White v stainless

Wednesday 26th March 2008
Ian got the kids up early today and made breakfast in bed for Carolyn again, she is going to struggle when he has to go out to work early and she has got to get the kids ready for school every day.
The kids all looked a bit tired this morning so after school we fed them early, made sure they read a bit and did whatever homework was required for tomorrow before putting them to bed for an early night tonight.
After we dropped the kids off at school this morning we went to the Café for a change to check up on our emails, we were also expecting to see an electrician there checking the equipment for us because he had told us that he had made an appointment to do it today. When we asked the owner if she had seen him she said that she knew nothing about it and had not had a call from anybody to arrange an inspection. Marvellous.
After coffee we went to the Settlement agents office to sign some documents for the house before rushing to the house to meet carpet salesman No 3 who had already measured up by the time we got there. We explained to him what we wanted where and he showed us some swatches of carpet and vinyl so that we could make sure that we were all talking about the same thing and he said he would ring us with the price. He was smiling so it doesn’t look good.
After that we went to a household appliance store and spent about ¾ hour trying to work out which home phone, mobile phone, satellite TV and internet networks would be best for our needs, when we had worked it out it turned out that the store could only help us with the mobile phones as that was the only bit they are licensed for. We need to go to another telecom store 200 yards down the road to get the rest sorted out which we will try and do tomorrow.
While we were there we got a call from the Café letting agent asking us to go to Bunbury on Monday morning for an interview and to talk about our business plan, also we had a call from carpet salesman No 3 and it wasn’t good news, Carolyn must have really liked that carpet for it to reach that price.
We then went to another department within the same store and spent the best part of 2 hours looking at White Goods although we were going to go for Stainless Steel Goods at one point, but after careful consideration (stainless steel is dearer) we decided to go with white. The salesman must have thought that he had got a result dealing with us; a couple of Brits, new to the country and not bringing much over with them as far as electrical goods was concerned. So it was that nearly 2 hours later having discussed the benefits of every Fridge/Freezer/Dishwasher/Washing Machine/Dryer/Iron/Kettle/Toaster and Vacuum Cleaner in the store we had produced the list of goods that we wanted and agreed a price which the nice man duly printed off for us.
Tomorrow we are going to a similar store, prices in hand, to see what they come up with and then expect to go back to the first store to renegotiate the price that we had just agreed. Lets face it as a salesman he was able to give us some quite large discounts without seeking permission so there has got to be room for a bit more negotiation yet, also we have got nothing better to do while we are waiting for the house and business to go through so we might as well make somebody work for a living.
After we left there we popped into the Café to let them know that we have got an appointment with the letting agents next Monday in Bunbury, while we were there they told us that the electrician had turned up unannounced about ½ hour after we had left in the morning and had done the inspection in less than an hour which is a little bit less time than the “all day” that he had told us it would take. It will be interesting to see how much he charges for labour.
We then had a coffee in one of our competitors’ establishment before picking the kids up from school, they were absolutely shattered so we fed them as soon as we got home and sent them to bed, Kristian was in bed by about 5.30pm and the other two by 6.30pm and they all went to sleep quickly. We also had an early night to make sure that we are fit and ready to do battle with the white goods salesmen tomorrow.
Carpet Salesman No 1 still hasn’t come back to us with a price, he’s probably too busy making more TV adverts for us to watch while he is away on holiday in Thailand next week so that he can justify the price he is about to quote. Alternatively he may have spent so much money on adverts that he has had his phone cut off and can’t let us know how much it costs. If we tried we could probably think up all sorts of stupid reasons why he hasn’t called but we would get bored typing it and you would get bored reading it so we’re not going to bother, perhaps we aren’t posh enough for him, oops there we go again. We shall say no more on the subject, that is unless he comes up with a reasonable or unreasonable excuse for taking so long in which case we will let you know as soon as we do.