Gift Card Challange: Already Annoyed

Behold! Six Dollars Worth of Groceries

As I said in my previous post, I am not usually a huge fan of Homeland. Today they did not really help that image.

I did not mention this yesterday, but the gift certificate is not actually a gift card that you scan. Homeland is kind of old school like that. I have two paper gift certificates- one in the amount of 10 dollars, and one in the amount of 20 dollars. I did not really think too much about this at the time, other than, "Hmm. I have not seen the paper ones at any major store in a long time! Guess they don't have the cards!" and went on my merry way.

So I went to Homeland today to check out their supposed huge meat sale. I did not buy any meat, because I was not terribly impressed with their "sale" prices. What I did pick up was three boxes of Tuna Helper (which I once bought on a whim when it was nearly free with coupons and now love!) and two boxes of El Monterrey Cruncheros. My husband loves these so I try to pick them up when they're running a good sale. They were on sale two for six dollars. They usually run about four dollars a box. I also had a dollar off coupon. Homeland in Wichita is currently doubling dollar coupons, so with the sale and my coupon I would have got them for two bucks a box.

For your viewing pleasure- the 2 for 6 sale ad

When I was in the frozen aisle, I could not find a sign anywhere saying that the pictured item was 2 for 6. There were big packages of El Montery Burritos listed as "Cruncheros" 2 for 6, but nothing else. I asked a handy salesman about it, and he pulled out his (regular) sale ad and could not find them. I said it was only mentioned in the red and white special "meat sale" ad, and that I would go find one, because maybe I was remembering it wrong. (Not the first time for me.) When I found the ad, I was indeed correct. The Cruncheros were listed as 2 for 6, with a picture of what I wanted. However, it said that only the 30oz variety was on sale. I could not find 30 oz. The picture was of the 8 count box, so I just picked those up, figuring that we could figure it out at the register.

Of course, it run up as full price, and they had to call pricing. The person who came was the same guy I had spoken to before! That was handy, and he was very nice. He went to look and could also not find any 30 oz packages. He was gone a very long time so I assume he looked very hard. He ended up deciding to give me the advertised price on the packages I had, plus three packages for free! Yay! So I got five packages and only paid four dollars with my double coupon. I was very pleased with how they handled this situation.

My total came to be exactly six dollars.

But wait, there's more! I pulled out my ten dollar gift certificate, and she would not accept it because she cannot give cash back on a gift card! Ahhh. I had not thought of that since I have not had paper ones in so very long. That's fine and I understand, but I rarely spend more than 5 dollars at a time at Homeland. I have a 10 and a 20 dollar gift certificate. So now I'm not really sure how this is going to work. I paid in cash and I think I'm going to write a letter to Homeland to see if they have any 5 dollar gift certificates or cards that you scan, so the change can go in the card. (The manager at the store said they did not have any- maybe the main office does?) I'm kind of annoyed. I spent over an hour in the store, I was not pleased with the pharmacy at all, and I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to be able to spend my gift certificates if I can't get them in smaller increments. I don't want to just buy a ton of stuff just to make it add up to 10 or 20 dollars. I had thought about doing that at the meat sale before I saw their "sale" prices. I'm very annoyed at Homeland right now.