It’s true, Tesco (the well known supermarket) employ professional musicians in their electrical goods department.
The day started well, I packed up the “technika” television to take back to Tesco to get a refund or replacement. It has a nasty hissing sound to it, it’s very subtle but quite audible especially at lower volumes. Knowing about it makes it worse when watching it as you tend to tune into the random crappy white noise which distracts from any decent telly viewing. I also lugged the 500 tonne beast that died and originally prompted the replacement television into the boot of the car. I seriously began to wonder if I was covered under any of my health insurance policies if my back gave way.
Once at Tesco, we queued at the electrical desk to be told that it was policy to test returned equipment. I chose not to take offense at this as they were obviously doing this to test the authenticity of my claim rather than the actual equipment. A bored-looking child emerged from the back, wearing an official-looking brown warehouse coat who took the slightly-faulty television and plugged it in next to the hundreds of display models.
At this point, I began to doubt myself – fearing that I’d be “rumbled” (the same feeling you get when a police car is following you – you immediately begin to feel guilty for the armed robbery you didn’t just commit and the several bodies you don’t have in the boot of the car).
He plugged it in, put on a DVD and began to turn the sound up. Remember this was in a busy supermarket with tannoys going off and hundreds of people milling around.
“erm.. you have to have it fairly quiet – it’s like a white noise, constant but very low. In a quiet room it’s really noticable”, I offered.
“White noise eh?”, he said as he turned the volume down and scientifically craned one ear right against the speaker, plugging the other ear with his finger, “I’m a musician you know so I’m very good at hearing white noise”
“Yes, so you’ll know with the noise of the store you’re unlikely to hear anything”, I suggested.
With a glare back at me he harrumphed and said he would have to take it to another room, unplugging the set and walking off down a corridor marked “staff only”.
Some minutes later he returned and said, “I’ll have to get a second opinion on this one” and rushed off to the other side of the store. I began to weigh up my options now, what if he uncovered my obvious attempt to waste his time by with returning a perfectly good television with an identical model? I was clearly making the whole thing up and he wanted reinforcements to destroy my credibility in the middle of Tesco.
Then I came back to reality, remembered that I was in the middle of a supermarket having my time wasted by somebody who plays “when the saints go marching in” on the bontempi organ and I clearly had statutory sale of goods law on my side. It didn’t really matter what his opinion was, if he tried to refuse I’d just ask to see an appropriate duty manager and end this silly charade here and there.
Some ten minutes later, he returned alone (I presume his accomplice, whom I never saw, must have been entered and again left by the back entrance) and said, “yeah, I can hear something – do you wanna change it?”.
After briefly considering a near identical model (well, exactly identical it seemed) for an extra forty quid, the look in Debs’ eyes told me that she wasn’t 100% keen on investing even more money in a Technika telly and with that we obtained our refund (including the vouchers we’d spent!) and left the store.
After browsing a few shops, we ended up driving to Droitwich (which I have to say is a lovely town, virtually no people there at all) and picked up a nice Wharfdale 22″ model for around the same price from Argos (on sale – £200 knocked down from £350).
And it has a built in DVD player!
So, Spankdonkey.com is finally at an end. Or so it would seem, perhaps a new beginning.