From The Past: September 11, 2003
Tonight, Ashley and I ventured out to a mother/daughter jewelry party. Neither of us had ever been to a jewelry party so this was a whole new adventure. A few years back, my sister had some kind of home interior party. That was a lot of fun. I believe I bought a candle.
It was pretty much what I expected it would be. “The Distributor” was the one who made the big presentation. She tried to get you to host your own jewelry party and told you how you could make lots of money doing it. She displayed all of the jewelry on a mannequin making sure that you knew that sets were always better than single items. Instead of just buying the earrings, she encouraged you to buy the earrings, necklace, and matching bracelet. The whole room of women totally cracked up when “The Distributor” turned around to grab another piece of jewelry and the mannequin fell over, flat, right in the middle of the floor. You could tell that “The Distributor” did not find this humorous at all, but once we all started laughing, it was hard to stop! I think it kind of ticked her off, but she kept cool about it.
Going in I had set a $15 limit for myself. I figured that I could surely stay under that goal. At the end of the presentation, we all got up to look over the long table of jewelry. Ashley was interested in earrings, so we focused on those. Every pair she picked up was either $26 or $32. Finally, she found a pair for $18 and then another for $16. I asked her which pair she liked the best and she picked the $16 pair. That was great for me. “I’ll only be $1 over”, I was thinking to myself. I filled out the order form and then handed it to “The Distributor”. She made it clear that she could calculate your order fast so we were encouraged to let her do it. She handed me back the order and my total was $21.86. What the heck? My eye then saw that there was a $2.50 shipping and handling charge which she had NEVER mentioned once in her big, long presentation. She also charged me $3.36 in sales tax. Well, I thought that $21.86 was way too much, but I wrote the check anyway.
When I got home, Kevin informed me that she had overcharged me in sales tax by several dollars. I had to call the hostess of the party and have Kevin explain the situation to her. Needless to say, she will be giving me my $2 back in cash tomorrow morning. But, what I’m really wondering is this: How many other people were overcharged $2? No, it’s not much, but it’s still wrong and I honestly don’t think it was an accident. This is her business and she does this daily. She knows how this works. I’d say that she wasn’t too happy with being caught either. Most people probably wouldn’t say anything. This is why it’s always good to have Kevin by my side. If he had been there, he would have caught it right away and maybe other people would have checked their stubs too. Now I know how she’s making her big bucks!
Currently (2019): In the above post, I never mention the name of the jewelry party, however since it was so long ago, I will say that it was Premier Jewelry. I have no idea if they are still in business today. That was my first and last jewelry party.