IU fraternity jumps on too-good-to-be-true Menards deal

An Indiana University fraternity found an unbelievable deal on lawn chairs that appears to be too good to be true.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (WTHR) - An Indiana University fraternity found an unbelievable deal on lawn chairs that appears to be too good to be true.

The brothers of Delta Chi bought 4,200 lawn chairs that were listed for a penny apiece at Menards. The chairs normally retail for $358!

Not necessarily needing thousands of lawn chairs, but knowing a good deal when they saw it, the students spent $52 to buy about $1.5 million worth of furniture!

The deal was so good, the fraternity even bought 500 of the chairs from Menards' store in West Lafayette, home of IU's rival, Purdue University.

The chapter got a confirmation email, though Menards has since said the sale was a glitch, so it appears the sale will not be honored.

Other Eyewitness News viewers say they also tried to take advantage of the deal, but received the email from the company saying the sale had been canceled and payment was refunded in full.

"This item was a figment of the computer's imagination. We are diligently looking (for) the cause of this temporary and isolated technical error," the email read.

The fraternity said they received the same email.

Members of the fraternity said they planned to store the chairs in a warehouse owned by one of the students' father and sell them to support their philanthropy, the Jimmy V Foundation.

"We were really excited about this, because Delta Chi Indiana has raised roughly $200,000 in the last six years for the Jimmy V. Foundation, and we were looking at a real opportunity of raising at least $100,000 from all of these chairs," Delta Chi Treasurer Fikki Sadykhov said.

Delta Chi plans to get in contact with Menards to try to get a better explanation for what happened. But they say, if anything, they're glad the error is giving the charity some publicity.