1) The FML doesn't say she paid full price for it (although it does imply it. Don't assume things. 2) most of those mail outs are free to sign up, so OP could have asked preemptively of there were any deals she could apply to her coffee maker before purchasing it. 3) if they didn't know at the time at the counter, she could have tried to get up and return it next day if she really cared, and thus ended her FML with something like "and they wouldn't let me return it the next day and use the discount" Hope I didn't hurt your brain. That would have been a true FML. In America return policies are incorporated into just about everything so they couldn't have stopped her from returning it.