For those who have been following this blog, you know that both Mr Credit Card and myself recently went to the Pottery Barn Outlet store in Lancaster County. There, we some furniture that was going for a huge discount.

While we were there, we also saw some blinds and curtains that we had always wanted to get for our kids’ rooms. However, there was a problem. We did not know the exact measurements. So what we did was to take out the blinds and did a ‘rough estimation’. We figured that it was fit the windows just fine.

We took a long time deciding on the color and finally settled on a checked blue pattern as it fitted both our son’s room. It was obviously on discount as well so we were happy to pick them up.

After the drive home (which was about an hour), we took the blinds and went to our sons’ rooms straight away. Then to our horror, it did not fit! The blinds we bought measured 26 inches by 63 inches. Our kids window measured 31 inches by 63 inches! Worst of all, there was no return policy.

Just two days ago, I was going to make a trip back to Lancaster again. I called the store and they agreed to exchange the items if we found something that suited us. After the hour journey there, we quickly found out that there was not any blinds that had the measurements or color that we wanted. We also could not return the goods.

Lesson - We learnt a good lesson here. While shopping at Outlet stores can save you lots of money and is certainly a smart way to be frugal, you can fall into the trap of buying something you either do not need or in our case, not sure if it is exactly the thing you need. Now that we know the precise measurements, we will not make this mistake again.

The lesson here is to make sure you know what you want to buy, only then should you look for the best bargains. In our case, we did the opposite. We stumbled upon bargains, then tried to decide what we want. I’m pretty sure that is how most of us get into credit card debt as well!.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Frugality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.