Never Let It Be Said – – –
Posted By Judith on 17th September 2018
Regular readers may remember a few months ago when I wrote about buying two new vacuum cleaners. Well I’m afraid the dream of being 25 with a loft apartment and a perfect husband has gone rather sour since then.
It all started at the beginning of Summer. As the warm weather hit and the cats started moulting it soon became clear that the smaller of the two vacs was not up to the job of picking up cat hairs from a carpet, though it was still OK on hard surfaces.
But never mind, the bigger one had a rotating brush bar and picked the fur up just fine from carpet and hard floor. Trouble was it wasn’t long before the rotating brush bar stopped rotating.
I consulted the ‘trouble-shooting’ section of the instruction booklet and followed each step carefully but the brush bar remained stubbornly stationary.
An email to Tesco followed (they were the name shown on my credit card statement) but apparently they were only the ‘gatekeepers’ for the transaction. (I do hate that terminology.) A further 2 emails to the actual retailer elicited no response whatsoever.
I suppose I could pursue it further, but to be honest I can do without the hassle. Oh the joys of online shopping.
I’ve now returned to the tried and tested world of the upright vacuum cleaner that you plug into a socket on the wall. Loft apartment living is clearly overrated!
Elsewhere.
Remember my first foray into buying ‘proper’ plants by post? My Heuchera collection had arrived in excellent condition back in July and are all doing well.
Buoyed by his success I decided to buy some more plants from a different nursery.
The box of plants arrived promptly but sadly looked like it had been sat on by a small elephant during it’s journey from Hampshire.
The plants, pots, compost and packing material were in disarray and the green sticky things which were supposed to keep the pots upright in transit were snapped like matchstalks, presumably because Dumbo had been sitting on them.
I’m hopeful that the plants can be salvaged, but it does leave me back at square one when it comes to buying plants by post.
I sent an email to the nursery, not asking for anything, but telling them what had happened to my delivery. Just like with the vacuum cleaner, I got no response whatsoever. What did I say about the joys of online shopping?
And yet.
Earlier this year I bought a new battery for my smart phone. When it arrived it didn’t work, so I emailed asking for a refund. To my surprise I got it, no argument, no quibble, it even included my original postage costs and I didn’t even have to send the defective battery back. So not all online shopping ends in disappointment.
However, back to the squashed plants.
I planted them in the garden the following day, as I want them to get established before Winter, and went to some extreme lengths to protect them from direct sunlight on their first outing.
I know you can’t really see them, even if you enlarge the picture, but they are, reading from left to right: Geranium Renardii; Geranium Sanguineum ‘Max Frei’; Erodium Chrysanthum; a purple plant that was here already whose name I’ve forgotten and finally another Renardii.
Never let it be said that I don’t tell my stories ‘warts and all’.
