Motorblog Currying No Favour: So the washing machine started going tits and finally died on Wednesday. Our third Zanussi, this is what they do after 8 to 10 years, so there's no need for extended warranty; they work like a horse, then die.
Jane went to Curry's, found one she liked with £50 off.
Wa-Hey!
Late yesterday afternoon we went to buy it, the washing mounts up, (I avoided the word 'piles' there, you noticed), and when it's gone, you need another one pretty quickly.
Curry's.
Plump girl smiles and says 'Good afternoon' as we walk in.
Jane shows me the machine, it's a white box with a perspex door and some dials and buttons, looks good enough to me. Jane calls the plump girl. 'I'll get a salesman' she smiled with a little wave.
Sales BOY more like, arrives; all gangly and awkward, but let's not be too personal or ageist.
'We'd like one of those,' Jane says.
'I'll check the computer,' he replies, then scuttles away, only to return to say, 'Yes, we have one in stock, you can take it away now.'
Jane and I exchange blank / amazed expressions.
'Look, we are talking about a washing machine, are we, not a box of Corn Flakes? Like I had a heart op eight months ago and,' nodding at Jane, 'she's female, we'd have a hard job if we were both muscle-bound blokes getting it in an Escort saloon, don't you deliver?'
Sales BOY pulls one of those faces rather like a mechanic when your MOT is going to run into several hundred quid. 'Mmm. Well, the van comes down from Southampton every Wednesday, so it'll be next Thursday...perhaps?'
'But don't you have three or four vans waiting out the back?' I asked, (we / I had attracted some attention by now, a husband and wife with a small child), 'this is the 21st Century, the age of everything happening F>A>S>T>; you're talking as if it was twenty-five years ago...'
Sales BOY shruggs his shoulders. 'Best I can do.'
'Well, you can stick it,' I told him, 'you're obviously not hungry enough for my money, so we'll find someone who is!'
A short drive away we see Comet.
Inside they have 5 or 6 different Zanussi models, Jane finds one she likes better (than skanky-old-Curry's one) for the same price.
She calls a sales MAN, and indeed he is exactly that, a real MAN amongst MEN; a MAN who obviously has hair around his scrotum and sphincter of perhaps not even twig, but possibly branch-like proportions, and obviously knows a pissed-off customer when he sees one.
'I'd like one like this, please,' Jane says, 'when can you deliver?'
'Follow me to the computer and I'll tell you,' he smiles.
As we walk, I give him a precis of the Curry's fiasco.
He smiles. 'And their on commission, we're not, he should have bitten your hand off!'
At the computer, he asks for it, so Jane gives him our postcode and he enters the information.
'Delivery Saturday,' he smiled, '£7-50 extra and we'll take the old machine away.'
This MAN is talking the right language.
It's £18-95 delivery, which was OK, (he didn't even suggest we take the thing away in the car, but he probably knew he'd be headbutted if he had), and we paid the bill. I shook his hand and thanked him by saying 'Curry's is a word no longer in our vocabulary.'
Outside, walking somewhat meekly toward us is the couple with the young child, obviously wary of this ranting loony from that other shop!
I smiled. 'Do you know what, we've been in Comet about four minutes, and I have the machine being delivered on Saturday, that other shop was crap!'
They smiled and nodded oddly, as if to humour me.
'I'm pleased you didn't buy one at that other shop, either,' I called after them, as they hurried toward the safety of people and things to hide behind inside Comet, 'they don't deserve to be in business!'
And we, at least, will never enter their doors again!