Returning Things To Save Money

This was $84.99 on Black Friday. Insane.
Sorry. I've been busy so I haven't had much time to post lately. Who would've thought having a newborn meant zero time for yourself? Oh yeah... parents do. Everyone else is just clueless.

One of the benefits (or disadvantages depending on how you look at it) of a newborn is odd waking hours. You can be up at 3am changing a diaper or 5am to feed baby.

As such, we found ourselves up early in the morning during Amazon's Black Friday week. While normally, I don't partake too much in Black Friday, the previous Black Friday we snagged a 42" TV for the bedroom for $200 and we felt it was important to see if there was something else we could take advantage of.

I had an eye on a new solid state drive to replace my laptop's old hard drive and was looking for a special on an Ecobee3, a smart thermostat. I would never have guessed I'd buy an electric pressure cooker.

I suppose the stage was set as follows. For months now, mother-in-law was trying to make bean rice in our regular rice cooker. Each time, the beans came out hard. It didn't matter how long she soaked the beans or if she pre-cooked them. Hard. Every time.

Due to that, talk of getting a pressure cooker (a non-electric version) came up. The issue? They scared mother-in-law. I don't blame her. Those things are scary with all the steam build up shooting out and the potential for explosions in the kitchen. Of course, we didn't know they had an electric version of this.

Until the Monday
before Black Friday when Amazon had a deal for an Instant Pot Pressure cooker. They had the Instant Pot 6-in-1 6L pressure cooker for $84.99. I did some research on Google and reading the reviews.

This was the lowest price of an Instant Pot ever!

Additionally, the Instant Pot was considered the best electric pressure cooker available. Wifey and I watched videos of reviews and operation on YouTube and the main selling point for us was that it was safe.

I purchased the Instant Pot that same day (an Amazon deal of the day) and it was delivered on Wednesday. We didn't even get a chance to use it when Black Friday rolled around.

That was when things got crazy. For the same price of $84.99, we could pick up an Instant Pot 7-in-1 6L pressure cooker. What? Same price? I read reviews. The previous year, this pressure cooker went on sale for $120. As a result, people didn't think it would go this low this year.

I believe it was a lightning deal, so I snatched one up.

Problem was now I had two pressure cookers. Well, we didn't get a chance to try the other one and I had all the packaging, so I started a return on Amazon.

You can do that?

That's the beauty of Amazon. They have a very generous return policy. Plus, returns are free. Just pack up the item, print out their shipping label, and drop it off at a nearby Canada Post. That's what I did and I got the refund for the first instant pot on the 30th of November.

With Amazon's generous return policy comes an odd quirk. They don't do price adjusting. As in, if an item you bought within the past 14 days is cheaper, they will not give you the refund on the difference. They will allow you to purchase another item and then ship back that item under the old price for a refund. All for free. You'd think it would cost them less to just adjust the price instead of shipping the same item back and forth, but I suppose a lot of people don't bother.

Of course, our returns wasn't limited to just Amazon. We also purchased an ecobee3 smart thermostat bundle from Ecobee. The bundle included extra sensors for $299 + tax. I've been keeping an eye out for a deal around Black Friday. The sensor usually sells for $299 anyway, but the extra sensors go for another $80 or so. Best Buy had the same special. However, I figured it would be better to give Ecobee the money directly rather than buy it at the same price via Best Buy. In hindsight, I should have purchased it through Best Buy.

One week later, on Cyber Monday, Amazon released their insane deal for the ecobee3. For $224, you get the ecobee3 smart thermostat. As an option, you could also choose to add the extra sensors for no charge. Yeah, you get the sensors for free.



As it was shortly before 6am, I took advantage of the ecobee3 promotion without dwelling on the details and logistics of everything. I was fortunate, as it was a lightning deal. When I was checking out, the page indicated that they only had 5 sensor packs left. So I was one of the lucky ones to get it at this price.

The issue was I had already installed the other thermostat the week before. The one I purchased from Ecobee directly. Fortunately, I could just return the new one from Amazon and that they have a 30 day window to accept returns. I would be in charge of shipping though. Which was fine. I just saved $75+ tax with the Amazon deal. This is where buying from Best Buy would have been better. I could easily return the sensor package in store for a full refund. With Ecobee, I'd have to mail in the package we received from Amazon. It took a while, but we received the full refund from Ecobee.

Granted through this experience, we're spending money. However, for the ecobee3, we were planning on spending the money. More on that later. The Instant Pot was more of an impulse buy. However, last week we made bean rice twice and the beans were so soft, you'd think they came out of a can or something.

So yeah, in certain instances, if you've already spent the money, you can take advantage of returns to save you some money.

As for the solid state drive I was looking for, I picked up a 750GB for $135! Awesome.

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