I could be. Check out this quote from a post of mine from last September:

“Ivan is currently a category 4 hurricane. 30 foot swells in the middle of the storm. Okay….that’s big scary shit. If the storm hits Mobile Alabama as predicted, 12 blocks of downtown could be flooded.

If it were to get hit, it would be devistating. Experts say there could be as many as 400 thousand people left in the city because evacuation is taking around 10-12 hours. Because of the fact that NO is a valley, if hit it could be under as much as 20 feet of water! Could you imagine the city you live in, being under 20 feet of water?”

So. Kel and I get a new couch for our “blue” room. For those of you that haven’t been to our house, the blue room is the one that is painted blue. Try to keep up.

So, we get a new couch, which is kick ass BTW, and we quickly realize that the carpet that we were trying to get a little more mieage out of seriously needs to go. I had mentioned earlier that our dog was sick all over the carpet 2 days after we had it cleaned. Anyway, we start carpet shopping. We call a few places, and end up having Empire come out for their free in-home estimate that they advertise.

(Quick side note on the power of advertising. We only called Empire because we remembered that stupid jingle from their commercials. You know the one, “call 1 800 empire”. That marketing teams deserves a bonus.)

Back on topic. Empire guy comes out, measures the room, and sits down to give us a quote. He says it’s going to cost 3 million dollars for carpet for that room. (well, it might as well have been 3 million) We thank him for his time, and tell him that his quote is way more than we are willing to pay. “Well let’s see what I can do” he says. He crunches some make believe numbers in his calculater, which probably doesn’t even work, calls the office to talk to his “manager” to see if he can do anything, and comes back with a little more reasonably number. Which is still to high. Again, we thank him for his time and decline. He tells us that the last number is better than we will get from anywhere, and to call him in the next 5 days if we change our minds. By the way, after 5 days, we would have to pay the original 3 million. So he leaves and we go to dinner to try and figure out what to do about the floor in there.

Yesterday I get a phone call on my cell here at work from a number I don’t recognize. Turns out, it’s Empire. The lady asks me if we had someone come out to the house and give us an estimate. I say yes, and she asks if that person answered all of our questions. Again, I say yes, and then she asks if we have come to a decision about whether or not we’re going to go with their quote. I tell her that we have made a decision, and that we are going another route. She asked if price was a deciding factor. I tell her that price was the deciding factor, and that they were just too high. She then tells me that she can offer me an additional 15% off, if we change our minds.

Really? No shit? Hmm, wonder how many people say yes to the 3 million dollar price right out of the gate. I mean, all of a sudden, I felt like I was buying a used car. I didn’t know that I could haggle the price. Hell, had I known that, I would have beat up on the sales guy they sent over.

So we’re going with the carpet, at this new super dicounted price. Don’t worry about Empire though, I’m fairly confident that they are still making a shitload of money off of us.

FYI
The old man in the Empire commercials and on their logo is just some actor from Chicago. What a buzzkill.