A New TV

The TV in our family room was having problems. After we had the bulb in it changed, the screen went all warped and soon there was a big, bright, yellow circle in the midle of the screen. We waited until the beginning of this month and then finally called Best Buy to fix it (we had the extended warranty and were very glad we got it after we had to have the light engine replaced last year, which was a $1400 part). They contacted the repair place and Wes from the repair place called us and said that he'd send it back in to Best Buy to have them do the buy back thing, since he was pretty sure it was probably the light engine again and he said they don't fix that anymore. So we waited to hear back from Best Buy and finally on Thursday we got a call that said to take our TV in to the store and they'll exchange it. They gave us a confirmation and told us to take in our receipt and stuff too. So when Bryce came home from work that night, he took the tv and went to Best Buy. He came back with a 50" dlp TV and an adapter for our computer to make it go from DVI to HDMI, since the new TV didn't have the DVI port (It had a VGA port, but our VGA output on our computer hadn't been working). He said that at first they tried to get him to take a 46" TV and he asked how it works, if they just trade for comparable models (although our old TV had more ports and they actually didn't have anything there with a DVI port) or what. So they figured out that the TV we had would cost $1200 now, so they were looking at TV's in that range (the 46" one cost $900). Anyway, Bryce set up the 50" TV and we couldn't get the computer to work right with it, so the next day, Bryce took it back and just got a gift card for the cost, since he thought maybe I'd want to help him pick something out. They actually gave him the full amount that we originally paid for our TV with taxes and everything, so just over $1900.
I told Bryce I didn't care what he got, so he could just go back, which he did after we got the boys in bed that night. He kept calling me to see if we wanted 2 46" TV's, a 50" and a 46", or a 65". I told him it was up to him. He decided to get the 65". But they only had the floor model left at the Nampa store and there wasn't enough time to get out to the Boise store before it closed, so they held one for him at the Boise store. Since I had an Enrichment Activity when he was supposed to be out there, he took Ben, Alex, and Chris with him and I had Daniel with me. I got home from the EA at about 12. At 1, Bryce got home and asked if I could keep the boys with me, he was going to go to the Nampa store. He had argued with the people at the Boise store because they wanted to charge him $1999 for the TV when he was going to get it for $1699 at the Nampa store. So he went to the Nampa store and got it for the $1699 price, which had been kind of a mistake in the first place because the manager hadn't switched the tag to say $1999, but since he had told Bryce they would give it to him for that price, they were keeping it there. And since he was taking the floor model, they gave him another 10% off. And Bryce managed to talk them into not charging him sales tax because of the hassle. And the manager who the night before had told Bryce he'd give it to him for that price wasn't there, so they had to call him to make sure Bryce was telling them the truth. So after buying the TV and another extended warranty with it (we figured that it was probably a good idea with a TV this expensive and it really came in handy last time), he ended up with about $28 left on the gift card. So he got a 65" TV that is typically worth $2000 or so for a really good price, feeling like he spent a lot of money, although he hadn't actually spent anything) And if he had taken the one they were originally trying to give him, we'd have ended up with a TV worth $900. I'm pretty glad I sent Bryce to go do the TV stuff. I probably would have just taken the $900 one. And now we have a HUGE TV in our family room that works with the computer (it also didn't have the DVI port, but the HDMI port was supposed to work better with computers). It took a bit to get the computer to work with it and in the end, the VGA output actually started working, and the DVI still wasn't working with the new TV, so we're using the VGA port. Which is actually kind of funny. To sum up, it was a lot of hassle, but we ended up getting a pretty good deal out of it. We went from 44" to 65" and didn't have to pay anything.