The Juggle Zone: Bargain Blog

Because I have nothing better to do at 3:30 a.m. Saturday night, I was cleaning out my "Rebates & Coupons" folder. It's a place where I save coupons and rebates as I find, often before I even know if I'll use them. As I was deleting expired forms, I came across one for the Oral-B D9013 Rechargeable Power Toothbrush.

Some history: A few months ago my old one died. After spending some considerable time debating going the fancy (read: expensive) route to get a top of the line model (3D Excel) or a cheaper model similar to what I had (which was the only model available when it was purchased), I finally decided to go the cheap route. Then, after buying it, I found a coupon in a weekly circular, which Target wouldn't give me credit for ex post facto (their supposed policy is they'll only do that for same day purchases). However, they would allow me to return the old toothbrush, and buy a new one with the coupon. So I did.

Anyways, back to now, as I was deleting the various expired forms, I came across a few rebates that I had saved while in my "debate between expensive or cheap model" phase. One of the rebates was for the expensive model, so I deleted it right away. The other was a $5 rebate for a cheap model, but I wasn't sure if it was the right one. Therefore, I immediately began scouring the house for the packaging. Despite having made the purchase over 1 month ago, I still had it, well, at least some of it. I found the impossible to open without getting cut plastic case, the generic instruction manual, part of the internal labeling. I was just missing one thing - the piece of cardboard with 1) identification of my model of toothbrush, and 2) the UPC! Digging a little further, I found the UPC. The only remaining challenge was to find the receipt, which under normal circumstances is easy - I save all my receipts by date in an envelope. The only problem is I'm not perfect about filing/re-filing receipts involved in returns, exchanges, etc.

So I searched my Excel spreadsheet (in which I track my credit card purchases) for a roughly $20 purchase at Target. I found one on 11/2/03, but didn't find the receipt. Mad at myself, I hoped against hope that that was a different receipt. Before searching further in the spreadsheet, I remembered that I had placed the original purchase on my Chase (LPG) card. Therefore, I could search that spreadsheet for a Target return (for roughly $20), find the date of the return, which was the same date as the purchase on my regular credit card. (Though I didn't bring the originally purchased toothbrush when I went to try to get Target to credit me for the coupon, I simply purchased a new toothbrush using the coupon, put that receipt away, pulled out the old one, and returned the new toothbrush with the old receipt.)

It turns out I made the return on 11/23, so I went back to my envelope of receipts and found the Target receipt! I just "found" $5! And just in time! The rebate has to be postmarked by 1/31/04.