated right. Followed AmyDale.com link... very funny site!
Posted by: Mark | August 10, 2006 at 08:58