about buying a washing machine. A washing machine. A washing machine. A column about a washing machine. This is a column about buying a washing machine.
09/11/2009
As a child, I never pictured the adult ‘me’ journeying to other planets and having a fantastic time of it. Instead I pictured myself dying in a nuclear inferno. The future me was a screaming skeleton decorated with chunks of carbonised flesh and the occasional sizzling hair. Not really someone you’d have round for dinner.
Still, at least my premonition suggested I’d live an exciting life, albeit a short one. The reality is less spectacular. I never pictured myself as I was last week: a fully grown adult: alive, yet slowly losing the will to live while attempting to buy a washing machine from a high-street electrical retailer.
Let’s be clear about this. Buying a washing machine is not the stuff dreams are made of. It’s not a device you’re going to fall in love with. It’s a white box with a round mouth you shove dirty pants into. Hardly a new member of the family, unless you’re a troupe of extreme performance artists.
Buying a mobile phone is easier than buying a washing machine because some phones have the decency to look ugly, thereby simplifying the decision-making process. Washing machines all look the same. Some eat bigger loads or have a more complex array of pre-wash options: whoopee doo. Some doubtless perform better than others: I wouldn’t know. Bet it’s all a con. Bet there’sonly one type of washing machine in the world, and they’re all shipped from the same warehouse in slightly different packaging and sold at randomly generated prices.
I buy washing machines the same way I order wine in a restaurant: avoid the very cheapest on the basis that it’ll be nasty, avoid the second cheapest on the basis that it’s probably even worse, avoid the expensive options at the top of the list on the basis that they can’t possibly be worth it, and wind up randomly picking something from the middle instead.
Just to make you feel even more uncertain about buying one, they don’t have proper names. Once you strip the familiar manufacturer trademarks away, all you’re left with is a meaningless series of model numbers chosen specifically to confuse you. Did you order a BD4437BX or a BD3389BZ? Face it: you have no idea. Ring up to place an order and it sounds as if you’re discussing chemical weapon formulae.
This is why buying a washing machine never feels ‘real’. If you walk around Battersea Dogs Home, brown-eyed puppies with names such as Timbo and Ookums softly yelp for your attention . Walk around Comet and you’re confronted by a wall of emotionless monoliths with incomprehensible names. And that’s just the staff!!!!!??!!!!?!
I got caught in a high-street retail delivery trap recently; one of those Kafkaesque scenarios in which you pay for something on the basis that it will arrive at a certain time, only to find out it won’t, and soon you’re sucked into a spiral of helpline calls and telephone keypad options and complaints and counter-complaints until eventually you realise that you’re both in a loveless relationship; needing each other, hating each other, revolving for hours in a weepy embrace, listlessly kicking at one another’s shins.
But this time something new and modern happened. Shortly after one of our bitter rows, while waiting for them to call back, I went on Twitter (yes, bloody Twitter) and angrily comparedthe Currys electrical retail chain to the Nazis. The next day a mysterious message arrived with a number for me to call; this turned out to belong to one of their heads of PR, who’d spotted my outburst and tracked down my contact details.
It’s a bit embarrassing when you find yourself talking to someone high up in a company you’ve loudly and publicly likened to the Third Reich only the night before. Fortunately for me, she was polite and savvy enough not to mention it. Instead she quickly
09/11/2009
As a child, I never pictured the adult ‘me’ journeying to other planets and having a fantastic time of it. Instead I pictured myself dying in a nuclear inferno. The future me was a screaming skeleton decorated with chunks of carbonised flesh and the occasional sizzling hair. Not really someone you’d have round for dinner.
Still, at least my premonition suggested I’d live an exciting life, albeit a short one. The reality is less spectacular. I never pictured myself as I was last week: a fully grown adult: alive, yet slowly losing the will to live while attempting to buy a washing machine from a high-street electrical retailer.
Let’s be clear about this. Buying a washing machine is not the stuff dreams are made of. It’s not a device you’re going to fall in love with. It’s a white box with a round mouth you shove dirty pants into. Hardly a new member of the family, unless you’re a troupe of extreme performance artists.
Buying a mobile phone is easier than buying a washing machine because some phones have the decency to look ugly, thereby simplifying the decision-making process. Washing machines all look the same. Some eat bigger loads or have a more complex array of pre-wash options: whoopee doo. Some doubtless perform better than others: I wouldn’t know. Bet it’s all a con. Bet there’sonly one type of washing machine in the world, and they’re all shipped from the same warehouse in slightly different packaging and sold at randomly generated prices.
I buy washing machines the same way I order wine in a restaurant: avoid the very cheapest on the basis that it’ll be nasty, avoid the second cheapest on the basis that it’s probably even worse, avoid the expensive options at the top of the list on the basis that they can’t possibly be worth it, and wind up randomly picking something from the middle instead.
Just to make you feel even more uncertain about buying one, they don’t have proper names. Once you strip the familiar manufacturer trademarks away, all you’re left with is a meaningless series of model numbers chosen specifically to confuse you. Did you order a BD4437BX or a BD3389BZ? Face it: you have no idea. Ring up to place an order and it sounds as if you’re discussing chemical weapon formulae.
This is why buying a washing machine never feels ‘real’. If you walk around Battersea Dogs Home, brown-eyed puppies with names such as Timbo and Ookums softly yelp for your attention . Walk around Comet and you’re confronted by a wall of emotionless monoliths with incomprehensible names. And that’s just the staff!!!!!??!!!!?!
I got caught in a high-street retail delivery trap recently; one of those Kafkaesque scenarios in which you pay for something on the basis that it will arrive at a certain time, only to find out it won’t, and soon you’re sucked into a spiral of helpline calls and telephone keypad options and complaints and counter-complaints until eventually you realise that you’re both in a loveless relationship; needing each other, hating each other, revolving for hours in a weepy embrace, listlessly kicking at one another’s shins.
But this time something new and modern happened. Shortly after one of our bitter rows, while waiting for them to call back, I went on Twitter (yes, bloody Twitter) and angrily comparedthe Currys electrical retail chain to the Nazis. The next day a mysterious message arrived with a number for me to call; this turned out to belong to one of their heads of PR, who’d spotted my outburst and tracked down my contact details.
It’s a bit embarrassing when you find yourself talking to someone high up in a company you’ve loudly and publicly likened to the Third Reich only the night before. Fortunately for me, she was polite and savvy enough not to mention it. Instead she quickly
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