My old mum has finally admitted to me that the battery powered vacuum cleaner that I bought her six months ago is crap.
It’s a Morphy Richards and therefore theoretically is a good make, but she insists that it doesn’t pick up what it should,and she wastes precious energy pushing it back and forth.
My response was simple, take it back to Asda, get a refund and buy a Dyson. Many years ago I borrowed a Dyson to clean new carpets in a new house. I pushed it once across the carpet and it left a miraculously clean strip (having sucked up all the loose fibres) and I decided there and then ‘we need one of those’. For the next thirty years we used nothing else. They obviously died and were eventually replaced, but I never regretted buying one.
Anyway, having taken my mother’s cruel ingratitude on the chin, I started googling for the best price of a battery-powered Dyson. This being Black Power Friday Week/Month/Year I thought we might pick up a deal so I started with the Dyson website....underneath the ‘BLACK FRIDAY DEALS!!!!!’ banners was one corded vacuum and a couple of table lamps, and that was it.
Next stop Curry’s/ PC World/ Dixon’s/ The British Union of Fascists and WTF else they call themselves this week.
Again Black Friday this, and Black Friday that. Excellent we thought (me, with mum sat on my shoulder, having apparently never seen the internet before). We scanned the list of Black Friday deals and settled on the V7 Animal Extra. Normally. £299 but (insert fanfare here), down to £199 because of (you’ve guessed it) Black Friday.
So, we look at the details and it’s Click and Collect (fair enough) with a promise in the small print to get one sent to your local store ASAP if it’s out of stock.
So we try and order. Can’t deliver (fine), so we opt for collection. Message pops up ‘out of stock’ in that store, try nearby stores’. Okaaay, we tried that and it was apparently out of stock in the closest 9 stores. We then extended the search radius four times until we hit the maximum of the closest 36 stores and it was out of stock in all of them. Despite the small print clearly stating that if an item is out of stock in your local store they will get you one within days, there is no provision for requesting this when you order.
We then tried Argos. Exactly the same deal and out of stock in all stores within a fifty mile radius.
I call bullshit on Black Friday and have come to the conclusion that these deals simply don’t exist. They are banner headline deals that look great in the adverts, but in reality the retailers have no intention of ever selling the items at the Black Friday prices and use the ‘out of stock’ excuse as a reason to avoid selling the stuff.