My Latest Deal

For Valentine's Day, Mrs. BigKat got me a new game, Commands & Colors: Ancients. It's a great game, but it took a while before I was able to play it. That's because it has about 350 little wooden blocks that I needed to put stickers on (both sides). It took me an hour or two here or there over a few days, but I finally got all of the stickers put on. Then I saw the other problem with the blocks: finding the blocks that I wanted among the huge unorganized pile in the box. When you set up the scenarios, you need specific blocks to put on the different spaces. And sometimes, you have a situation where you need Roman Archers and all you can find is Carthgenian infantry. It was kind of like when you dump out your Legos and you need a grey 2 dot brick and all you can find are black 2 dot bricks and grey 4 dot squares. Frustrating.

I decided that I needed to organize my blocks better so that I could enjoy my game more. I knew exactly what I wanted to get, a clear plastic modular tackle box insert that was small enough to fit in the box, but had enough compartments to hold all of the blocks. I went to Fred Meyers to see if they had what I wanted. Well, they did...sort of. They had the perfect box for me, but it was about $7 and I only wanted to pay $3. They had some boxes for $3, but they were much too small. I was about to go home empty-handed (well, except for the hamburger fixings that I bought for lunch), when I saw this:

 

Now, this box wouldn't fit into the game box. But it would hold all of the game pieces. Not only that, but there are a total of 4 big compartments, which means that I could probably also fit some of my Heroscape and BattleLore components in there as well (2 other games that I really need to organize).

The best thing was that the box was on clearance for $9. This was just about the right price for me. I'd be able to organize 3 games for $9, which fit perfectly into my $3/game budget that I gave myself. I purchased it and brought it home.

When I got home, I wanted to show off my purchase to Mrs. BigKat. Then I saw the reason why it was on clearance. One of the bottom corners was smashed.  So the 2 clear outer compartments had huge holes in them, and the hinges were busted. I was very disappointed. I thought I had a perfect storage system for my stuff, and now I had to go return it.

But then I had an idea. I emailed Plano (the company that made the box) and told them my situation. I asked them if it would be better for me to return the product to the store or if they could send me replacement outer compartments. They replied and said that they'd send me free replacement compartments in the mail. Yay!

So I'm going to give 2 Thumbs Up to the customer service department at Plano. I'm very pleased about my game organization system. I'll be even more pleased when I have a fully unsmashed version.