Come on consumers - stand up for yourselves!!!

After yet another retail disappointment, I'm feeling let down by my fellow consumers. When did we all decide to roll-over in the face of return and refund policies that deny basic consumer rights?

More and more often we spend good money on faulty goods - and then wait for indeterminate periods, with neither our money nor our goods, whilst they're sent off for repair.

I recall some months ago when we bought a HDD/DVD Recorder from our local (Traralgon) Harvey Norman. When it proved faulty, I returned it - with receipt - to the store for a refund. I was advised that they couldn't refund, and it would need to be sent to the service agent for repair. Sent by me! How's that for after sales service? Worse still, I knew from prior experience that the repair agent, Earl & Becker, were not the type of service-oriented business I cared to deal with - and on this count I was not disappointed in being disappointed. I rang, explained the problem, and was advised that I would need to bring it in, and that it would be 2-4 weeks before they could look at it. Now, given that the unit was only faulty in recording, but still worked fine as a set-top box, I suggested that they might place me in their queue and give me a call to bring the unit in when I reached the top of the list. But no no no. Much too difficult apparently. It would have to sit in their workshop for the 2-4 week gestation.

So, I rang Harvey Norman, and suggested that this was a less than acceptable solution. The sales assistant certainly sympathised with me, but unfortunately Earl & Becker are the service agent for that manufacturer (who I can't recall).

Not to be deterred, I wrote to the manufacturer outlining my concerns with the service agent. They, rather unhelpfully, responded with the number for Earl & Becker, and suggested I contact them if I had a problem with a product.

I felt somewhat frustrated at this point, so, arming myself with suitable information from the Consumer Affairs website, I returned to Harvey Norman and demanded a refund. Upon referral to the superior employee, I made my case and soon after took my refund to The Good Guys and purchased an LG HDD/DVD Recorder.

I'm pleased to say I've not purchased from Harvey Norman since (this having been at least my third unsatisfactory dealing - me being a slow learner and all).

I also responded to the manufacturer, as a courtesy to let them know I had returned their product and now had a trouble-free LG replacement. I didn't hear back.

But, this was all some time ago, and not the cause of my recent disappointment. I beg your indulgence while I recall my contemporary tale of woe.

In September, Suzy purchased a new digital camera (a Canon Powershot) from Dick Smith Electronics in Morwell. This in itself was interesting, as the Traralgon store had the same model, but such an appalling lack of customer service that she couldn't make the purchase locally. At the same time, she purchased an iPod dock for Jesamine's birthday.

When Jesamine received her gift in November, we found that it wouldn't charge her iPod. By this time, the zoom on the camera had also malfunctioned.

I took both of these items - with receipts - to Dick Smith this week and requested a refund. Of course, I'm again presented with an alleged store policy that after 14 days I couldn't be granted a refund and the items would need to be sent away for repair. I asserted my legal right to the allegedly superior employee to - to no avail. Thusly, I returned to work, printed some appropriate fact sheets from the Consumer Affairs website, and took them back to the store. I was successful in getting a refund for the iPod dock, but not for the camera as it was not a "complete unit". A complete unit, I was advised, includes all packaging and manuals. I know this will come as a shock, but I suspect I've thrown away the vitally important cardboard insert.

Why am I continually astounded by the treatment of customers by so many retail outlets?

The strangest part of the tale is, when given the refund for the iPod dock, the lady asked if I'd like to purchase a different model. I couldn't believe my ears! What aspect of the preceding dealing led her to believe I was the sort of satisfied customer who might like to deal with her again? And, I believe I suggested as such.

Any, I've lodged a complaint with Consumer Affairs, and whilst I can't say whether I'll get refund for the camera - I do know another store I won't be revisiting.

RED QUEEN - H.M. BROWN

I somehow managed to forget in my previous posts to provide an update on the publishing phenomenon that is H.M. Brown.

I attended the book launch at a quaint bookshop in Warragul a week or so ago. A "quaint" bookshop - for those lacking specific industry knowledge - is like any other bookshop, only smaller.

Anyway, I've never been to a book launch before, so I felt terribly important to be invited.

Yesterday I went to a signing at the Collins bookstore in Traralgon. If I was a real friend and supporter, I would have provided some forewarning to drum up a little business. I thought about that afterwards.

Anyway, it's starting to pop up in newspapers and magazines. I think the verdict in yesterday's Herald Sun was "chilling" - so perhaps there's a learning in that for the publicist to send out review copies in warmer weather!

FOOTBALL RECORD

Have you noticed that football commentators are able to turn any once inconsequential achievement into a bona fide record using only their mouths, a misplaced sense of achievement, and that bastion of and deceit and misdirection - statistics?

Once upon a time, when the world was far simpler and our goal umpires wore boaters and lab coats, we heard of records for the most goals in a season, the most consecutive wins and the largest winning margin.

Today we hear of the most goals kicked ... against an interstate team ... at the MCG ... in the third quarter ... by a number 5 draft pick ... in his 4th AFL game ... wearing yellow boots ... with a heavily strapped scrotum ... and an aunt name Vera.

I'm sorry Messrs Cometti, Hutchison, Lane, McAvany, Brayshaw and co - these are no longer notable achievements, and whilst I commend what is undoubtedly a stirling level of dedication and committment from your statisticians and researchers, perhaps it's all gone just a little too far.

GETTING ACTIVE IN THE BLOG SPACE

"Getting active is the blog space" is corporate-speak for "updating my blog".

That's right, I've been to a conference today (or should I say- I've been active in the conference space) and I can't help but walk away feeling a little concerned for the future of humanity. We continue to bind ourselves in allusions and illusions of civilisation and progress, and it all feels so wrong.

Seminars, workshops, conferences - it's a world of genericised language, breakout groups and butchers' paper.

With everyone so active in their chosen "spaces", and I can't help but picture a NASA conference - "We've been very active in the space space this year"

And while I'm venting on corporate speak, and its unceasing strive to take language always to the next level of abstraction (what does human resources convey that personnel didn't?), let me ask - what ever happened to rain? As one active in the water space, I've noticed over the last few years that we can no longer refer to rain, or rainfall, or rainstorms. We now have precipitation, rain events, and significant rain events. Presumably rainfall was far too ambiguous, or didn't leave sufficient wiggle room for political manoeuvring if it turns out that the rainfall didn't really occur.

I'm not sure is you caught the news this week, but our State Parliamentarian with primary accountability in the Water space was temporarily mis-located during an ambulatory endeavour upon some of the State's more significantly elevated and botanically plethoric terrain. Whilst amply provisioned for such an eventuality, his co-habitant paramour expressed some concern following evidence of a significant rainfall event across the geographic locality.

Now isn't that much clearer than saying Minister Holding went missing whilst walking up a mountain and got caught in a storm?

But onto much chirpier matters. Long time readers of my blog ... okay, let's be honest, I have google analytics installed, so I know full well that no-one ever reads this bloody thing ... but anyway, I have previously written about the one I refer to as "The Mysterious H M Brown", and my excitement at knowing a real-life soon-to-be-published author.

Well, walking through KMart last Friday night - what to my wondering eyes did appear upon the shelves ....




I was ever so excited!!!! So I bought a copy. And, turning to the acknowledgments, who's simply adorable little name is there? Why if it isn't my own!

I've long had aspirations of novelling (which is brave new verb for a brave new world), and after many false starts I'm quite convinced that it's bloody difficult. But have no fear, I'm now in print, so bollocks to my own writing, I'll continue to live vicariously through the superior talents of those around me.

And just to make sure this blog post gets ample hits from search engines, thus giving Honey's book the publicity it deserves (did I mention it's a crackingly corkeresque read), let me finish with ...

underpants, backside, front-bottom, rumpy-pumpy, chestnuts, films about men buggering men, dangly bits, free pictures of attractive ladies pretending to get jiggy with other attractive ladies, oily turnips, free pictures of less-attractive ladies genuinely getting jiggy with ladies with boy haircuts and dungarees, free XXX footage of Angela Lansbury in unscreened episodes of Murder She Wrote,
free subscription for nasal delivery technology to make your slow cooker cook even slower, free pictures of some hot tennis player from Western Europe wearing tennis clothing and playing tennis with a tennis racket and tennis BALLS

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER WITH A STENCH MOST FOUL

Today I travelled from Ringwood to Merrimu for work. I stopped by Subway in Melton for lunch. Having ordered and subsequently received my elongated sandwich of choice (and accompanying oversized biscuit), I took a table in the street - much in the manner of a Billy Joel song. Not an old familiar place, as Mr Joel would have you believe - but you and I were certainly face to face. That is, or course, if you happen to an elderly gent with poor dental hygiene and the overpowering aroma of urine!

From my table, I saw just such a gent glance my way, and being good-natured as I am, I proferred a smile and some form of generic greeting.

And lo did said purveyor of stenches most foul approach me, and commence to enlighten me as to the back story of one Ray Neville - a sixteen year old jockey who rode Rimfire to Victory in the 1948 Melbourne Cup at odds of 100 to 1 in a controversial photo finish.

I fear I can do no justice in describing the odour that this minion of the devil himself secreted.

I was stunned by two thoughts - "Why are telling me this? And why do you not remove your pants before you pee?"

Of course, being the good-natured type I've already described myself as being - I kept my thoughts to myself. I also kept my lunch to myself - which proved far more challenging.

If you'd like to know more about Ray Neville's 1948 cup win astride Rimfire, try this link. You never know when information like this may come in handy.

A MATTER OF SOME GRAVITY

I was camping at Bright over the Easter period, or "God's Own Country" as I prefer it. Whilst contemplating weighty matters, as my mind is want to do when not otherwise occupied with trivia, I chanced upon a rather unique and groundbreaking theory of gravity. My thinking ran thus:

1. We experience gravity as a force of attraction between two objects, for example, between an apple hanging precariously above the renowned noggin' of Sir Issac Prince of Newts, and the Earth.
2. When the fruit is ripe, the gap between it and Earth closes with scant regard for the Newtonian cranium in the breach.
3. We assume that the apple is falling to the Earth, but couldn't it just as correctly be inferred that the Earth is moving up to meet the apple?
4. If the Earth is round, which I understand to be the contemporary consensus on the matter, and if apples fall to Earth on all continents, which I'm prepared to concede despite my limited experience in both travel and horticulture, then the success of the Earth's unending quest for apples can only be explained by an expansion outwards in all directions - much like an inflating balloon (but not at all like a sponge).
5. Of course, if the Earth were expanding, we'd know about - and when I say we, I mean people who know about stuff like that.
6. But, if we were expanding at the same rate, and so were our tools of measurement, then we wouldn't be aware of the expansion.
7. Furthermore, the expansion is not just in the objects, but in the fabric of the Universe itself - so the spaces between objects are also expanding. This helps stop a really big Earth from crashing into the really big sun - which would be less than a boon for the theory.
   
8. Then I thought - but hang on! If the apple is attached to a tree which is being pushed outward by the expansion of the Earth, then the apple is moving outward with that same momentum, and will continue to do so in accordance with the rules of motion as described by the apple-addled Mr Newton. The apple would therefore not meet with the Earth unless acted upon by some other force.
9. Aha! But if the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, then the apple will keep moving at the momentum it had at the point of release, but the Earth approaches it faster and faster and faster and faster and then not so much. And we know that objects fall to Earth at an accelerating rate, so at this juncture the theory is fully intact.
10. At about this point I went public with the theory, to my dad, who looked a bit confused and expressed his own theory that I was talking absolute bollocks.
11. No to be deterred, I went to bed to mull further and ponder my prospects for a Nobel prize.
12. Then I realised that if the fabric of the Universe is expanding, then the space between the apple and the Earth will also be preserved.
13. And thus the theory died.

Subsequently I Googled the theory, only to discover that there have been many fools before me, and that my theory was neither unique, nor groundbreaking.

I now suspect gravity to be the action invisible lassos strung about us by Amazon women in alluring outfits. Curiously much more difficult to disprove.

By the way, I caught 8 lovely trout whilst away, and threw a few others back.

I also bought 22 books, which are already in the database.

I'm currently reading "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court". Very enjoyable so far.

Yesterday afternoon I saw "The Boat That Rocked", and then went to the Zappa Plays Zappa concert in St Kilda. It was most assuredly a display of most venerable istrumental virtuosity, such as is rarley offered for observance. It was a concert that I didn't want to end - but which nonetheless did end, and so I went home to bed.

A CALL OUT TO ALL NON-INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIANS - ARE YOU IMMORTAL?

Well, it has finally happened. My gob has been well and truly smacked. My foundation is dumb. There is gast in my flabber, and my oxen are flumm.

Driving to work this morning, I heard on the local ABC radio that the mortality rate for Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities is 3 times the national average.

Now, if I assume that these folk are ALL mortal (which I'd have thought a fair assumption) then it follows that something more than 2 thirds of non-indigenous Australians are immortal!!!!!

How the flipping-billy-o did this little nugget slip by me for 37 years?

So don't slip into that mid-life crises just yet my fine friends. Chances are you've only lived an infintely small percentage of your eternal life.

Incidentally, I returned to the plastic surface Wednesday night for another inddor soccer win. Unfortunately I "done" my ankle yet again early in the game, and it's currently swollen and bruised (again). On a poisitive note, not only did I manage to score a goal before the injury, but I moved into goals for the second half of the game and saved two penalties! No, I don't think you're quite grasping the magnitude of this. Remember that it's really hard to save a penalty. And remember also that I lack co-ordination, but have a finely honed sense of danger and the only reflex I possess is the "flinch". This is truly "big news". Possibly bigger than the news that two of your three best friends are immortal