Pound Wise and Penney Foolish.

I made a huge mistake this week. While I was planning and upcoming vacation, it occurred to me that I had a lot of "Thank You" points on my Citi Card. So I called them. It seems I had 28,000 points which was worth $100 in cash, but $275.00 in store merchandise. Knowing I would need luggage, I chose to get my points in cards from J.C. Penney, assuming that being a large department store they would have a wide choice. And for some insane reason, I thought they were reasonable. Armed with my valuable cards, I went to J.C. Penney at Dadeland in Miami. The first thing I noticed was the incredibly loud music playing throughout the store. I asked a clerk (oops, sorry, associate) if they could turn it down. She indicated that she also hated the music but that it came directly from Ohio. Ohio! It was downhill from there. Tacky and wildly  overpriced luggage which I didn't buy. Sales on tee-shirts marked $12 and up. Naturally they were all "up" and there were about three Mediums in the stacks of dozens. The clerks were either snippy or uninformed or lost in action. And the whole experience felt like going back in time to Jordan Marsh in Boston in the 60s, except for the screaming music. So now I'm stuck with $275.00 in purchase power and very little purchase. I called Citi Corp in the hopes I could return the vouchers and swap for another company. With their usually helpfulness they said "no".