Thursday, August 21, 2008
Retail therapy
Having found a junk shop affiliated to the Exeter waste transfer station, FIL was delighted to acquire a computer table for £5 knocked down to £2.50 because they were having a sale. One of those tubular steel contraptions with several wooden shelves - around £25 new from Argos or wherever. Sturdy thing, well up to the weight of his antique monitor (which has seen good service at Nottingham University), but rather too small to work at in comfort for any length of time. And the printer shelf two centimetres too narrow for the shiny new printer. But this last could not dent the delight from a bargain.
Purchase of printer from Staples not very therapeutic. The neat little HP printer just the ticket at £40. But then, having gone back to the shop later that day (they were expecting a delivery of the things), we find that it includes very little ink and only one of the two cables you need to connect the thing up. Putting this right takes the total price from £40 to £90. Which on closer inspection of the printers in the store had become about the same price as other entry level offerings. Observing my irritation, the well-mannered young Pole serving us throws in a packet of paper (value, say, £1). Not too impressed, either with Staples' pricing arrangements or with my slowness. The other trick that they pulled, which I thought was dishonest rather than testing, was to sell things in three parts. So you had a headline price for something of £30. Then you read the small print on the ticket and find that this is for box 1 of 3. The other two boxes also being £30, so the actual price of the thing is £90. At least we managed to work this out before buying the thing (and moving onto the junk shop where we did the deed for £2.50, as recounted above).
The junk shop also sold us a fine sixties pedestal ashtray. Handsome thing, made out of beech - the real thing, not that fibreboard with a beech photograph stuck onto it used for worktops. Good heavy circular base, maybe 6 inches across and 2 inches thick. Tapered column maybe 18 inches high, topped by a circular bowl to hold the ashtray proper, which was missing. Obvious candidate for a table lamp. Circular bowl just the place for a light fitting.
At which point, hands up. I confess to having modified a domestic electrical appliance without having consulted a qualifier electrical engineer. Is this a felony? Or perhaps an offence worthy of a fixed penalty notice? Would I need to declare my dereliction should I ever come to fill in an information pack for our house?
Reminded along the way of how awkward some electrical fittings are, this one being a torpedo switch. Very proper thing will two pole cutoff and an earth by-pass, but very awkward. Real fiddle to get the bared flex into the relevant holes. Whole job took me about an hour. So if an electrician were to take around half an hour, plus house call, plus visit to shop to get parts, plus filling out relevant documentation, you might be looking at more than £100 for a routine repair of a commonplace appliance. Could an old lady afford to have her heritage table lamp mended on this basis?
Postscript: just heard that I have bagged my third mouse in three trap settings in the compost heap. Will they keep on coming?
Purchase of printer from Staples not very therapeutic. The neat little HP printer just the ticket at £40. But then, having gone back to the shop later that day (they were expecting a delivery of the things), we find that it includes very little ink and only one of the two cables you need to connect the thing up. Putting this right takes the total price from £40 to £90. Which on closer inspection of the printers in the store had become about the same price as other entry level offerings. Observing my irritation, the well-mannered young Pole serving us throws in a packet of paper (value, say, £1). Not too impressed, either with Staples' pricing arrangements or with my slowness. The other trick that they pulled, which I thought was dishonest rather than testing, was to sell things in three parts. So you had a headline price for something of £30. Then you read the small print on the ticket and find that this is for box 1 of 3. The other two boxes also being £30, so the actual price of the thing is £90. At least we managed to work this out before buying the thing (and moving onto the junk shop where we did the deed for £2.50, as recounted above).
The junk shop also sold us a fine sixties pedestal ashtray. Handsome thing, made out of beech - the real thing, not that fibreboard with a beech photograph stuck onto it used for worktops. Good heavy circular base, maybe 6 inches across and 2 inches thick. Tapered column maybe 18 inches high, topped by a circular bowl to hold the ashtray proper, which was missing. Obvious candidate for a table lamp. Circular bowl just the place for a light fitting.
At which point, hands up. I confess to having modified a domestic electrical appliance without having consulted a qualifier electrical engineer. Is this a felony? Or perhaps an offence worthy of a fixed penalty notice? Would I need to declare my dereliction should I ever come to fill in an information pack for our house?
Reminded along the way of how awkward some electrical fittings are, this one being a torpedo switch. Very proper thing will two pole cutoff and an earth by-pass, but very awkward. Real fiddle to get the bared flex into the relevant holes. Whole job took me about an hour. So if an electrician were to take around half an hour, plus house call, plus visit to shop to get parts, plus filling out relevant documentation, you might be looking at more than £100 for a routine repair of a commonplace appliance. Could an old lady afford to have her heritage table lamp mended on this basis?
Postscript: just heard that I have bagged my third mouse in three trap settings in the compost heap. Will they keep on coming?
# posted by Jim @ 12:45 AM 
