Last week our family experienced the appalling service so many users of Royal Mail are regularly complaining about.
Our daughter, unable to get to see her Mum on Sunday, had posted a Mothers Day Card, including a voucher for a day out in a couple of weeks, from Sheffield City Centre on Thursday afternoon, 1st Class (next day) delivery expecting it to arrive on Friday.
Not only did it not arrive Friday, but it didn’t show up on Saturday either (yes they do claim to do Saturday deliveries still)
This left both parties embarrassed and upset, on what should have been a pleasant start to “Mums Day” and me running round trying to make the best experience I could cobble together
It is notable that our daughter had grumbled to me after posting the card “do you know how much it costs to send a card by post”? I do in fact know as I had recenly had to use Royal Mail myself, I normally only send parcels and most of those via courier, and I too had been staggered at how expensive it was.
It therefore rubs salt into the wound to see in today’s Martins Money Newsletter a notice that stamp prices are about to soar to over a £1 each
Is it any wonder that so many of us have given up sending cards and simply use email or messaging services. You can have a video call halfway around the World easier, without the expense of buying a card, or getting wet finding a post box.
Yet this shambolic system is still called “Royal Mail”, it seems to me that in the year of his Coronation, King Charles II, should ensure that Royal Mail, becomes simply “Postal (lack of) Service”, and at least the Royal Family would be rid of one embarrassment
I was watching the Euros 22 on BBC the other night and can’t help but be struck by the fabulous colours the commentators were wearing, particularly of the “suits”
What I want to know is why “blokes” seem to have a choice of any colour as long as it is virtually black! (OK maybe grey or dark blue).
For Instance take a look at M & S colour selection
Or Perhaps Next
A little better, but still no plain colours other than sheer boredom…
I get that fashion for men, (if it still exists) has been taken over by dark grey and black, and not featuring suits outside proms, Weddings and Funerals (See you need a black suit!), but come on we are not Model T’s, and it seems girls can have light bright cool suits but not blokes?
Being members of the IKEA “Home Club” we received a mailshot offering us a £10 discount plus a free salad bowl (worth £9.99 – subject to availability) if we visited soon. Needing a new cabinet for the bathroom plus a display case for our showroom we collected Grandma last Sunday and set off.
Copyright Gerald England. Click above for more information.
Grandma always grumbles that she doesn’t want to go to Ikea, this might have something to do with us telling her that we don’t want to buy anything, we are simply going to give her some exercise.
We got there and did the “Ikea Walk” (a bit like the Okey Dokey Shuffle – from Beverley Hills Cop 3 – but far more tiresome) and eventually got to the Warehouse Area on the ground floor armed with a few bits and pieces and some written details of where the flat packs of the cupboard and display unit we wanted where located, these of course were wrong, when we got to Aisle 34 there wasn’t a location 57b. Monster took great delight in running to the Computer in the middle of the store, locating what she thought was the product and sending us in search of ever more exotic “locations”, then we had the issue of whether the cabinet we wanted part of the BJÖRKEN range or the GODMORGON. (where do they get these names I’ve watched Mama Mia and no-one there has names like this?)
Eventually we located our cabinets, put one on our trolley and decided that the other one was far to big to fit in the car along with us and Grandma (despite Monsters suggestion that her and / or Grandma could be strapped on the roof rack, we felt this might cause a unwelcome interest from the local Gendarmerie) and decided it would have to await another visit.
Now whilst the trolley and Management joined the interminable queues at the checkouts (it’s my opinion that Heathrow terminal three was modelled upon Ikea) yours truly was sent to get our ”FREE” Salad bowl worth £9.99! from the Oasis Department. It seemed to me that this would be near the checkouts so you could collect your freebies on the way out, I collared a guy in a yellow shirt who had no idea what I was talking about (note if your sad enough to spend your day off shopping in Ikea don’t wear a yellow shirt), next I tried a couple of yellow shirted guys first making sure that they also had badges saying Ikea, they didn’t seem to have much more idea anyway, but suggested it was at the warehouse entrance near the bottom of the escalators, as this area had lots of plants etc. it seemed a good bet. When I got there this was clearly wrong and eventually I found some staff hiding behind the undergrowth, they said it was on the first floor. A trip round the first floor found no sign and another Ikea employee said perhaps the second floor.
On the second floor no-one knew but suggested it was near the checkouts and, if not. the customer information centre there would get it for me!
When I got back to the checkout area our trusty team where now within hailing distance of the checkouts, and the young man there directed me to an information centre in the middle of the warehouse area, the operator there tapped some keys on his computer and told me the Oasis Centre was on the first floor and that they might have some of the bowls left.
By this stage I had twigged that this Oasis was obviously a mirage and that Ikea are probably in league with the department of Public Health to keep us all permanently knackered, no salad bowl worth £9.99, or not, was worth another trip round the store.
Upon getting home that evening I eagerly started unpacking my new Bathroom cabinet, as all the outer frame is coated with mirror effect covering (and according to the instructions quite easy to scratch when they are new) great care was taken removing all the cardboard and polystyrene packaging and pushing it into a bin bag, finally the four glass shelves were unpacked and two of them were completely crazed and promptly fell onto the carpet as a large pile of glass diamonds!
An email to Ikea complaining mainly about the broken shelves but also the missing “bowl” (worth £9.99) elicited a reply on Tuesday morning that the whole unit should be taken back to the store and exchanged. We responded that this was difficult as
Packing the whole thing up was impracticable as we had damaged some of the packing and anyway who can ever package things up the way they manage in the Chinese factories?
It mean’t a round trip of 20+ miles, surely they could take our word and simply send out the broken and missing bits
Anyway returning the undamaged bits improperly packaged was more than likely to result in further damage.
Ikea’s response was that they didn’t send things out and that we must return the whole unit.
I now fully understand why it’s called DIY and it’s much simpler to forgo my £9.99 bowl and get a couple new glass shelves from a glazier
But “Ikea family”?? no way, mine are much more helpful (even grumpy Grandma)
On Monday night, intent on making Fish Soup, we raced into the Morrisons branch, in Chapel-en-le-Frith, to get some Fish Stock, this store is really too small to be a Morrisons, but does at least have a Fish Counter, obviously the place!
We seached in vain, they had several types of Beef Stock, Chicken Stock, and vegetable stock, but no fish stock.
In desperation we went to Tesco in Whaley Bridge, once descibed to me by a local as a “mean little store”, the fish counter here suggests they have more or less given up trying to sell fish (nobody actually cooks any more do they?) except mainly, the processed “fish finger” type, ( am I only person who has never actually never seen a fish that has any “fingers”). Not really expecting much luck here we found at least three type of Fish stock, with cubes, powder, and best of all liquid stock ( also loads of other choices, and even Pork stock.)
Is this odd or what, or is it a sinister plot to make us drive from Store to Store frantically trying to complete our shopping list?
Score 7 for Tesco and 3 for Morrisons (lack of “joined up thinking/products” – to put it into modern terms)
On Sunday, we went towards Manchester, and had a reasonable list of veggies we needed, we called into “the Indian Supermarket” (as we call it,) in Longsight and we purchased:
Box of good Tomatos (£2.99)
Box of Red peppers (£5.99)
Bunch of Coriander
A Butternut Squash
6 nice nectarines
1Kg Pack of dried fried Onions
bag of Chewra Mix (Bombay like stuff)
4 Green Peppers
2 Bulbs of Garlic
2 Red Onions
1 Cucumber
1 Galia Melon
5 Bananas
All for less than £19, agreed the peppers are well ripe and strangely aren’t all the same size colour and completely unblemished, and they did not have the cardboard trays and plastic film that the supermarkets grow them in, but you know they seem to taste better despite that?
Serious recommendation, get out and try your local Asian or Chinese etc Supermarket, try some of those strange things like Mulfi, Okra, or some Goat (makes wonderful Curry) – people there will tell you how to prepare them if you ask. You will not only find it hugely cheaper than the Sheds, but tastier and more exciting.
Each morning as some attempt at “5 a day”, we all have a glass of fruit Juice, in my case I like grapefruit juice ( I guess as a child itwas nicking the breakfast juice, small glasses of Britvic from the tables at my Uncles hotel?) Anyway part of the thing about grapefruit is that it is a “tart” taste, and I suspect that’s the way those who like Grapefruit want it, however the “industry” has relentlessly pushed to make sweet sickly (usually pink) girly grapefruit.
The effect seems to be that many smaller stores don’t even bother to stock grapefruit Juice, the only choices being Co-op Grapefruit Juice, which is OK (despite dodgy packaging changes in their range meaning that you have no clue from the picture on the outside as to which juice it is) and going to more expensive “Tropicana” ranges.
Wonderful then to find in our local Morrisons a choice of Girly Grapefruit , and “White Grapefruit Juice“, this a first rate product, really good taste and (so far anyway) it tends to be in stock most days. A pat on the pack to Morrisons who are not normally the most innovative of stores.
However, I couldn’t not find something to grumble about, and it’s the stupid “plastic ring-pull” that comes after the plastic cap is unscrewed, get rid of it on all juices, it’s unnecessary, useless, usually breaks and I end up attacking the carton with a sharp knife, (not wise when still half asleep). What does the ring pull achieve, the screw caps are sealed and I don’t miss the ring pull on the few brands that don’t use it, meaning that as a prevention of malicious contamination it’s still useless, how are the elderly and blind supposed to open these things?
