The $1000 Phone Call

About a month ago Todd and I bought a new kitchen table. It came with seating for eight, but I think we can seat 10 comfortably. It's all black and is a 54" square table, with a leaf making it 54"x 72". I absolutely love it.

It has six chairs and a bench seat for two. I think it looks great in our kitchen and can't wait to get our cabinets in and to finally get the kitchen painted.

There was a slight problem with our table though. They undercharged us. By a lot. When Todd realized this almost two weeks later, the question for debate was, "What should I do?" or "What would you do?"


I'm sure Todd knew exactly what needed to be done, but he was hoping someone would tell him that it was the store's mistake and that was the end of it. He wasn't so lucky.


Finally Todd decided it was time to let the store know about the error. He asked me to call them so I could let them know. We were in the car driving home when I made the call and Todd was leaning over so he could hear the whole conversation.


This is roughly how it went:


Nicole: Hi, we bought a table from you about two weeks ago and we noticed an error on our credit card statement.


Salesman: Uhhhh, okaaay.


N: Actually, it was an error in our favor.

S: Ohhhh. Well then, what happened?


N: I have the invoice number if you'd like to pull the receipt.

S: Great. Let me go get that. (wait for a few seconds to pull the receipt) So, what seems to be the problem?


N: It looks like the cost of the table is $1296.40 and we were only charged $129.46.


S: Wow. That was a big mistake. Well it looks like it's already been sent to our main office in Phoenix, so we'll have to have someone get back to you at the first of the week. Thank you so much for being a nice lady and letting us know about this.


N: Sure. No problem. Have a good day.


S: Thanks. You too.


After this call ended I thought Todd was going to drive off the road. He said that was the most expensive call I'd ever made. Who knew I could spend about $1000 in a matter of minutes?


I mentioned that when we were younger, if we went to a teacher and told them they counted our test wrong and gave us a higher grade, the teacher would often let you keep the grade because you were honest. Why does that happen when we're young, but not later in life? Couldn't we have been given some sort of discount for our honesty? Please?


Three days later, this message was left on our answering machine.

Needless to say, Todd was depressed all over again. As for me, I asked for a copy of the message so I could blog about it! How different we are!