A couple of years ago we bought a board game at a garage sale. Well, actually, my oldest son bought it for the $2 that he had saved up. The game was Mousetrap, a game that has a lot of little pieces. I ask the seller if all of the pieces were included in the game, and she assured me that yes they were. She told me that she just checked all of the games an hour before. All of the way home, my son was so excited by this game. As soon as we got home, he opened it up and begged us to play it with him. Guess what? There were several pieces missing after all. It is the type of game that needs all of its pieces to work. We tossed the game out.
Now, I could go into a rant at about the morals of a person who would willingly sell an unusable game to an excited four-year-old child, but that would be the subject of a different kind of blog.
Christmas wasn’t too far off, and the game was at the top of my son’s list. We purchased a brand new version of the Mousetrap game for Santa to bring to our house. Christmas morning and once again my son was so excited by his new game. We took off the shrink wrap and sorted out all of the pieces, only to find that the manufacturers had forgotten one piece and given us two of another. We explained this to our son by telling him that the elves must have been so overwhelmed with everyone’s Christmas orders that they made a mistake. We attempted to exchange the game, but the store wouldn’t take it back, since it had been opened. We could mail the game back to the manufacturer, but that would cost more than we paid for the game on sale.
So there went another game.
Later, I found out that I could have saved us some money and some grief by just ordering the missing pieces. Hasbro sells all sorts of game kits to replace missing pieces, and they even sell pieces from Milton Bradley and other manufacturers. The prices on these pieces are very inexpensive. Just call the number on the box or go to Haboro.com for information.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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