Anyone who knows me knows I watch a lot of QVC. I check every day to see what the Today's Special Value is, although it's been quite some time since I actually purchased one. I have figured out that most of the time I can find something similar at a store nearby for the same price, and since I don't mind going out to shop, I end up saving on what I consider to be QVC's exhorbitant shipping rates.

The thing that gets me is you're charged separate shipping rates per item. If you buy both a pair of pants and a shirt from QVC, you're charged full shipping rates for both items. That adds up quickly! The only time you get a "break" is if you buy two of the same item, at which point you only pay 50% of the shipping for the second item. And you can only get the standard, slow-ass UPS delivery if you want to save money.

I'm not a fan of the UPS folks here. First, they're just WEIRD. I don't generally mind chatty, oddball folks, since I am one too, but these folks are just WEIRD. Second, the one guy who runs the route will deliver whenever he gets around to it. If that's 8pm on a weeknight, that's when he's ringing my doorbell. Of course, with Kurt being gone, my doorbell ringing at night tends to scare the crap out of me. So there you are.

Anyhow, back to the story. I wanted yesterday's Today's Special Value, which was two watch cases with twelve different straps to them. In this way, you get 24 different looks. For $25, you couldn't beat it. So I asked Kurt if I could get it, and he said sure.

I placed my order on QVC.com like I ALWAYS do, and went on my way.

Later that night I got an email from them saying my credit card has been declined. That completely confused me. I am in very good standing on all my cards, so there is no reason to decline me!! I checked to make sure what my balance was on that card, and there is plenty of room on that card. I also found out that some makeup I had on auto-delivery was pending for the exact same reason.

Here's where I began to figure it out. See, when I first ordered the auto-delivery for the makeup, my card had a different expiration date, although the account number was exactly the same. When the second shipment was charged to that card, the expiration date had passed. Finally I got that all straightened out, and I told QVC the new expiration date. It even read the correct date when I went to charge something else to that account.

However, it must be that QVC.com still has the old expiration date in its system somewhere. I used that same card today at Mervyn's for $40, and it went through just fine. That proves there is no reason for QVC.com to decline my purchase.

No big deal -- I still managed to get the watches, just charged to a different card.

Then today as I was coming home from the mall (I got bored this morning), I called Sprint's account management line to see how many minutes I had left on my cell phone plan for the month. I'd been calling non-Sprint customers lately on my phone, so I wanted to make sure I had enough minutes to last me the next two weeks.

Sprint told me I had 39 minutes left. For two weeks. Between two phones.

I left Kurt a message on his phone to tell him not to use the damn thing unless he's calling me (we have free PCS to PCS minutes between our phones), and later when I talked to him I made sure he wouldn't use the phone except after 7pm when our night & weekend minutes took over. I know that's sort of a problem for him since it's his only way to contact his brother to set up things to do over the weekend, but fortunately he was too busy to call his brother anyhow till well after 7pm. It was more like 9 when he called him.

I just checked my minutes again, and somehow we lost 34 minutes this evening! How is that possible when I didn't use the phone except to talk to Kurt, and Kurt didn't use the phone until after night & weekend minutes kicked in?? I think he and I would have remembered if we'd talked to someone for over half an hour.

I'm thinking that for some reason, Sprint isn't recognizing either our PCS to PCS minutes as being PCS to PCS, or it's not recognizing our night & weekend minutes. That happened once before. On my birthday in 2004, I got a bill for $212 for our cell phones. For some, this might be normal. But our combined cell phone bill was supposed to be $70-some! I called Sprint PCS, and they were quite kind once I informed them that I had unlimited PCS to PCS on both phones, and for some reason they were charging Kurt for minutes that should have been included. The lady fixed the problem, I ended up paying my $70-some bill, and everyone went on their merry way.

I just checked my cell phone minutes again, and now I've supposedly used 309 minutes! That's up from 248 minutes earlier this afternoon when I left that message for Kurt. It must be that they're charging me for PCS to PCS minutes, which are supposed to be unlimited. I haven't talked to anyone else BUT Kurt, and he's calling me from his cell phone. And it was after night & weekend minutes were to be in effect anyhow. Hopefully this is what the problem is because then Sprint will kindly fix the issue and I'll go back to having another 200 minutes to last me another two weeks.

*crosses fingers*

I'm still nervous. Gahhh! I'm sucking lately!