Milly, probably will go to America, that is my experience when I was involved with antique auctions, but ....... if you don't buy a ticket you'll never win the lottery will you?  I'd go for it.  Look through the catalogue carefully, think to yourself, what is this worth to ME?  Decide on a price and leave a bid.  If you don't you'll always regret it (particularly when you see the sale results and you know you could have succeeded) and if you are outbid, then shrug your shoulders and say it wasn't to be.

Believe me Mills, I have spent half my life either organising or bidding at auctions.  You can't sit on the sidelines.  If you want it - go for it - up to your limit - no more.

I'm the second at the back with the dodgy glue-on moustache.

Sniff, sniff.

Sorry, me moustache fell orff.

Giggles helplessly and collapses into a wheelie bin which is instantly lead away by robbers and thieves of the night.

Almost made it into the picture...

Whose Barber? - and what if he'd fallen in with him? Never mind - if it'd be as bad a prospect as that, let's have this rough Diamond forcibly taken away by a Carter and put in a Cage for a lifetime rather than just for the duration of the average Sessions...

Best,

Alistair

How about 'of' his Barber?




(Coat on)

Mort,

You’re not the only one being messed around at the moment. How’s this for a sorry saga?


After we’d finished his garden and once he’d recovered from the shock, Dode decided that a shed to round the side of the house would be the perfect finishing touch. We had a few sorties round local firms, but in the end he asked if we could look on the net and he found something which was just the job on the Waltons site. "Five Working Days Delivery", they trumpeted. He asked me to order it on his behalf, which I did, on October the 7th.

The five working days turned out to be a somewhat optimistic estimate: they didn’t even manage it in ten, by which time Dode, a man not exactly known for his patience, was just this side of apoplectic. I made the call for him, because, frankly, his phone manner can be curt at the best of times, and furthermore once he gets going his accent retreats ever further into deepest Dundonian, and no one south of St Andrews would have a haggis at Burn’s Night’s hope of understanding one word in five.

I spoke to a very brusque young lady who had no answers for me whatsoever, but eventually after consulting somebody else was able to tell me that the shed would arrive the following Monday - the sixteenth working day.

 It was decided that I’d better be at their house all day, just to check things out, and it’s just as well I was, because when the delivery was being unloaded it became obvious that one of the pieces - the door gable-end -  hadn’t been made properly: one of the boards had been nailed through a knot in the wood, and had split from end to end.

I got on the phone to Waltons again, and at least this time the lad I spoke to was a bit more amenable: he apologised, took a note of the damaged part and arranged for a replacement to be sent out: delivery five to ten working days, and they’d call us when it was on its way. On the eighth working day (thursday last), I called them again to see if they had any news. It transpired that the part was already at their deliverer’s local depot (about twenty miles from here) and was due for delivery on Monday, the tenth working day. I pointed out that we’d already had a long delay and that we really needed the piece as soon as possible, so that we could get the shed up over the weekend. The Waltons lad said he’d see what he could do, and would call me back. He didn’t.

Nor did any one call to confirm the piece was on its way on Monday. Just as well I was at Dode’s place again when they came, because what they had on the lorry - the sole item - was not a door gable-end but a plain one. Not the deliverer’s fault: that was what was on their manifest, but somehow there really doesn’t seem to be a lot of point in building a shed if you can’t get in or out of it.

Time for another call. I told them plainly but politely that this just wasn’t good enough, that we had lost all faith in them, and that they could come and collect the whole useless heap of stuff and refund the money: this they agreed to. I followed up the call with an email as soon as I got home, repeatiing the whole story and asking for a reply. As yet, some forty-eight hours later, none has been forthcoming. The shed that Dode expected to be delivered and erected by mid-October is still incomplete and unassembled in mid-November, but the company in question seems not one whit concerned. Their Customer Service department has displayed scant interest in customers or service, let alone the concept of combining the two.

I think it goes without saying that I wouldn’t recommend this company to anybody, so if you, yours or any acquaintance of yours is ever considering buying a shed, please do them or yourself a favour, and strike the name ‘Waltons’ from the list before you start.

They just don’t care.

What a sorry - yet all too common (in principle if not in actual detail) tale you do tell, Ron! One of the things that especially gets me about this and similar tales of woe is this extraordinary idea of "working days" that's on everyone's lips these (working) days. Apart from any other considerations, has anyone here ever seen a day doing any work? On top of that, as I have so often had cause to tell people who try to pull that one on me, "a working day is one that has the letters d, a and y in it, usually in that order and usually towards the end" (the French equivalent thereto being any day with a d in it). "Working days"? "Working in a daze", more like...

Best,

Alistair

You know, I thought you might have thought that.