Useless Items Via Walmart

*Updated*

While I had been offered the loan of an air mattress by a friend last month, since I do not like to borrow items that could get either trashed or stolen should someone come across my camp and as I cannot afford to be responsible in replacing them, I declined the kind and generous offer. In addition, I also informed the person that it would also be more weight to have to carry and quite possible yet another load on top of the two full loads that I have to trek back and forth whenever there is a need to set up, take down or move the camp site and it was already too much of a burden on me to do so.

Although I could not really afford to buy them and will be even deeper in a financial hole due to doing so as well as the fact that it would as noted above more weight to carry when having to move camp, because I have sorely needed to do something to help ease the major discomfort and pain experienced of sleeping on the floor of my tent in the woods with only a useless and poor quality sleeping pad purchased at Walmart for nearly $13.00 last month underneath my aching body, early last night I went back there and spent $23.00 for a very cheap and basic twin inflatable air mattress as well as a hand air pump -- each item ran close to $11.00 before taxes -- both sold separately and made under the name of Coleman.

The truth is that I have grown rather desperate in the hopes of getting better sleep and to not have to be so achy and fruitlessly rolling around all night in an effort to get comfortable, not to mention what it is doing to the state of my health and well being. Plus I cannot afford the prices I would have to pay to buy like items elsewhere.

Pleased that I might finally get a better quality sleep than has been the case since I started camping out last month, I returned to my camp and quickly went about trying to inflate the mattress. Come to find out that the one small part that one is supposed to use with the pump in order to inflate the mattress, both of which should of course be compatible, was not the right size: i.e., it was too large to fit into the hole to inflate the mattress.

One potential clue something was wrong was the fact when I grabbed the unopened boxed items off the shelves there were one of each of the same boxed items that had been opened and, I assumed were also returned for which I can only guess why.

There was even a piece of paper in the box for the pump that stated something along the lines that the item was not to be returned to the store of purchase stating how one should call a certain toll free number instead. Forget that, I am returning both items right away and I hope they give my money back without any problems as I need it and really should not have spent it in the first place. All of which means I have to go back to my camp late this afternoon, pick up the items and lug them back to Walmart and then return to camp for the night again, none of which will take just a small amount of effort or time on my part either.

One would think whomever makes the item for Coleman, if they could take the time to put a piece of paper in the box figuring it might have to be returned since maybe there have been problems in these regards, they should have the proper quality control in place to pick up on the problem and not ship the items out the door without ensuring the correct part was in the box to allow the two items to be compatible so the pump would fit and work. Having worked in quality control for various forms of manufacturing, I know this is not rocket science, is easy enough to do and also simply makes sense from every angle.

What I truly need of course is real, safe, decent and affordable housing, yet cannot afford that either and, it is a sure thing that neither Walmart or anyone else can help me in a meaningful manner with getting such any time soon as well.

Go figure!

*Update*: Made it up to Walmart early yesterday evening and managed to get a cash refund after returning the items purchased the night before. Tried to explain the problem to the person at the desk, but do not think they were listening or cared, which means others will be put through the same exact thing since they will simply reshelve the items I returned as well as the fact that most likely the other unopened boxes of the same product have the identical flaw.


*Note*: made several, mostly minor, edits for the purposes of clarification and readability; added an update; last updated on Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 11:14 AM.