The Consumer Champion Strikes Again!!!

Well here we are on Wednesday, and I have not been on facebook since Sunday. And I am not missing it at all. In fact I am positively enjoying it. At last I realise what a slave I had become to that site.

I doubt whether my absence has even been noticed, but there you go. I don't know as I have turned notifications off, so I won't get any emails to tell me if anyone posts on my wall. Which they rarely do anyway.

Despite not visiting the site, I am still maintaining a presence through these blogs, which should send a link to my facebook page. Hopefully, anyway, the posting is a little sporadic, so if you are seeing this, hello!

Now as for facebook, I think I am going to use it as a networking site, as originally intended. I have had a fair amount of business come my way in the past through people either sending me private messages or posting on my wall e.g. "Hi Jason, so and so here, it's my 30th birthday next year and wondered if you could do my disco".

I probably get more business this way than through my yellow pages ad and yell listing (which I am thinking of dropping), so I would be foolish to abandon facebook altogether. I think what I shall do then is keep it open, set my notifications to send me an email if anyone tries to contact me and leave it at that. In the meantime I shall focus on my blogs, which will come up in the news feed anyway, and then if people want to comment they can do it here.

I mentioned spats on facebook. Well there was a huge row on my status a couple of months ago about a totally trivial issue. Then not long before that I got an embroiled in a huge bust-up between two of my karaoke singers. And that's just me. I've seen a lot worse on other people's status. I just can't be doing with it.

Over here on my blog I'm free. It's my little place where I can write whatever I want, and it's permanent, unlike the here today gone tomorrow nature of facebook statuses. My own tiny little corner of the internet, and if you like it, stop over on my blog any time and share a cup of tea :-)

The consumer champion struck again in Tesco today. I'm the man they fear coming into their store. I would not say I've got to the point of actively seeking out mistakes yet, but if you find them, exploit them. Today I found a fixture laden up with fun size mars bars, smarties, maltesers etc, advertised as 2 for £4. The little yellow stickers below then went on to list all the brands included which did include maltesers. However, crucially the maltesers themselves did not have a yellow sticker below them. Hello, I thought, is this another attempt at deception by Tesco? Let's try it on...

Sure enough at the till, the discount did not come off. Cue me causing lots of aggro, stressy staff "we can't find a manager" and me presenting the yellow sticker highlighting the offer, in short "I rest my case, your honour".

In fact further investigation revealed that the offer has actually ended yesterday, not that the average punter would have been able to make this out from the ticket due to the font size, if I can demonstrate it was roughly half the size of this (the smallest font I can get this blog to do)

Offer ends 11/10/2011

Tesco have a policy that if they make a mistake they refund double the difference and these mistakes occur every day. They are worth looking out for. OK, this time I only regained the grand total of £1.74, hardly a great days pay for the 10 minutes wasted arseing about at Customer Services, but it's the satisfaction one gains from getting one over on the giant bloated big corporation that I enjoy. I doubt whether my £1.74 will affect the share price but...




Like I say, it's worth doing. I once got about 6 bottles of Chateauneuf-Du-Pape for the grand total of about £15 (it should have been about £60 due to a catastrophic mix up in their labelling combined with another offer they had going on that week.

That was the second time we'd had trouble at the tills today, as in Somerfield earlier, Claire bought some Aussie shampoo that was reduced to £1.80, which she assures me is a bargain. I don't know - that comes under the heading of "girlie stuff". Anyway the till did not recognise the reduction, cue another load of hassle. No manager available. The usual chaos ensued, you all know my opinions on how badly that place is run. So I was unsurprised to hear (and this is the hot gossip on Sheep Street today) that it is closing down next month, and the hot favourite to replace it (a very strong rumour from a reliable gossipy source) is Wilkinsons. I think this will be excellent. We need a variety store where we can get all those odd little bits and pieces that Woolworths used to sell.

Bicester won't miss a shoddy 1970s food store that's for sure, and Sainsbury's is coming (eventually) to plug the gap.

Ollie went round to his friend's house after school yesterday which gave me a couple of hours to play on GT5 on the PS3. I must have improved an awful lot, as I am finding I can now complete certain licences and special events in the game which I found impossible when I first got the game nearly a year ago. This is enabling me to fill in a few gaps in my trophy cabinet. I can only assume that having played it so much for so long I have got significantly better. I'm certainly winning more online races now than I used to.

There's just been another update released with some new features and cars. There's also an add-on pack which you can buy for a few quid with some new tracks on it - one of which is Spa - how awesome is that? I love the nature of the modern games, the way they can keep evolving and growing. I've certainly had my £40 worth out of GT5, and every update brings new stuff to do. Back in the Spectrum days in the 80s, games were about a fiver, seems cheap by comparison, but if you completed them in 3 days, that was it.

That'll do for today I think. I am going to see if I can beat my best times on the Nurburgring :-)

If you have enjoyed reading this blog, please take a look at my books on Amazon (Paperback & Kindle), where you can read lots more of the same! Click here.

Jason x x

Comments

  1. Nice blog Jason, I miss you on Facebook though :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ah - thank-you! Are the links to the blog coming through to facebook all right now?

    SF308 has arrived by the way!

    ReplyDelete

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