Matt Charlton

I visited the Trafford Centre yesterday.  The main reason for doing so was to allow both my wife and I to visit the Apple store.  We both have AppleCare Insurance on our iPhones and they had both been affected by a problem with the plastic casing; a small crack starting at the docking port and making its way up the back of the handset.

We got these replaced with no problems whatsoever – fantastic customer service and we decided to have a wander around whilst we were there.

I bought Sue a Sony Reader for Christmas.  It’s a Mills & Boon special edition (pink) PRS-300.  I’d had my eye on one for a while – long before I’d bought one for Sue, e-ink was something that looked fantastic.  There was a Sony Style shop at the Trafford Centre so I decided to go and have a look at the other model they have on offer – the touch (PRS-600).  I’d read a number of conflicting reviews – a lot of the negativity was aimed at the screen.  Due to the surface required for a touch screen interface, the screen was more reflective than the matte finish of the PRS-300.  I confirmed this almost immediately when I was unable to read the text on screen from a number of angles due to the florescent lighting in the store.

Up to this week I had been waiting for the announcement of the Apple iPad – it was pointless buying an E-book Reader as well as a tablet, I’d end up with having too many devices to carry around.  After disappointment with the press conference and knowing that I wasn’t going to be picking up the iPad (at least not the 1st generation) I’d decided I wanted the PRS-300.

There were a number of options available to me at this point.  I knew that I could get the reader online from WH Smith for £139.  I knew that Sony were selling it online for £149.99 and I knew that the prices other retailers were selling it for varied from £150-£199.  I decided to see if I could regain my faith in the high street; I’d have a go at bartering like my dad used to do (when we used to bother going to physical shops and not just buying things online).  I remember one occasion he was buying a Camcorder.  Currys and Comet were both situated within a few hundred meters of each other so we went to-and-fro playing them off one another.  One shop would throw in a bag, the other a bag and some tapes, back to the first and they’d throw in a spare battery along with the bag and tapes.  It was great fun and you could end up with a real bargain. This was all before the Internet really took off.

I decided that since we were out, wanting to have a wander around anyway that I’d set myself a little challenge and try to get hold of a Sony Reader cheaper than I could online. I want to make it clear that I didn’t set out to waste the time of any of the stores involved, I wasn’t trying to defraud them or con them into selling me something cheaper than they should have been doing, I was trying to satisfy my own personal curiousity about whether or not high street shopping could still be competitive when compared against the Internet.

Here’s an account of how it went.

Sony Style

They had the PRS-300 at 149.99 – matching their online store price.  I thought this was more than reasonable considering a lot of places tend to treat the businesses as two completely separate entities.  Also they had the readers on display, both (PRS-300 and PRS-600) were turned on, had books available to read and were on the display stands that allow you to pull the unit away from the stand to feel it in your hands properly. I decided the price was pretty good but that I’d go and have a wander around the other shops to see what they were offering.

WH Smith

They didn’t have the readers on display but once we tracked down a member of staff they checked in the back and confirmed that they had one in stock at £149.99.  I asked them why they were selling it for more than it cost from their website and they attempted to explain it in terms of delivery costs – it costs them more for them to have stock delivered to the store.  (They sell it online for £139 including free delivery to either store or customer).

Waterstones

Had a nice display cabinet next to the tills – you couldn’t hold one but you could see them behind glass.  They had an offer on this weekend where they were giving away a free £10 e-book voucher for their online store with all e-book readers purchases.  Price of the PRS-300 was £179.99.  The store was busy and I struggled to get hold of anyone – we decided to leave and come back a little later.

Sony Style

Back in the Sony shop I decided to try something out.  I didn’t lie as such but I asked an assistant if there was any room for maneuverability on the price as I’d seen it elsewhere.  He told me that if I bought one today I could have it for £134.95 as they were having a sale.  I asked him which colours they had in stock.  He replied “none”.  They’d have to order one in.  Sneaky! They’d order it in and I’d have to pick it up from the store, they weren’t willing to ship to my home address.  I’d have had to go back to Manchester from Bradford, negating any saving we’d have made.

John Lewis

Managed to find the Sony Readers in the electrical department on display stands which you could lift them from to read.  Some helpful soul had decided to delete all of the books on them, you could look at the menu but not a lot else.  Price was £179.99.  It took us ages to grab an assistant, even though there were a number of them hovering around – they seemed more interested in talking to one another than helping with customer enquiries.  We found one and asked him if they were willing to price match the other stores.  He told me their policy allowed for two options – either we bought the Reader at £179.99 and their price match department would verify the lower cost, send us a letter which would allow us to go back into store for a refund, or we could do it in reverse – wait for a letter which would allow us to purchase the reader at the lower price.  Again both options meant a return trip back to Manchester.

Waterstones

I decided to go back to Waterstones and it was a little quieter, managed to grab someone and ask them if they’d be willing to price match.  They got a manager who said unfortunately not.  They then tried to sell me an Elonex E-book Reader (I didn’t even know Elonex were still in business) and told me it was only £130 and it was better than the Sony because it read more types of PDF.  I decided to let this go and we left.  Again.

Currys.Digital

We decided to see if Currys had any in the shop. They had the unit retailing at £179.99, we were going to leave but I noticed they had a sign up by the tills which mentioned their price promise.  If you find it elsewhere within 15 miles/however many days they refund the difference + up to 10%.  I grabbed someone (again they were all for gathering in groups and ignoring the customer) and asked them if they’d price match a cheaper store I’d been in that day.  He went to get a manager who came over, got a reader out of the cabinet, printed off a label and took me to the till.  “That’ll be £179.99 please sir.”  “Oh, I said.  I was wanting to have it price matched with another store”.  I told him that Sony were selling them for £134.95 – he asked me if they had any in stock (drat) and I told him that they had them ready to order in 1/2 days.  He looked at me smugly and said “We won’t be price matching them then”.  I replied with “WH Smith are selling it for £149.99″ He asked me if it was the same model and the same colour, I told him it was.  He asked me if I’d told the shop assistant this, I said I had, he looked unhappy, went to find him and told him to check out the price at the other store.

The guy who I originally grabbed must have been late for lunch because he palmed me off onto someone else who went onto the net to have a look at the WH Smith Price.  They had the slowest Internet connection I’ve ever seen and it took a long time to sort out.  She saw that it was £139 online, she eventually phoned the store, got through, managed to get a price and was told £150 (price had gone up a penny!).  She checked with another manager who said that they would match the in-store price but not the web price.  I would be able to get it for £149.99 (£150) – 10% of the difference; in this case £30 so £3 off and a retail price of £147.  I asked if that was the best she could do – I told her I could order one from WH Smith today and have it delivered to my house for free on Monday/Tuesday.  I realised that it was only £8 difference but £8 is £8.  She agreed that every penny counts at the moment and said the only thing she might be able to do was offer some discount on the monthly payment protection plan for three years.  I told her I wouldn’t have the reader in three years but was going to buy it on my credit card so it would be protected that way.  I didn’t bother going into home contents insurance and things too but it’d covered under that as well.  I told her that I was very grateful for her time and thanked her but I was going to leave it. I did feel a little bad about having wasted her time.  If they’d done me a price at less than £140 I would have bought it there and then.  They’d have made a sale of £140 and I might have given them another go in the future.

As it happens, I left the Trafford Centre without a Sony Reader.

I had a good look when I got home at the WH Smith website, using Quidco I can get the reader for around £134 – 50p cheaper than the Sony shop were offering me it for.  This is an extremely good price (Sue’s reader at Christmas cost me £160) but at the moment I can’t really afford to buy it.  I could but I’d have no money left to spend on myself for the rest of the month.  In a month where you have Bioshock 2 and AvP coming out you need to save the pennies up!

I’m in no immediate rush to get hold of a Reader, as long as I have one before I go on holiday later in the year I’ll be fine.

It’s not all bad news for the high street, the Skechers shop got £120 out of Sue (after I’d run some price checks online to make sure you couldn’t buy them cheaper) and I bought a couple of iPhone cases from the Apple store spending around £60 (including £20 for a new case for Sue’s new iPhone) so we did do our part yesterday to help the retail industry.

To sum up – I think my own consumer habits have changed.  I can’t speak for the rest of the world or the rest of my generation but 9/10 I cannot bring myself to buy something from a shop if I know that I can order it online cheaper.

I understand that high street stores have overheads that online stores might not; more staff – certainly more customer facing shop staff, more costs regarding electricity, taxes, etc.  I just thought that with the economy being the way it is at the moment (even though we’re now out of the recession) that high streets might try to be a little more competitive.

I also realise that without the Sony Style high street store I wouldn’t have been able to hold the PRS-600 in my hands and confirm that the screen was unusable in bright light (making it a non-viable purchase for holiday sunbed reading).  With this case there would have been enough scope for me to build an opinion based on reviews from the web but its no match to holding the thing in your hand.

The thing that bugs me the most is that the online counterparts of the high street shops (GAME being the most prominent example) are treated like a seperate entity.  To me, there is no reason why an Xbox 360 copy of Left4Dead2 might be £34.99 online at www.game.co.uk and £42.99 on the high street.  I can use my reward card to collect (and redeem) points on purchases both online and in store.  I can return an item I’m not happy with that I bought from the website to a GAME store.  It’s silly.  With the two arms of the business being as conjoined as they are in that respect – why not do it with prices across the board?  I know it would make it more likely for me to buy a game whilst I’m in town on my lunch break.  As it stands at the moment I’ll buy it from the cheapest online store.  Sometimes this is the GAME website, other times its Amazon or gameplay.

Whilst I don’t want the high street shops to disappear, I’m not going to spend any of my hard earned cash with them if I can save money, spend it online and get the product I want 1-2 days later.  I’ve never been in such a rush that I’ve had to have something there and then.  (we’re talking electricals here, reptiles and other non-electrical impulse buys are excluded from this statement)

Thanks for reading

Some of you probably read about the fun and games I’ve been having this week with trying to upgrade the hard disk in a 15″ June 2009 macbook pro.

A little bit of backstory – we bought a macbook pro for Sue in June and decided on the base 15″ spec – even the sales guy at the Apple store said it was easy enough and cheaper to buy a bigger drive to replace the 250GB drive supplied.  That was nice of them, I thought.

Anyway – after exhausting my technical support abilities and admitting defeat,I  managed to get an appointment at the Apple store in central Manchester yesterday and we raced over there in order to see if one of the Apple “Geniuses” could shed any light on the problem we were having.  I won’t be visiting that Apple store again.  I found the guy very dismissive and quite rude actually.  It was the first time I’ve been into an Apple store and had poor service.

His excuse was that althought 99% of drives would be compatible, that this one probably wasn’t.  Probably due to some anti-shock technology used in the drive that was conflicting with the built in anti shock stuff in the macbook pro.  I asked him if there was a list of compatible drives – he said there wasn’t.  I asked him if they sold compatible hard disks in store.  They didn’t.  I asked him why the drive would work in another macbook pro – albeit an earlier model.  He said they were different models.  I challenged this and said surely as newer motherboard revisions are released, more hardware is compatible, not less.  He said that this wasn’t the case – that there could be something new in some part of code somewhere that has just meant that the drive isn’t compatible.

As we’d taken the mbp in to the store with the original drive in and it was working he didn’t seem to be able to grasp why we were there.  The mbp was working in it’s current configuration and adding the new hard disk made it fail.  The problem was with the hard disk.  I’m pretty sure I lost him when I went through step by step everything I’d tried.  He tried to boot the mbp into diagnostic mode which he couldn’t do as we didn’t have the applications disc with us – he said that he was only going to run it to show us and that it wouldn’t bring up any errors anyway.  It felt like we were in the way, like we were taking up space and time in a place that was more about the selling than the service.  Not the same sort of experience we’ve had in either Meadowhall or the Trafford Centre.   You start to wonder if Apple is starting to become a victim of it’s own success and things are starting to creak.

He told me to send the drive back and try another brand/model.

I came away feeling quite annoyed.  We’d been stuck in traffic due to road closures in Manchester and it had taken us nearly 2 hours to get to the store and it just felt like a complete waste of time. I hate having a technical issue get the better of me – it just doesn’t happen.  When I was responsible for the Network at my last place, problems would eat me up inside until I’d fixed them.  I’d take my work home with me and just try to figure the thing out.  There has to be a logical reason why this problem exists.  If the drive isn’t at fault, it has to be something else.

I got home, booted into diagnostic mode and ran the diagnostics.  It looked like an apple version of memtester – only seemed to be testing the RAM and the extensive test just seemed to test the RAM in a more intensive manner.   The RAM is fine.  I started to do some more googling, varying my search terms and just trying to find someone with a similar issue – I couldn’t be the only person who had tried to upgrade a June 2009 mbp.

Then I stumbled upon the answer, or at least the cause of the problem.

It was the firmware update to fix the problem with SATA transfer speeds.  You might remember there was a bit of an issue with the latest model of macbook pro in that it had shipped with a SATA controller that was running at only 1.5GB – Apple released a firmware update to fix the problem.

(Click to enlarge)

The important part of this update notification is the following portion of text

While this update allows drives to use transfer rates greater than 1.5Gbps, Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac notebooks and their use is unsupported.

Quite interesting that they decided to add this disclaimer to the update.  As far as I know, Apple only supply drives that use a 1.5Gbps transfer rate – so anything running at 3Gbps is an “unsupported” drive.  Shortly after this update was released, June 2009 mbp owners started to experience problems with the drives.  In fact, there’s an 81 page thread on the Apple website about it.  The Register also ran an article about it.  How I didn’t find this stuff before going to all the hassle of travelling to Manchester I have no idea.  Probably because I wasn’t looking.  I presumed that the issue would be localised to a problem with this specific brand and model of hard disk. How wrong I was.

What’s interesting is that even people using the same model of hard disk as Apple supply seem to be experiencing problems.  The Apple supplied drives run on a different firmware revision.  Sneaky.

Somewhere buried inside that 81 page thread, theres a link to a .dmg file which will allow you to downgrade the firmware back to 1.6 which eliminates the problems.  This is a tool which has been rolled out to Apple Genius bars which someone has passed on to a customer and that’s gotten onto the Intenet.  I used it to roll back the firmware yesterday afternoon and I could now install the 500GB drive without a problem.  Only problem is – I don’t really want to.

What happens if we accidently apply the update in the future and I’ve got the new drive in?  Someone in the Apple thread posted that Apple were working on a new firmware revision to resolve the issues.  We’ll see.

All I know is that I’m not happy with Apple – the Hard Disk is a user serviceable part, there are instructions in the manual for removing the bottom of the case and upgrading the hard disk and RAM.  When you’ve got Apple staff in store telling you that you can upgrade the drive yourself too then something is wrong.  Fair enough if you don’t support third party drives, you don’t have to – but don’t release firmware upgrades that stop them from working.

This is almost the sort of behaviour that got Microsoft into trouble and with all the negative press that the app store is getting for rejecting applications at the moment, Apple need to buck up their ideas because they’re going to start hemorrhaging customers.

This is certainly going to be an interesting piece to write.  It’s not about the George Michael song, its about Faith – the god-like stuff. I guess religion is a bit like marmite these days – you either love it or you hate it.

Whilst I would never begrudge anyone for following a particular faith or belief system, its just not for me -  I believe that faith is a personal thing.  What bothers me is that I don’t seem to have any these days as such, no faith in anything.  I don’t know if I’m meant to have a faith or whether its okay not to have a faith.

Now I apologise if any of the following offends anyone – especially anyone in my family, its just something I’ve been thinking about over the last couple of days and something I want to throw out there so that its not in my head anymore.  I don’t mean to criticise or offend and anything written is purely personal experience and a collection of thoughts, feelings and stories.  It gets fairly personal in here and I’m pretty sure I’m writing about things that I’ve never spoken to anyone about before.

I was born into a Catholic family, raised as a Catholic (sorta – we went to church at Christmas and at other times, I guess we were lapsed Catholics), I went to Catholic nursery, Catholic first school and had a year in a Catholic middle school before getting a place at a City Technology College (Science and IT ftw!) – my grandparents are fairly religious and to some extent I think my mum is fairly religious.  She really likes some of the stories – especially the Footprints in the sand story by Mary Stevenson.

I’m trying to think back to my earliest memories regarding religion.  I remember my first holy communion, I remember some sort of rehearsal we had before it and I can visualise images from the actual day itself – they might be memories of seeing photos of me in a white shirt and a red tie at a later date though.  I never got confirmed, and although I went to church a fair few times when I had to, I hated it.  I think back then it was so mind numbingly boring that it just completely and utterly bored me to tears.  I could think of many, many better things I’d rather be doing.

I always remember the end of mass – go in peace, everyone shook hands and said “peace be with you” – I knew it was over and I was looking forward to getting out of there.

Nowadays, the only time I seem to go to church is for funerals – I haven’t been to any weddings at churches recently, I find it really difficult to cope with the whole thing. I guess I still see a funeral as a sad, bad thing – a negative thing.  Some people see it as a celebration of a life – the problem is that I tried to do that yesterday and the Vicar started talking about regrets and negative thoughts and feelings, so that didn’t last all that long.

As far as participation in the actual services go – I’ll stand and sit with everyone else as a mark of respect, not for the church or the religion as such – but as a mark of respect for the other people that are worshipping there and do follow the faith.  When it comes to singing hymns, I stand legs apart hands together and just stand and think.

As much as I love singing, I think it would be both hypocritical and wrong for me to sing songs that I a) don’t believe in and b) really don’t want to sing anyway.  Same thing with the kneeling or the bowing of the head in prayer – I sit there quietly, maybe admire the architecture of the church building and stained glass windows – lets face it, they just don’t build things like that anymore and there are some really pretty buildings. The funeral yesterday was at a COE church – they do things differently there, theres no communion or there certainly isn’t at a funeral service.

I’ve been at some kind of personal “war” with religion for a while.  I know that I was forced to do Religious Studies GCSE at school (obviously not too Science/IT ftw there then) and that for some reason we were doing the Christianity exam – thinking back I think that we all did the exam for whichever faith we “were”.  I hated this – so I failed it on purpose.

I say I failed it – the answers that I wrote were both blasphemous and extremely stupid – I flushed a qualification down the toilet and whilst its not the biggest regret of my life, its certainly something I maybe regret not taking seriously.  At the same time, it was one of the only ways as a (just) 16 year old I felt I could rebel. I still managed to get an F.  In old school terms an F was a fail – when I did my GCSE’s – F was still a passing grade, you had N and U which were something like Near Miss and Unclassified.  I must have given whoever marked my paper a good laugh – either that or I managed to answer the questions in a way which ticked a box or two.

I vividly remember two of the questions.

There was a sketch of some protesters who were moaning about pollution, they had placards that read “God is Green”.  The question asked for three reasons why this might be:

1) Maybe they are ill
2) Maybe they are Vulcans and have green blood.
3) I can’t remember the third answer that I wrote.

The other one was about the bible itself, it said that people obviously use the bible for study/prayer and asked if we could think of any other uses for a bible. I can only remember one answer for this, it involved a small child sitting on the bible so that they could see the altar.

So – there you are, that was my stupid GCSE Religious Studies stunt, as I said – it’s something that I regret now but its something I think I needed to do at the time.

Thinking back to the actual catalyst for me falling out with religion, I’m pretty sure its when my Grandad died (on my Dad’s side).  He died of cancer, I was about 11.  I remember we went to the funeral, I wasn’t allowed to go to the cremation but the funeral itself I was there.  My grandad was in his 50s, I remember he used to smoke a pipe and he used to carry me on his shoulders.  I also remember seeing him when he was sick (I realise now I’m older -  from the chemo) and I remember going to see him in some sort of clinic which I think must have been a Marie Curie respite/centre where people go for their last few weeks and months. I’m struggling to remember much else – its funny how memory can seem so fluid and easy to recall at times.

Now I’m not sure if I was too young to go to the funeral, or whether its just the age that I was at and this would have happened regardless because of his death.

There was a big, long mass (Catholic mass goes on FOREVER) and the coffin was there, I was crying and upset.  I wouldn’t have wanted my parents to not let me go – I think it helped to kick start the grieving process proper but  I don’t think theres any ideal age for someone to go to their first funeral.  It must have affected me quite strongly because I don’t remember going to any more until I was fairly close to my twenties.

I remember asking my parents – “If there’s a God – why did he let my Grandad die?”.  As far as questions you can ask your parents, I’m betting that ranks right up there with “Where do babies come from?”.  You can see where this is going…

I’ll come back to this in a bit.  The other thing that completely messed my head up – we’d been to the funeral, I was at my grandma and grandad’s house with the other kids and an aunt/uncle or someone was looking after us.  We went to a “party” down the road at a hotel.  People were smiling, they were laughing and joking.  Now – grown up, I know and understand what was going on, I’ve done the same thing.  Back then – I couldn’t understand why everyone was so happy and laughing and joking -I mean hadn’t we just had my Grandad’s funeral?.

So that was the problem.  My Grandad died of cancer, cancer was a bad thing.  God is this all powerful, omnipresent being and he can do anything – he created the Earth in 7 days, etc, etc.  Why does cancer exist and why dod God let my Grandad die?

I’m pretty sure thats when I lost my faith.  Going through puberty is a strange enough process as it is, couple that with all these thoughts, feelings and emotions and you’re in for a strange ride.  Guess I came out of the other end fairly well adjusted.  Maybe. Depending on who you ask, the jury is still out on that one.

My other grandparents – on my mum’s side.  They’re really religious.  Church every Sunday, always helping out with various church-type things, they helped out the handicapped a lot, took them to Lourdes, did loads of really good stuff.  Three or so years ago, my grandad suffered a stroke.  Over the course of the last few years he’s gotten worse and he’s in quite a bad way.  It breaks my heart every time I go and see him.  Here’s not the time nor the medium for me to talk about this – but it’s relevance to the subject matter is this – here we have a great man, a man who devoted so much of his life to God and his faith and he is struck down with a debilitating condition that renders him paralysed on his left side completely and has caused problems with the way that his brain works.  How does that work then?

I’m sure I remember someone saying that everything happens for a reason, I know I remember my mum talking about my Grandad asking my Grandma how God could let this happen to him.  I know for quite some time he lost all faith and who can blame him?  I’m not sure if this has since recovered or not but I know that its certainly done nothing to help my feelings towards religion.  I can’t even begin to imagine how this must feel for him.

All the bad things going on in the world, all the people, all the children who die every day.  It just doesn’t compute for me.

Most faiths have some sort of endgame – Heaven or Paradise whatever you want to call it – couple that with the other place downstairs and you’ve got the whole – be good or you’ll go to hell stories, on the flip side, you can denounce your sins and seek forgiveness on your deathbed and ascend to Heaven.  That might not be to the letter but its pretty close to the mark.

All the people blowing themselves up because its the will of God, all the people who have been executed or excluded in one way or another because of their faith.  Religion to me is filled with so many negatives, I struggle to find any positives and therefore any point to it.

Over the last few days I’ve been trying to think about what I do believe in – I think I believe in Karma.  What goes around comes around and be nice to your fellow man – that sort of thing.  All the horrible things that go on in the world, its difficult to have faith in people but there are still a few good souls out there, people who will return a mobile phone if you leave it in a taxi, help a little old lady across the road without mugging her and bashing her head in and generally just do their part to make a difference.

The last few months when I’ve been doing ghost hunts, I guess I’m looking for something.  I want to believe that there is something there after we die, and I’m looking for proof.  I’m not looking for a heaven or a hell – I’m looking for whether or not the soul/spirit of a person ceases to exist when they die and their body is burned/buried.  So far I haven’t found anything, it’s looking fairly fruitless but I still find it fun to wander around in the dark.

The funeral we were at yesterday, with me not taking part in the singing/praying, I found myself analysing the words, what the vicar was saying and what she meant.  Some of it sounded so silly to me – I felt quite bad that I was being that cynical and analytic.  It just sounds so old fashioned and so very, very dated.  I know why we were there – this was something that Sue’s uncle really believed in and as a mark of respect I’m more than willing to go and be a part of the funeral service and more importantly be there for my wife.

I don’t know whether or not I’ll ever recover my faith – be that within the Catholic Church or some other church somewhere.  What I do know is that I don’t really have anything at the moment, so when the 2011 census comes round, I’m marking myself as a Jedi (My mum wouldn’t let me do it back in 2001).

Having re-read this before posting I’d thought I’d written more, it certainly took nearly an hour to put together.  Might just be the way that I’m reading it.  I’d be interested to hear about anyone else with a similar set of circumstances.  It’d be interesting to hear about your stories.  Pro-religion too – if you’ve had something happen that has proved to you beyond doubt that there is a God – please let me know.

I saw this news story earlier on and wondered which cinema it was in Leeds – there are two VUE cinemas and it so happens it was the one in Kirkstall road, the one that I go to..

Shit.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/8176348.stm

A woman has been attacked with bleach in front of her family by a group of youths she had asked to be quiet during a showing of the new Harry Potter film.

It happened as the woman, her husband and two children ate in a restaurant after leaving the Vue Cinema on Kirkstall Road in Leeds on Sunday.

It is feared that the 46-year-old, who suffered burns, may have permanent damage to her eyes, police said.

She had asked a group of five or six youths to stop talking during the film.

West Yorkshire Police said the same group shouted abuse at the family as they left the cinema.

The family then went to Frankie and Benny’s restaurant, where two of the youths came in and threw the bleach on to the woman’s head and back.

They ran away and got into a waiting car.

This is one of my biggest bugbears when I go to the cinema and the reason I don’t go more often.  Respect.  Or lack of it. Society is full of these retarded fuckwits who think that doing something like this to another human being is okay.  I mean, lets rewind it a little – the fact that they were talking in the cinema in the first place is wrong, this lady did the respectable, decent good citizen thing and asked them to be quiet, I’m presuming that she did so respectfully albeit firmly and she gets followed into a restaurant and bleach thrown at her. The fact that they left the kirkstall road car park hurling abuse then returned with bleach – I mean thats premeditated GBH.

I hope they lock the bastards up.

When I go to the cinema, I hate everyone else in the room – If I could go watch a film in a cinema and right in the centre there was just one chair I’d be set, big screen, great sound, just me.  What I can’t do with is people rustling sweet wrappers, talking to each other or people that can’t bear to switch off their phones for 90 minutes.

What we have here is a typical situation – a family go to the cinema together, they are trying to watch a film but are hampered by a group of kids ( I say kids, ages in this story seem to range from 14-19).  They ask them to be quiet, they get abuse.  They get more abuse later and then the woman is physically assaulted, to the extent of possibly permanent damage to her eyes.

What on earth is this place coming to?  Where did the respect go? Who brought these kids up?

If this was one of my kids I’d be ashamed, I’d be mortified.  I’d march them up to the police station and I’d ask them to throw away the key.  It’s a shame that if they get caught they’ll be let off with a caution more than likely. What’s more of a shame is that the parents probably don’t give a shit.

It reminds me of when we went to see Jack Dee at St. George’s Hall a few years ago.  There were a couple of people sat behind us, turned up 20 minutes into the performance and then started to heckle – Jack Dee shut them up but we’d asked them to be quiet – we got abuse hurled at us and filthy looks.

Freedom of speech is one thing, freedom to do as you please without hindrance is another – not having the decency or respect for other people though, there’s no excuse for it.  Sometimes, I just despair – I don’t hate these people, I just despair at what sort of a world we live in and every time I read a story like this one, I stop and wonder if this is a world I really want to bring a child into.

Just think, these are the world leaders of tomorrow.  Well, that’s unfair – the leaders of tomorrow are in little bubbles inside their own little worlds at Eaton or wherever.  But I can guaruntee you these kids will be standing in the dole queue at the benefits office.  Scumbags.

Sorry, that was a little stereotypical and probably a little harsh.

I think I believe in Karma, I don’t know how people can sleep at night.

/rant

I recently (this weekend) purchased a laptop bag for Sue from Laptopstuff.  It so happened that laptopstuff were the cheapest online site I could see selling this particular bag:

http://www.laptopstuff.co.uk/p/Celly_Model_A_Series_Laptop_Bag.htm

It was priced at £29.99 and delivery was around £3.50 – total including delivery and VAT was £33.98.

This should have dispatched Monday but didn’t appear to have done so when I checked.  I logged into the site on Tuesday to find that the price of the bag had been reduced to £24.99, my order said that it was still awaiting dispatch at the warehouse.

So I sent them a message:

Hi there -

The laptop bag I ordered at the weekend has been reduced to £24.99 and my order hasn’t yet been dispatched – can I have a refund of the difference please?

Many thanks,

Matt

To which they replied:

Dear Matt Charlton

Unfortunately your order has been dispatched. It left for delivery on 15/06/09.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards

Vicky

LaptopStuff

PO Box 298,
Twickenham,
TW1 9AU

I was a little perplexed – the site said it was still awaiting dispatch and besides, the price had been reduced by a fiver and it was less than 48 hours since reduction.  A refund would have been nice.

I sent this message back

Hi Vicky,

Whilst that might be the case, I still feel that a £5 price drop the day after I order something warrants a refund for the difference – I’m quite within my rights to return the bag under the distance selling act within 7 days for a full refund and re-order at the lower price – I’m sure that your returns team doesn’t need the hassle putting the bag back into stock when a simple £5 reimbursement would resolve the situation.

I’ve dealt with online retailers in the past that offered a 30 day price difference refund – if their price dropped 30 days following your purchase they would refund the difference – I know that this isn’t one of your policies and were this a matter of £1-£2 I wouldn’t be sending this message but it’s near enough a 20% price reduction.

Many thanks,

Matt

And received this message this morning:

Dear Matt Charlton

Unfortunately we are unabelt o offer you the £5 refund that you are requesting.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Kind regards

Vicky

LaptopStuff

PO Box 298,
Twickenham,
TW1 9AU

I’m not the happiest bunny in the world but I really don’t know if I can be arsed to follow this one through.  I can send the bag back, get a full refund and then reorder at the lower price but it’ll cost me £2 or so to send the bag back recorded delivery.  It’s only a fiver so I’ll only end up around £3 up, still that’s £3 in my pocket rather than theirs.

Am I just being anal or do I have a point?  I mean Amazon used to offer a 30 day price reduction policy but they stopped it a few months ago – that was fantastic and it meant that I used Amazon for pretty much anything and everything that I could.  It’s just annoying that the price had been reduced on an item that I’d ordered and as far as I was concerned hadn’t shipped.  I came back to my desk this morning to find the bag waiting for me – I guess it came yesterday and with a 2nd class postage label it was probably send Monday.  Still, if the price reduction happened on Monday I still feel shortchanged.  Most companies would probably honour a price difference refund.  I don’t know whether to order it again and send this one back or what.

Can I be bothered? For the sake of £2-£3, I don’t know.

What I do know is that I won’t be using laptopstuff again.