My sister, Charlotte, has a new credit card with an obscenely large credit limit. The computer she’s borrowing from a family member has also unceremoniously died, with a dead hard drive. So it was no surprise she was suddenly in the market for a new laptop.
I talked to her about the possibilities of buying cheaply online from a few retailers, the fact that there’s free replacements for expensive software, and the possibility of crossing over to the Mac side. She didn’t want to wait for a delivered laptop, so we headed into a retail park.
More specifically the Currys.Digital in Swansea for a “Closing Down Sale” they had going at the moment.
No, a large UK chain of stores is not closing down. In this case they’re just crossing the road to a bigger establishment. And that’s a brilliant excuse to hold a sale.
Although you might think a closing down sale is fantastic, there are many downsides, some less obvious than others.
Such as the fact that because of the depleting stock, you’re not likely to find anything you might actually want to get.
Also, the lack of produce forces the store management to shrink the accessible shop floor down, to make the place look less empty. You will see PCs next to headphones, and laptop cooling stands placed beside photo printers. It becomes disorganised.
This disorganisation does have it’s plus sides, however. The randomness coupled with the slashing of prices allows you to find some absolutely fantastic items. Such as the Apple Remote for £10. Or a leather laptop bag for £35, compared to the usual £70 price tag. Or a printer that was marked at £129, priced down to £100, and suddenly became £69 at the checkout.
The best buy turned into a painfully long wait. Charlotte picked an aforementioned laptop from the list of priced-down remainders. It was a good machine, damn cheap and also impressed me. We waited 30 minutes for the staff member to come back and say we couldn’t have it. He couldn’t find the box for the laptop. This in itself isn’t that bad, except that the box contained the all important battery. Fine, we’d choose another one.
And we did. A fantastic cheap laptop that I’d be tempted to buy. Except that the spacebar was sticky. Which made it unappealing.
So, Charlotte chose another laptop. A fairly good all-round laptop with a built-in swivel webcam in the screen, and a battery. This was good, almost too good. Would we walk out with the laptop within minutes?
No. Currys has a very secure locking system, stopping most laptop adaptors from being removed easily. No problem, if you have the key. Which took about 20 minutes to find.
Eventually, we got out of the store. Charlotte’s credit card had been battered, and we were waiting for a taxi to take us home. For 15 minutes.
You’d think we’d be used to waiting by now…
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TechMamba
you told everyone about my credit card? this laptop really is the best damn thing ever
Yes, because most people have credit cards, and you were excited about owning it. And you bought a ton of stuff that I thought was worth reporting on.