Thanksgiving Week and A Scam

Hello friends, I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is just a few days away. We are going to have a very quiet day around here. I think it will be just me and hubs and maybe my nephew and his girlfriend. We are having ham instead of turkey. I will do the traditional sides and a couple of desserts. It seems a little strange because for so many years we had such huge gatherings. Sometimes twenty and thirty people and often several places to visit. I say if you still have that many people to celebrate with enjoy it while you can.

I had a great weekend. We planted fifty tulip bulbs. I am hoping it is not too late in the season. Hubby and I had a great system. He used his drill with an attachment and dug the holes and I placed the bulbs in the ground. I can’t wait until spring to see if they come up. I will be so excited and grateful if only a few survive. I am hoping some critter does not dig them up. That has happened before, and the critter mentioned is one of the cats.

I got scammed:
I can’t believe as old as I am I fell for such a scam on the internet. For weeks I had been seeing those adorable gnome advent calendars. Some were on Facebook and some were on TikTok and a couple of other social media platforms. I thought they were adorable. They were $39.95 and each day starting in December you would open one of the little gnome windows and get a different gnome. They were a great size and the ad showed some people putting them on their Christmas tree as ornaments and some made a little garland from them. I couldn’t wait to get them. Now to be honest, there are some real gnome advent calendars out there, but you have to watch carefully to see what you are getting, I didn’t, and that was my fault. So lesson learned.

The day the package finally arrived. I went to the Post Office to pick it up. I was expecting this huge box that I would probably have to wrestle to the car. I opened my PO Box and, instead of a card telling me to come to the counter to pick up my box, there was a locker key. The locker keys are for the larger boxes in the Post Office. But there was no way my big box of gnomes could ever fit in one of those. Right??

And to beat it all it was one of the smaller locker boxes. I opened it and there was a small box maybe an 8 x 10 size. Oh well I guessed, this was something else that my husband ordered. But no, it had my name on the box. I took it to the car and I could actually carry it in the palm of one hand. Once in the car I opened it and there was the gnome advent calendar box I had seen online. Only this one was incredibly small and well no, just no. It couldn’t be. I opened one of the tiny advent windows and a small hard trinket fell out. What???? I opened up several more and each had an ugly little hard plastic trinket not much bigger than a charm for a charm bracelet.

I sat there staring at the box with the cold hard realization hitting me. I had been scammed!!! I had been scammed out of $39.95 plus shipping. Close to $50.00 in total. As I looked at this little pile of kids toys I couldn’t believe that someone could sell this. But wait!! There were three bigger gnomes in the box. Sort of ugly they were. But they were there. As I looked at this I started to laugh. I couldn’t stop. If anyone had seen me in my car that day they would have wondered why I was laughing so hard. They would probably shake their heads and say “yep she’s finally lost it”

I was so disappointed and mad that I had allowed myself to be scammed. I went back to the ad and started reading the reviews, something I should have done before ordering, they were terrible. A hard and expensive lesson learned. I was too embarrassed to take a picture of it. I gave it to one of my co workers and she was going to give it to her little sister. She said she would enjoy playing with the little trinkets. So if she liked them it is not all wasted.

I sent an email to the company asking for a refund. Of course I have heard nothing back and certainly have received no refund. It’s funny but this is reminding me of the time when I was about eight years old and wanted to send away for 100 little dolls. They were only $1.99. You can read that post here

I guess if it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Enjoy friends and family and be sure to love on each other as much as possible. Now I am off to knit on my sock for a little while.

Always remember

Love your day your way!!!!