The Lemon Fool

When I go to the gym of a morning I don't take my wallet but I always have a fiver in my phone case.
Leaving the gym today I remembered I needed to buy a stamp for my nephews birthday card. No problem I have a fiver in my phone case I thought.
3 shops visited, all had second class stamps but were unable to split the books of eight, probably due to the need to scan the QR code. I wanted one stamp not eight and in any case didn't have enough money for eight so I decided to walk to the post office to buy one from there.
I arrived about 10 am and took my eighth place in the queue. One member of staff serving, the other kind of walking around pretending to do token housekeeping. You know the type of thing, making sure that box is exactly square on the shelf, picking something up and then putting it down somewhere else, brushing an imaginery bit of dust from the jacket sleeve etc etc.
Eventually the sartorially concerned procrastinating member of staff sat down and opened a till. Then all hell broke loose when the first member of staff closed her till to go and help somebody fannying about at the self service terminal. Somebody started shouting at her that the self-service customer had only just arrived whereas he had been waiting patiently for ages. I was still 7 in the queue now with another four or five people behind me so I gave up and decided to go home to buy postage online from the post office website.
Unfortunately it is so long since I last used my printer the cartridge has dried out, again, and I'm blowed if I'm going to spend £15 on a replacement cartidge to print a 2nd class stamp.
I've left it for now but tomorrow I'll have decide how to resolve it. Probably it'll come down to buying 8 and keeping the other 7 till Christmas

Solution..... an online card. No cost, no delay
doolally

Are there not companies who will print and post the card for you?

Something pig or bird related I recall.

Dicky99 wrote: I was still 7 in the queue now with another four or five people behind me so I gave up and decided to go home to buy postage online from the post office website.

Careful now. Don't book stamps bought now (i.e. without the bar code) expire in June this year (when the bar code stamps start)?

Or something unbelievably annoying like that?

Edit to add: Note to self, must read what I quoted before posting... I blame this Chardonnay.

Urbandreamer wrote:Are there not companies who will print and post the card for you?

Something pig or bird related I recall.

That's for people who'd never consider queuing at the post office to buy one 2nd class stamp

Dicky99 wrote:

Urbandreamer wrote:Are there not companies who will print and post the card for you?

Something pig or bird related I recall.

That's for people who'd never consider queuing at the post office to buy one 2nd class stamp

Or who be posting from t'other side of the globe

The Post Office.

The place where you join the queue when you leave school, and reach the front just in time to collect your pension.

Mike4 wrote:Careful now. Don't book stamps bought now (i.e. without the bar code) expire in June this year (when the bar code stamps start)?

You haven't been able to buy non-barcoded stamps for ages now.

(Other than specials maybe.)

Scott.

swill453 wrote:

Mike4 wrote:Careful now. Don't book stamps bought now (i.e. without the bar code) expire in June this year (when the bar code stamps start)?

You haven't been able to buy non-barcoded stamps for ages now.

(Other than specials maybe.)

Scott.

I thought that too, but when I bought two books of First Class stamps in my local post office about two months ago, they were non-bar coded.

Mike4 wrote:I thought that too, but when I bought two books of First Class stamps in my local post office about two months ago, they were non-bar coded.

That's strange, because the official changeover still happened on 31st January this year. There was just a 6 months grace period added when you can still use the old ones.

Of course the Post Office isn't the Royal Mail, and maybe still want to get rid of old stock.

Scott.

I thought that too, but when I bought two books of First Class stamps in my local post office about two months ago, they were non-bar coded.

I'm jealous that you managed to get to the front of the queue. Did you start queuing about three months ago?

Dicky99 wrote:

I thought that too, but when I bought two books of First Class stamps in my local post office about two months ago, they were non-bar coded.

I'm jealous that you managed to get to the front of the queue. Did you start queuing about three months ago?

Simon the Postmaster is a fellow bellringer.

We bellringers get preferential service in his post office and rarely have to queue for longer than a week.

I was in B&M today and since I was low on Pringles and their offer of £1.85 was the same as I'd recently paid at Sainsbury's, I bought a couple whilst there.
It was only when I got home and placed the B&M tubes next to the Sainsbury's tubes that I realised I'd had my pants taken down (so to speak), the victim no less of shrinkflation. The tubes were clearly shorter and 35g or about 17.5% less in weight.
Hoodwinking your customers is shameful behaviour B&M and it's the last time that any of my cheesy comestibles budget will find it's way into your tills

Has anyone else similarly had their pocket picked by a greedy retailer recently?

UncleEbenezer wrote:The Post Office. The place where you join the queue when you leave school, and reach the front just in time to collect your pension.

The problem is that the PO is the place where a lot of people go to collect their pension or welfare payment. If it were just selling stamps the queues would not be out of the door. But instead you have to wait whilst Aunt Beryl gets her widow's pension cashed.

Then there all the other extraneous things a PO does like passport applications or national savings stuff. POs are really a retail branch network for the government at low or no cost. All those activities create no revenues and just clog up the facility. A pox on the lot of them.

I thought we were going to have a Lootman / shopping in B&M anecdote there.

How silly of me to even contemplate that.

There are times when tubes of Pringles appear on Tesco shelves at varying prices, including shorter tubes. Sometimes I recollect tubes with "20% extra free" or something similar. I then look at the own brand variety.

I don't eat them myself, but there appears to be no correlation between price and quality or quantity.

TJH

Dicky99 wrote:I was in B&M today and since I was low on Pringles and their offer of £1.85 was the same as I'd recently paid at Sainsbury's, I bought a couple whilst there.
It was only when I got home and placed the B&M tubes next to the Sainsbury's tubes that I realised I'd had my pants taken down (so to speak), the victim no less of shrinkflation.
Has anyone else similarly had their pocket picked by a greedy retailer recently?

There's a lot of it going on, one has to keep one's eyes open.
I like Pringles and crisps, but no longer eat them due to avoiding ultra-processed foods, and in a drive to continue wearing the 30" troos that seem to have shrunk of late... nothing to do with inflation of course...

V8

Dicky99 wrote:It was only when I got home and placed the B&M tubes next to the Sainsbury's tubes that I realised I'd had my pants taken down (so to speak), the victim no less of shrinkflation. The tubes were clearly shorter and 35g or about 17.5% less in weight.
Hoodwinking your customers is shameful behaviour B&M and it's the last time that any of my cheesy comestibles budget will find it's way into your tills

It's a pretty common occurrence in places like Poundland where pack sizes are often smaller than those found elsewhere.

Dicky99 wrote:I was in B&M today and since I was low on Pringles and their offer of £1.85 was the same as I'd recently paid at Sainsbury's, I bought a couple whilst there.
It was only when I got home and placed the B&M tubes next to the Sainsbury's tubes that I realised I'd had my pants taken down (so to speak), the victim no less of shrinkflation. The tubes were clearly shorter and 35g or about 17.5% less in weight.
Hoodwinking your customers is shameful behaviour B&M and it's the last time that any of my cheesy comestibles budget will find it's way into your tills

You just have to be careful. Tesco often have both the 165g tube and the 200g tube available at different prices and in different special offers.

Scott.