Let the buyer beware

What they say and what they mean. 

Special purchase - Cheap tat purposely made to be offered as a "special purchase"

Huge Savings - Against deliberately inflated prices.

Typical Selling Price - An inflated price designed to make the saving look better. The term "typical selling price" or its close relative "suggested" are a misdirection, designed to befuddle the recommended retail price legislation. 

Buy 3 for 2 - The price for two, is the price three were before the offer started. 

If you see a suspiciously expensive, yet under specified product, it is likely to be being price established. This allows the retailer to offer a legitimate yet entirely misleading saving at a later date.

Save up to 50% - There is a proportion of products that must have had this saving applied, however these items usually consist of high margin, low ticket priced items, and goods that have been through the price establishing process. 

Prices Match Guarantees. Cached in exclusions, the most common in the electrical sector being the "exclusive model" get out. The addition, substitution or removal of a model number prefix / suffix is enough to make an otherwise identical model different, meaning the price match will not apply. The delivery options must also be the same. So if the competitor doesn't offer free delivery to the Moon on alternate transits of Venus, then I'm sorry we can't match that price, 

Fully Guaranteed Exchanged Items / B Grade. Crap the manufacturers won't take back because a vital piece of polystyrene packing is missing. It will be intermittently faulty. 

Display Items - General. Poked and pawed at by hammer handed, ice cream eating children. It will have an additional and completely free layer of Mr Sheen. Parts will be missing. As will the box. And the instructions. And the power adapter you need. A replacement universal one will be provided, the use of which invalidates the warranty. 

Display Items - Requiring a remote control. If, by some miracle you do get the correct remote there will be the remnants of brown tape over the battery cover. It will also look like it has been a comforter for a teething Staffordshire bull terrier. More likely, the remote you get is a "best guess remote". Half the functions won't work but you've been assured a replacement has been ordered. It will never arrive. 

Display Items - Computers. The cursory attempt to remove the Shop Demo by the instore “experts” will result in there being at least two administrator accounts on your nominally new machine, one of which you’ll never be able to remove. Any trial software, pre-installed on the machine (crap and all as it is) will have long since expired, meaning you will be festooned with pop-ups reminding you it has expired. As they no longer supply an operating system disk which, would allow you to do a full restore, you are reduced to uninstalling this infernal crap, leaving behind rogue registry keys, file associations and odd documents referring to someone's "boobies".

Managers Specials – You’d be better advised taking your chances in the electrical product recycling skip at your municipal dump. 

The Return Volume 3

So.

The usual. 

Spar branded salt is labelled as "suitable for vegetarians". 

Sainsbury's "Half Turnips" are £1.50. Their whole Turnips are 75p.

The I newspaper's  Arts and Entertainment coverage has been proclaimed as "new and improved". Pointing the contradiction inherent in the claim resulted in a ban from the comments section. 

It's hard to square "Private Eye's" fortnightly howling at the BBC, with its editor's continued participation in the BBC's "Have I Got News For You".

As is its continued howling about bankers with the advertisements in its pages for Lloyd's Private Banking Services.

Odds and Ends.

When retailers say "sale ends soon" I wonder do they mean an imperial soon or a metric one? 

I've resumed my struggle with DLNA.  I bought a nice client, wired up my blu-ray player and waited for the fireworks. As concepts go flawed doesn't even come close to describing it. For example, its inability to deal with albums with tracks which fade into each other. Now, depending on the DLNA client you use, and the format the music has been ripped in, it is possible to avoid 

"So let me introduce to you the one and only Billy Shears... 

Silence.
Pause.
Delay.
More silence.
A longer pause.
A bit more delay.

...Billy Shears" 

But only after an inordinate amount of footering. As it sits, DLNA is unusable. 

Dixon's have posted more comedy sales figures and results which boil down to "if you ignore all our losses we made a profit." They've a year, 18 months tops. They'll not go bust as such, more likely they'll have their supplier insurance removed or hiked up. The end will come shortly after. Indeed it would not surprise me if suppliers were already hedging their bets and delivering directly to the customer rather than use Curry’s infrastructure.

 Recently there was a shocking exposé which revealed celebrity experts are completely useless at solving issues. No surprises from this quarter. Of course their utter inadequacy hasn't prevented the BBC from running a programme where "celebrity chef(s)" solve UK food poverty. They even had the big event at the end when they triumphantly present their budget feast to a motley a collection of ne'er do well's as I've ever seen, selected to appear at the end of a shite, celebrity centric, TV show*. Because appearing at the end of shite, celebrity centric, TV show's is all they are famous for. Needless to say they all pouted and declared the food "lovely" and pledged their support** - for as long as the camera was there anyway. 

The most recent instalment featured one intrepid chef, tasked with making budget fish and chips, flying off to Norway to select the ingredients. And you thought shopping at Waitrose was excessive. Clearly this isn't aimed at the impoverished single mum, forced to go hungry so her children can eat, but rather those stricken individuals who can no longer afford fresh Fennel and are forced to buy the dried stuff.

*There is a subset of celebrities who exist purely to fill the role of attendees in shows such as this. Of course this is nothing new. Watch any "An Audience With" and gaze in wonder at Wincey Willis and Rusty Lee. 


** They'd also roped along some Supermarket representatives who committed themselves to, well nothing really. Just once I'd like one of them to turn around and tell the instigators that no they won't be supporting this, as it has nothing to do with the notional cause it supposedly embraces, but is in fact a lot of self serving shit. 

Update.

Writers block. It even touches those who aren't writers. Hence the lack of updates. 

Odds and Sods - Ultimate Redux Volume II

Do we really need another interminable of series of slappable wannabies performing outlandish and irrelevant stunts to win a job working for a company whose entire business is producing 23rd rate junk foisted upon an unsuspecting public by a supplier of multi-channel TV?

Or another interfering, bubble permed, busy body deemed an "expert" because the previous one, who now believes selling her brand (and only her brand) of frilly knickers will save the High Street, fucked off to Channel 4?

Or more "consumer champions" proffering advice which seems to consist of "shop during the sales" or "if you ask some hapless sap for a discount while being filmed by a C4 camera crew you are more likely to get it" or "set up a money saving website site then sell it for millions" 

Or idiots who think
a) Companies are unable to sell fashionable or desirable consumer durables as "new" if the box has been opened. 
b) That rather than offer these items at a reduced price in one of their outline stores they will, instead, give them away for free. 
c) And that the best way for them to decide who should get these freebies is by picking someone who has shared a picture of said product on Facebook. 

Or another fucking "comedy show" featuring two performers whose qualification for getting a show seems to be the university they went to? 

Yeah more.

So...

A show about sewing. Marvellous. I look forward to the knock-off versions featuring knitting.

The History Channel - the way it's going that will be an accurate description of its fate. 

Honestly? Walloping the prefix "craft" on your generic IPA doesn't justify the extra £1. No matter how many NHS spec wearing wabs think otherwise. Nor does giving it a funny name - unless it's "Pish IPA Aimed At Undemanding Fuckwits".

Welcome To Fear. Part XXVI

Death by Meat

Great Things About - S*** W*rs.

As this decade straddling cultural phenomena announces a new film I thought it would be worth listing the things which make S*** W*rs great.

1. Nothing.

Great Things About - Doctor Who.

As this decade straddling cultural phenomena celebrates its 50th anniversary, I thought it would be worth listing the things which make Doctor Who great. 

1. Delia Derbyshire. 

2. Er?

3. Did I mention Delia Derbyshire?

It's Vinyl-ly happened.

Honestly? If the future of music retailing is a myriad of "limited edition*" box sets featuring this month's must have fashion trinket vinyl, then the future isn't bright at all. Previously I'd complained that Belfast's one good record shop "Head" had been forced to close because their landlords wanted to lease the premises they used to a flavour of the month clothing brand. You know the sort; chasing the "purple-skinny-jeans-chequered-shirts-and-unnecessary-glasses" demographic. Well the good news is that "Head" found new premises and reopened. And the celebrations lasted long into the night. Or they did up to the point I took my first nosey around. I think the word is "forlorn". Gone was the vast selection of CDs. Now the place is filled with cheap DVDs and something much worse....

When HMV went bust, there was howling how they'd "lost touch". "Too much electronics" they claimed "not enough music". It isn't quite the same but "Head" are in danger of falling into a similar trap. Except there is plenty of music; but it's on vinyl.

Now here's the thing. There are many advocates for the vinyl experience. Listening to music on "vinyl" is a more involving experience. The ceremony of pulling the LP out of its beautifully designed sleeve, examining the pricey, hand crafted, 180gm audiophile virgin vinyl pressing, carefully placing it on the turntable, and sitting there immersing yourself in the music. As you can't to skip tracks you have to listen to tunes you would previously ignore, allowing you to explore the music as the album unfolds; hearing it the way the artist meant it to be heard. 

What could be better? 

Of course, this fiction doesn't bear scrutiny. What really happens is that you pull the vinyl out of a cover, which looks like something cobbled together from one of those random album cover generator memes, complete with a pixelated photo ripped off from Flickr. You then stick this work of carefully mastered polyvinyl wizardry on your plastic £70 turntable, complete with a stylus which would have a hard time passing muster as a wood screw and wow and flutter fluctuations measured in geological periods. While you can't skip between the tracks, the turntable certainly can, entirely of its own accord. And, as the stylus clogs with dust, and the crackle generated by static this causes issues forth from your speakers, you console yourself that none of this matters; "vinyl" sounds better because its analogue, ignoring that pretty much any piece of music recorded in the last 25 years has been recorded digitally. But it's still better than CD. Which, if you are prepared to spend the price of a car on turntable plus the same on the rest of your hi-fi and invest in special vibration eliminating stands and are prepared to only listen to Mary Black records, it occasionally will. 

After the first few listens through, you realise that there are only two tracks you like, conveniently located on different sides, meaning if you just want to hear these you have to get up and flip the thing over. After three more plays you wonder, as you run your carbon fibre anti-static brush over the LP in a fruitless attempt to get rid of the worsening static crackles, why after so few plays on that turntable (with the USB connection you bought for slightly more than the album itself) it has managed to become scratched, adding to the cacophony of extraneous noises which obscure the music. Especially, as you've treated the thing with the same care and reverence as a heart prepped and ready for transplant into a sick toddler.

The only people who believe that "vinyl" is the future are those who didn't have to suffer its failings when there wasn't a choice. There is a reason why vinyl died. There is a reason why in less than 20 years 200 billion CDs have been produced**. So not only is "Head***" filling their shop with limited edition and contrary obscurest second hand vinyl which panders to the same demographic as that frigging clothes shop which forced them to move****, they are doing this at the expense of the format people actually buy. It is utter madness*****. 

*If everything is a Limited Edition, then nothing is a Limited Edition.

**20 years after its abject failure Sony announces they will cease production of Mini Disc players. Yet analysts and experts claim that the single most successful consumer electronic format ever released, or CD if you prefer, is at death's door. Aye. Right.

***Of course it’s not just Head. Lots of record shops do the same; filled to the rafters with mouldy second vinyl and Limited Editions of albums by bands who certainly deserve the epithet “Limited”. 

****If the irony were any more beautiful I think I'd cry.

*****Not to be confused with the rather fine compilation album "Complete Madness"