When Teens Do Not Get What They Paid For

Daughter J was wandering around here earlier looking for something to do, and hoping we’d let her out of the house to wander aimlessly around town by herself.

Not gonna happen!

I still had a gift card from Barnes & Noble (from Christmas) so I suggested that we go there. I figured I’d buy her a hot chocolate and she could listen to the CDs while I browsed. She didn’t take me up on the offer of cocoa, but she did ask if she could buy a CD by a band she likes. So I let her borrow money from my gift card to buy the album.

About twenty minutes later we left the store and she opened the CD and popped it into the car stereo. That’s when she discovered that this album was recorded live. She’s not a fan of recorded concerts. (She gets that from me.)

Because the CD had been opened, the store refused to take it back. That’s their policy. They’ll only accept returned CDs if they’re defective, and they will replace it with a new copy of the same item in that case. But for J, there was no chance at returning the item.

She was disappointed, but gracious about it. All the way home we agreed that the CD should have had a note on the outside that labeled it as a live album. After we got home, I looked closely at the CD case and it did, indeed, in very tiny, very thin red letters on a black background, state that it had been recorded live. Our righteous anger had been misplaced all along. The blame was squarely on us for not reading the album cover carefully.

I’m not going to lecture her. She doesn’t need that. This is a lesson she has learned all on her own, and I’m just grateful that it only cost her $22 to learn to be a more careful shopper.

Related posts:

1. Spring Break with Teens
2. Moms as Role Models for Teens
3. Tunnels: A Parable to Read and to Discuss with Your Distraught Teens
4. Teens and Sex
5. Ceramics Without Teens