I have an old Norelco - or is it Philips since they bought Norelco? - rotary head shaver. I've had it perhaps 3-4 years and probably paid $30 for it at Beast Buy. Nothing fancy, just a razor. It's gotten dull and rather than buy an all-new razor, I shopped around for replacement heads and was surprised they were about $24. Jeez, may as well by a new razor for a few bucks more, right? Sparing the landfills be damned.
Well, this morning I saw on Slick Deals a Target coupon for $1 off pain relievers that run for less than a buck, so they'd be free. Nice. While selecting the coupon, I saw another one for $5 off replacement razor heads. Double nice, right? WRONG! When I went to print, I was greeted with the bane of anyone who's ever tried printing in a corporate environment: The coupon printer program/add-on/plug-in/show-stopper. Even if you can get them installed (which I can), they never seem to actually work. I'm out of toner at home, so printing at work is sort of a necessity and these stupid doodads make it impossible to take advantage of the deals.
Now what I don't understand is the logic behind these things. I'm guessing they're intended to prevent people making multiple prints to clean them out on "free" ibuprofen, but what about bigger ticket items? I still have to pay for the blades and they're expecting coupon redemption, so why not just present a printable page in my browser? There's a sound (if evil) business case for making rebates hard to redeem or using them instead of marking down prices (i.e. a percentage of buyers won't submit for the rebate), but what's the point of making it so hard to get a discount coupon that the sale ends up lost? I want/need blades and Target could've made a sale, but instead isn't getting squat because they made the coupon unavailable. Jerks.
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