It doesn't compute

We picked up the wedding wine last night and had an incident with the wine steward at Fred Meyer. (My dreams of a custom vintage bottled just for us vanished with the reality that we aren't in the position to live it up like Donald Trump.)

We've tasted lots of value priced wine and found some that we actually like and are drinking at home. Then, just as we landed on this wine, it went on sale at Fred Meyer. By on sale I mean more than $4 off per bottle, so we ordered the four cases we'll need to supplement the beer, champagne and booze we're having trucked in from Colorado. (Seriously, folks - get a hotel room and take the shuttle to and from the party!)

Fred Meyer, like most places will give you 10% off when you buy 6 or more. Actually, their posted signage says "buy 6 in the Fred Meyer travel bags and get 10% off" We calculated the price of the wine and came up with one price. Last night when we went to purchase our wine the price written on the cases was more than we anticipated. (Not more, like no food for the baby more, but it didn't add up.)

We asked to have the wine steward paged and he came out and tried to explain. His math went like this:

Fred Meyer Cost + 10% on all custom ordered cases.

Our math went like this:
Posted price - 10% - per the signage in the store.

Turns out that the Fred Meyer cost and the sale price were EXTREMELY close together and thus the difference between +10% and -10% was noticeable. We asked where the custom order pricing information was posted (as it wasn't explained when we ordered it) and the WS got irritated with us.

So then we asked, what do we have to do to get the posted price for the wine? His solution was to unbox the wine, put them in the cloth 6 pack carriers and purchase them that way. So, for less money we didn't get the boxes from the winery (which were free) but got the custom made cloth bags (which Fred Meyer paid for.) Strange.

We unboxed the wine, used eight of the wine carriers and got our discount. We opted NOT to ask a clerk at the check out for boxes instead went to the liquor store and picked up new boxes.

We may use the wine carrier bags as party favors for the wedding.

I would order wine again from Fred Meyer as the cost +10% pricing is reasonable - but I would check on the price before ordering. Had we known this was the scenario we would have just pulled the wine off the shelf.