The biggest consumer purchases I have ever made are my laptop and my bicycle.
So when our television set, a high school graduation present to my husband, began flickering and throbbing, we knew it was only a matter of time before a new television would have to be purchased. So one Sunday afternoon, I was getting really upset because I wanted to know the score to the stupid Lions game, but our television set was throbby, throbby, throbby, and let's not even talk about how since we had an old skool television set without HD or widescreen, the scores were cut off anyway, and I blew. I turned off the television, turned to my husband, and told him we were going to Best Buy and buying a new television.
And we did. We'd been doing research for approximately eighty bazillion months and we knew what we wanted and we went in there and we purchased a television set.
As I was digging through my purse, attempting to find my wallet to pay, the cashier was babbling on about extended warranties, and Dr. BB was systematically shooting her down, I felt a wrenching in my gut. A little piece of me, the piece that is sort of proud at how frugally and debt free we live, just broke off.
(Tangentially related: I fucking hate Best Buy. The television we purchased has a manufacturer's one year warranty. The cashier asked us to buy a two year warranty. We declined, saying that catastrophic failure would likely occur during the one year period. She then proceeded to say that was true for some products, but not always and then she nodded at the box holding the television we were purchasing!! I stared at her and said, "Do you know something about this television?" She merely responded that she had training about the electronics they sell. I pushed. "So you are telling me that this item is going to catastrophically fail within two years?" "No, no," she said, slowly, as if I were an idiot. "Then why do we need it?" Anyway, Best Buy is for suckers. Next time I buy a big electronic item, let's say approximately two decades from now, we're going to Target.)
Friday we're going car shopping. Our pickup truck, Monster, is ridiculous for the city. Dr. BB is going to be commuting 80 miles a day soon and Monster, while he is reliable and cheap to maintain, is killing us in gas and driveability, a fancy way of saying that Monster tends to fishtail like mad when there is so much as a trace of snow on the ground and it snowed eight inches on Saturday and...well, let's just say that while I survived Saturday, my trust in Monster did not.
I find myself wondering 1) if anyone will give the two of us with our spotty employment histories a car loan and 2) what it will be like to drive a car for the first time in my driving life. And also? How much of my soul will be lying in a showroom floor when we commit to a car payment each month?
I bought the TV for my living room about six years ago and I went to Best Buy first. I had already narrowed it down to two different models before I went into the store and they had both of them. The salesman came up and I said, "I'm trying to decide between these two," and he said, I kid you not, "okay, the first thing you're going to want to do is get an extended warranty." He tried to sell me the warranty before he even knew if I was buying a TV! We then got into a bit of an argument and I left and bought my TV at Sears. The Sears salesman did mention an extended warranty but in a really half-hearted way. When I declined, he looked around and whispered, "yeah, you don't need one."
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