Black Friday: are you really getting a good deal?

Have you ever had to wash clothes in the bath Malcolm? I have been doing it for several months now since the washing machine broke and waiting for our new kitchen to be finished. It really is a back-breaking job. It’s just lucky I haven’t got rid of my old spin dryer.

We are getting a Siemens dishwasher with a top cutlery tray, and my trusty manual dishwasher gets to retire at last. I have already bought the top 2 brands of dishwasher tablets on special offer to see which ones are best but will keep M&S in mind. We have plenty of mugs but like drinking out of the sames ones every time. My trusty dishwasher has a habit of breaking crockery and we have very few every day plates left so time for a new kitchen crockery set.

I remember the time when my washing machine broke down. I put all the dirty washing in the bath and invited all the children to remove their shoes and socks and jump up and down in the bath. The kids had a whale of a time and all the clothes were washed at the same time!

Having been given the job of loading and unloading a top cutlery tray when staying with family, I cannot think of a bigger waste of time. The ones I’m thinking of keep each item separate to prevent scratching. Decent cutlery does not deserve to be put in a dishwasher and laying everyday cutlery in neat rows makes little sense to me.

I think if you owned a dishwasher with a decent cutlery tray you would realise the benefits. It gives more capacity, saves cutlery dropping through some holes in a basket and fouling the spray arm, keeps cutlery separated so all gets a better wash.

Having used both, I prefer the traditional basket, which can sit on the worktop to be loaded and taken to the cutlery drawer to be unloaded. If a cutlery basket is properly designed, cutlery will not fall through the holes.

The basket bottom can become damaged and the webs break, letting smaller items through. You also lose considerable capacity and versatility in using the space in the main basket. mrs r would not go back to a cutlery basket after years of experience. But each to his own. Maybe Which? could compare wash results for a top tray and a basket full to capacity?

Well yes, if you use damaged goods you cannot expect them to work properly. As you say, each to their own.

Top cutlery tray is actually safer as any research on-line will reveal. I am surprised coroner comments are so easily forgotten.

As the quilt is too big for a washing machine, I do put that in the bath, stick a couple of plastic bags on my feet/legs and march over it. Not sure I think of it as fun, more as good excercise !!!

Groupon was heavily criticised on Rip off Britain the other day for promoting bogus and highly misleading offers. Fake Ariel washing powder, photo sessions for aspiring models that were totally unnecessary and extortionately expensive and subjected to huge sales pressure, for example.

However, you have to ask, when you see the huge “discounts” offered, this must be too good to be true. And ask “why should someone want to offer me something so cheap?” We are partly to blame for ignoring the warning signs, or maybe we go in just in the hope we’ll get a bargain but accept they may be full of catches and not what they seem. Greed is at the root of many scams – on both the perpetrator’s and the consumer’s side.

If you want a product, first thing is to ensure you identify the best one(s) for your needs – will it do the job, is it reliable, will it last. Then shop around to see how much you can buy it for. If it happens to be in a sale, all well and good, but don’t buy a poorer substitute just because it is on “offer”.

What is annoying, very annoying, is that there is no follow-up on the rogue seller of Ariel, and of what other powders etc are bogus. How the industry runs in the UK for instance?
10kg packages of chemicals are not easy to hide?
to print the fake packaging requires serious machinery.

All of these aspects are ignored. Rather like the BBC Which? we do not have a place to look up these interesting matters to avoid being caught out.

What is the point of not providing a place where people can easily check frauds and have the re-assurance it will be regularly up-dated and contain the full story. Like penalties and successes in combating the rogues.

I must admit we would very much miss our dishwasher; nothing can compete with it for cleanliness and convenience. We usually run it every day but sometimes on the half-load programme. I agree with Malcolm on the slide-out top cutlery tray – it leaves more space in the lower basket and is much more convenient to fill and empty [plus it takes most lengths and thicknesses of knives, forks and cooking tools, etc].

Having said that I would suggest you wait until after Christmas and buy one in the January ‘clearance events’ when real bargains are more likely.

A tip from past experience: if you want to install it under a worktop, check the clearances first and the routes for the inflow and waste and the electrical supply. The builders of our house had to send a carpenter round to enlarge the cavities for the dishwasher and washing machine. The firm that installed the fitted kitchen thought 60 cm would be sufficient whereas that is the width of the appliances. Luckily there was some tolerance so a comfortable fit was obtained.

Whether or not that was a bad buy would depend on how the product was described. If it was marketed as complete and as good as a comparable TV and it turned out to be materially deficient then that would have been a breach of the Consumer Rights Act. Unfortunately, buyers don’t always seek their statutory remedies [and shops don’t always accept their liabilities].