Yes, I’m a happy Cornhusker.  If you read my earlier blog, my tickets came through safely and my team came through spectacularly.  We sat in the rain, which all the folks from Nebraska thought was fantastic weather since they all dug themselves out of snow drifts to get here.

But enough football reminiscing, I do actually have some post holiday advice: hang on to those receipts.  I have a fat little wad of them in my purse as we speak.  This is the season that we get complaints on issues with returning goods and horrible weight loss programs.  We’ll save weight-loss for another blog.  (Although I found an effective program: holiday flu.)  As for those returns, what are your rights?  Well, unless you were in your home when you made the purchase, your rights differ with every store.  You see, stores are required to post their return policy in a conspicuous place, but that policy can be different not only for each store, but one store might have different return policies for different items in the store.  For example, a store might have a 30-day return policy for most items, but a 7-day return policy on some perishables.

Personally, I do a lot of online shopping, but not for the holidays.  Because I am dealing with so many hard goods, I want to know I have recourse if something goes wrong, and that it will be easy to deal with.  Point in case, the electronic dart board I bought “hung” (failed to score in the computer brain) on the third day of play.  I drove it down the street and exchanged it.  The return policy was on the back of my receipt and I had no trouble whatsoever with the merchant.