OK so this post is off-topic for Zoe, but I wanted to fill you all in. I was a 'big winner' on Mix 94.5, a local radio station who is running a contest called "Pick Your Purse". If you're a member of their email club, you're entered in the qualifying round. They choose names at random to announce on-air. Each person called has 9 minutes and 45 seconds to call the station to win a small prize. At that point, you're considered a "qualifier" for the grand prizes that are being given away every Friday for about 6 weeks or so.
Thursday afternoon last week my name was called, and I just lucked out to have been listening, so I call in and I won a t-shirt and 2 tickets to an Illini men's b-ball scrimmage and I was officially qualified for the subsequent grand prizes that would be awarded for the next few weeks. Each grand prize consists of a designer purse filled with a ton of gift certificates for local vendors and such. Well wouldn't you know... Friday morning I set the alarm clock to get up at 7 so that I would hear the name of that week's grand prize winner and IT WAS ME!!!!!!!!!!!!! Holy moly. So after yelling out loud with excitement and COMPLETELY freaking poor Zoe out (she was sitting next to me when my name was called and my shout-out startled her to tears) I called that station and claimed my prize.
Well come to find out the whole thing was worth $1145. And if you win a prize over $600 in value, you have to pay taxes on it. I suppose it would have been most wise of me to decline some of the prizes that I didn't want so that I wouldn't have to pay taxes... but I didn't think of that until later :( aargh. But what REALLY makes me upset is that once I got home and looked through all the "gift certificates", I realized that the one I wanted the most (it's $250 for a local pro photographer) isn't actually a gift certificate- it's a COUPON. The fine print says that you have to spend at least $750 to get the $250 discount. Well now we have a problem. I need to get back over to the radio station tomorrow and work this out. I should not have to pay tax on a COUPON! Especially since I can't afford to spend that much on pictures anyway, and the so-called gift certificate which is really a coupon would just sit here and go to waste while waiting for tax season to roll around.
So anyway- the moral of this story is that you should be careful what you wish for and you should not just take anyone's word for it... some things aren't as they appear.
BTW- the purse is sort of hideous and I can't imagine every wasting the suggested retail price of $425 on it.... but that's beside the point... I feel eBay coming on.... either that or I'll dontate it to the Central HS Band Boosters to raffle off for a fundraiser or something.
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