Trip to the Mall

I had a good experience at the mall today.

 

First of all I walked there from work since it's relatively close. saves me gas and headache of finding a parking space and it's good exercise.

 

Second I went there and felt relief of not feeling any urge to buy anything. I could've gone with my credit cards and I don't think I would've used them. I actually went there with a bunch of cash from a payment I couldn't make.

 

I roamed the hallways and looked into the stores and as usually the ones with low prices had a lot of people in them, the ones with expensive stuff had no one inside but the employees, how do those store survive?! I guess they can still make a good profit even when they put a 50% discount on stuff.

 

I went to the Tigo store and it was closed for remodeling. Crap, I wanted to remove my mom and dad's cellphones from automatic debit from my Amex BAC credit card. My dad and mom pay their cellphones but sometimes they time it wrong and Tigo ends up charging me and I don't have the hard to ask them for the money back. This last time they charge me AND my dad paid too. It was one of those rare days when both things go thru into the system. That was a month ago, this new bill my dad was expecting to pay nothing since the bill came about the same. But it was charge on my CC again! So Tigo explained to him that they send the bill amount to the CC company and that credits stay there until my dad would go pay manually to the bank, then it would be posted against his next bill. This was too much and he didn't want to cause me more trouble and asked if he could be removed from auto debit AND stay in the good plan we have. I had done this one time before with a cousin and apparently it had worked so I wanted to try it out.

 

The usual place where the Tigo store is located was being remodeled. I roamed around and made a note to get an ice cream cone when I was ready to walk back to the office. Suddenly a huge rainstorm could be heard outside so now I was sorta trapped in there.

 

I've been looking for a bluetooth headset for a while trying to get the lowest cost one with good sound quality. So I went into the many cellphone stores looking for prices. I found one headset that seemed good. I wasn't going to buy today but I asked if they would take credit card points. They said yes, and they also told me they took Tigo points!

 

Cool! I know my mom and dad's cellphones have a bundle of those under my name so I could use them. However I told them the Tigo store was closed. "Oh no, they moved to the first floor while this place is being repaired" , they said.

 

Even cooler, so I went down and I first took care of the cancellation of auto debit from my mom and dad's cellphones. That will help me kill that balance off now. I called them both and they said they were happy to finally have this fixed, AND they stayed in the plan which means I still call them for free.

 

Then I went on to gather my Tigo points and I had about Lps 1,300 worth, which was the price of the headset. I know I had used a ton of those points before getting cellphones from Tigo for free so I was happy the balance had gone up so fast.

 

So I did the usual paperwork and got the good headset I wanted. Most of the points came from mom and dad's cellphones which they were ok with giving to me since they only use their phones to talk so they don't need the latest one each year or any fancy accesories.

 

Then I went to the ice cream store, and I was about to pay when I noticed I had only a bunch of 1lps bills..I managed to gather the 20lps to pay (didn't want to break the other money I had for the payment I couldn't do).

 

I toured a little more but now I was a bit itchy to get my headset charged and start testing it. So I walked back to the office under a light rain and got here all soaked. I'm still drying up.

 

Cancelling my mom and car auto debit from my credit card was a good thing. Getting a BT headset for points (no money) was good too , no more hiding from the police when I talk and drive! And the ice cream cone was 20lps..so trip to the mall , window shopping, improving my debt burden, getting a nice bluetooth headset and an ice cream cone was a total of 20lps , about $1 . :-)

 

Still I meditated as I was walking thru the hallways how in the past I would've charged the headset first and would worry about how to pay it up later. This time I wasn't in a hurry to buy it, actually I have been shopping for one for months now. Only because I was able to use the Tigo points, which are good only for cellphones and accessories, did I actually buy it today. I had seen the same headset in another store there and was only comparing prices and was ready to walk back to the office without it with no remorse. I even actually had a credit card with me because I needed to bring my CC to cancel the auto debit. At no time was I thinking of using it to pay for the headset today. I did asked for a CC points balance and I had about 2500 points on it. That's when they told me I could use the Tigo points.

 

I'm putting the credit card back in my desk drawer now. I'm not tempted to use it but it's too bulky on my wallet now and it feels uncomfortable.. :-)

 

This for me was a good experience, how do you think I did?