A friend from out of town gave me a gift certificate for an e-tailer dedicated to one of my passions: shoes! I received the gift a few months ago but our recent cold weather had me hungering for boots so I visited the site to see what I could find. Imagine my delight when upon my visit to Shoebuy.com, I found not only a pair of boots I liked but also a site-wide promotion for 20% off. With my gift certificate, that would still leave a small balance remaining for me to pay but that was fine. The website form wouldn’t accept both the promotion and the gift certificate despite there being two clearly marked and distinct fields in which to enter them. Oh, a tech problem, I thought. I called. Talked to Rodney. Nope, he said, pleasantly, you can’t use both. “But I’m not trying to use a second discount,” I explained. “It’s not a coupon.” Yes, he said, but he couldn’t help me. He suggested I write an email, which I did, and call back, asking for one of two people, which I did. I never heard back from that email and when I called back was never able to speak with the two people I was told to seek out. Instead, I was told that my gift certificate, which I understood to be my...
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