Busted!

I've been caught in a dishonest act by a Radio Shack employee.

I've been meaning to mention that, despite our well documented nightmare with AT&T CallVantage (here, here, here and here), we're taking another stab VOIP telephone service. This time we signed up with Vonage. After a few weeks, there have been no problems to report.

Once again, we have to plug our phone into a special router that is connected to our cable modem. Like with CallVantage, this would mean that we could only have one phone for the who house. Except this time, on the advice of one of the guys working on our new basement, I decided to wire the router directly to the telephone junction box in the basement. This would allow us to still be able to use all of the phone jacks in the house as long as I first disconnected the box from the outside phone line (are you still with me).

To help me out, the basement guys ran a phone wire up through the floor near our computer so I could plug into the router. The only problem was that the wire was left without any connector on it.

Those connectors can really only be attached to a phone wire with a special crimping tool. So I went to Radio Shack and bought a box of connectors and the tool.

I felt a little bad blowing $11 on a tool I figured I would only use once. But then I realized that the packaging was such that it would be very easy to put it back together without it looking like I ever even took the tool out. So after I was finished with it, I figured I could just return it.

I finally got around to taking the tool and the receipt to the Radio Shack near work today. I walked in and told the clerk I wanted to make a return.

"Is there any problem with it?" he asked.

"Nope, I just didn't need it," I answered.

"But you needed the ends," he said, glancing down at the receipt.

"Excuse me?"

"You needed the ends," he repeated.

It took a few seconds for me to realize what he was talking about. Then it dawned on me. The connectors were on the same receipt. They're pretty much useless without the crimping tool, and yet I wasn't returning those.

"Oh, well it turns out I already had a tool like this one," I said trying to think quick on my feet.

The clerk told me they see a lot of people trying to return tools after they're done using them. I'm not sure if he bought my story or not, but he went ahead and processed my return anyway.

Don't think any less of me!