IU fraternity’s bargain of the century rejected
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (WISH) — A story about an Indiana University fraternity is getting a lot of attention online.
IU’s Delta Chi fraternity claims to have scored the bargain of the century.
After discovering lawn chars on sale for a penny each on Menards’ website, the fraternity purchased $1.5 million worth of chairs for $54, according to Fikki Sadykhov, Treasurer of the Delta Chi Indiana University Chapter.
The fraternity originally purchased 3,000 of the Tamara Mowry-designed paisley pattern chairs, but later learned another brother ordered an additional 1,200 chairs. The total amount of chairs purchased increased to 4,200 chairs.
The lawn furniture normally costs $358 a piece.
Sadykhov told 24-Hour News 8 the only reason the fraternity purchased the large quantity of chairs was to sell them for charity. He said the fraternity planned on reselling the lawn chairs in bulk to contribute 100 percent of the proceeds to their philanthropy, the Jimmy V Foundation, which supports cancer research.
“We already had pre-orders set locally and were working on selling these chairs to hotels, nursing homes, and other residency companies at an incredible discount to them. In all, we were hoping to use the proceeds to contribute at least $100,000 to the Jimmy V Foundation, although we expected much more than that,” he said.
Sadykhov said what’s shocking to the fraternity is “the fact that the error has been attributed to the item for being ‘a figment of the computer’s imagination.’”
“We feel this entire debacle has been incredibly unjust. Not only are they threatening to dishonor our purchase, but they’re putting the blame on the ‘imagination’ of ‘the computer.’”
It’s unclear why the items were discounted to 99.9972 percent off.