It happened.

For the first time in at least two years, I’ve finally experienced the one of the most amazing things man can ever experience in his life.

That’s right - I had Ben & Jerry’s vanilla flavoured ice-cream! I was at The Trafford Centre in Manchester and there was a stall there that was selling it. Pity the tubs are tiny yet expensive.

…which leads us to why I was there. I went because I’ve recently sold my motorcycle and wanted a widescreen 20-inch Apple Cinema Display. Apple sell them at £550, but Dixons sell them at £397 so on Thursday I went to the Trafford Centre to get one. But for some reason, Dixons didn’t have one. But PC World did. Dixons said that PC World in Warrington had 2 - and luckily at the same price, but we phoned and they said they were out of stock.

We found one in John Lewis but they sold them at the full £550. They said they might be able to match Dixon’s price, but I’d have to wait and even then, no guarantee. The only reason was cos Dixons didn’t have any in stock at the time.

Then the next day we tried calling PC World again, but this time, the Warrington store confirmed they had some. So I travelled all the way over to Warrington and when I arrived, they told me that they’d “cocked up” on the stock control. Which meant no Apple Cinema Display for me. An hour later and they’d tracked some down in Chester. That meant another hours travel.

So we finally arrived in Chester, went to the store and after waiting for them to check I was relieved to find that they had 3 in stock. So I was just about to pay and they said it was £549. That’s right, apparently Dixons lied and they do them at a different price. And PC World refused to do anything about it.

“We can match any price with another store, as long as it’s not another company as part of the Dixons Group”

Which unfortunately both Dixons and PC World are. Damnit!!! Then one of the guys at PC World said that he thinks it’s a scam where Dixons say that price and tempt you into their store, but with no stock they send you to another of “their” stores so that you pay full price.

I walked out, then back in and bought it. Basic upshot of it is that if I keep it in my room for a week, unopened, and if John Lewis can knock down the price for me, then I can return it to PC World. John Lewis will then have to lower their price round the country, and then PC World may have to do the same aswell to keep up with competition. Which frankly is their own stupid fault. But if John Lewis can’t match the Dixons price, then at least I still have the monitor and don’t have to go to trouble trying to get hold of another one.

Then we went to MacDonalds just across the road from PC World Chester. I swore that if they told me that they had no Big Macs, but that the Warrington one did that I would kill them all!!! Luckily for them it turns out they did, except they gave us completely the wrong order. Friday was the day that anything you ordered instantly became chaos!

I left on Thursday morning. I got back Saturday afternoon. Just before I left I put the dishwasher on. I came back to find it still on. I think it might be broken and I think we might get a big electricity/water bill as a result. Hopefully my Dad will think twice about asking me to do the dishes again though…

I don’t seem to be having a good week do I?

But at least I got my ice-cream!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 27th, 2005 at 10:29 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.