128. Sorry, But It’s Not Quite What I Want

Sometimes, before I buy something, I want to try it first but I can’t. Some products are always tested or tried prior to purchase but there are others that never are and I think it would be helpful if at least some of them could be. 

Before you buy something, what rights do you have with regards to testing it first or perhaps, tasting it, to make sure that the product is what you really want?

For my daughter Lucy’s wedding in 2004, I bought an off-the-peg suit from a well-known London outfitter to wear at her wedding.  It was relatively expensive and so, of course, I tried it on before I bought it and a couple of alterations were made before I took it away.  When Alice, my elder daughter got married last year, to my astonishment that suit still fitted me.

“That’s a saving,” I thought.  “I’ll buy a made-to-measure shirt with the money I’ve saved so I’ll look smarter in the photos,” and so off I went to a Savile Row tailor.  Where else? 

I realised immediately that this was to be a very different experience from buying a shirt from Marks & Spencer or John Lewis where I would be in and out in less than five minutes having spent no more than £30.

The measuring component of the procedure alone lasted more than thirty minutes because in all possible ways I was treated like a Very Important Person.

On the walls were photographs of actual VIPs wearing the company’s suits and shirts.  I remember seeing, among others, Alec Guinness, Bob Monkhouse and someone whose name I wasn’t sure of but I think it was Dale Winton.  See what I mean?  Real VIPs.

“Will a photograph of me go up there?” I asked, innocently and with a straight face.

The tailor didn’t exactly stare at me but he looked at me intensely for a second or two.  Then he asked a question that I’ve never been asked before or since:

“Are you known, Sir?”

“Not in the way I think you mean,” I replied. 

“Probably not then,” he said, very politely.

In the days before Google and the Internet, I could easily have lied and got away with saying that I was “known”.  I read of someone who relied on the fact that Stanley Kubrick was a name that everyone knew but whom no one would recognise, to use that circumstance to defraud many restaurants, airlines and hotels.

I know someone who, 40 years ago, bore a likeness to Ray Davies, the lead singer of The Kinks.  In the ’70s and ’80s he regularly used that resemblance to obtain free meals in North London Restaurants.  Fifteen years ago, when I last visited it, an Indian Curry House in Crouch End still had a photo on the wall of “Ray”, posing with his arm around the owner’s shoulders, smiling the beaming smile of a smug, satiated thief.

A week after the measuring of the shirt, I was called back for a “preliminary” fitting.  It seemed fine to me but I was told that it wasn’t at all fine and I needed to return in two days.  What a palaver!

I’m not going to tell you exactly how much that shirt cost me because that would be vulgar but don’t think for a moment that a £300 shirt is necessarily ten times as pleasing, comfortable or stylish as a £30 shirt.  It just isn’t.  In my opinion, made-to-measure shirts are absurdly overpriced and consequently, for the most part, a waste of money.

In November 2008, recovering from my liver transplant, I was very frail and bedbound in hospital in Fort Lauderdale.  For weeks I was given (subjected to) a daily bed bath but I was never shaved and I was too feeble and befuddled to shave myself.  I asked Caroline if she would buy me the best electric razor she could find.  If Rolls Royce make electric razors, I told her, I want one of theirs.

Unlike a pair of shoes that you can try on to make sure they fit before you buy them, you can’t try an electric razor to make sure it shaves you before you buy it. 

With no evidence to guide or help her, Caroline based her choice on price alone and bought the most expensive razor she could find.  It cost more than $300 but I immediately discovered that it was absolutely useless.  It just didn’t do what it was designed to do and that was to shave me properly. 

If I had been able to try it first, Caroline would never have bought that razor.  I only used it once and found immediately that it didn’t work.  The store said it wasn’t faulty and so would not give a refund.  A total waste of money!

Recently, Caroline decided that she would buy a new car and she scoured the Internet making notes on all the models that were possibilities.  At last and after masses of research, she made her decision and I accompanied her to the dealer.

She looked carefully at her chosen model on display and saw everything that she expected to see and nothing that made her change her mind.

“Would you like a test drive Madam?”  Madam said that she would.

I am fairly sure that no one has ever bought a new car without test driving it first, but what is the point?  I wonder if anyone has ever changed their mind as a consequence of the test drive.  I’ve never heard of it happening. 

I’ve never heard anyone say something like, “It was a great car except that when I drove it I found that the cup holders were too small and the rear window took too long to demist,” or even something less trivial like, “it didn’t have enough oomph.”  You know its “oomph” from written reviews.

Mattresses are always a problem.  When you walk through the bedding section of a department store, it is quite common to see someone lying on a mattress.  They are obviously trying out a mattress prior to purchase but they always seem to lie on their backs.  I don’t think that most people go to sleep lying on their backs but everyone I’ve seen tests a mattress that way. 

You never see anyone lying on their left side, basically in the foetal position but with their right leg straight and with their right arm bent around the back of their neck so that their left ear is resting on their right hand.  That’s the way most people go to sleep, isn’t it? 

Nowadays, it is possible to test a new mattress at home for up to 30, 60 or even 100 days and return it if you are not satisfied but although admirable, that can cause problems.  How many people keep their old mattress in case the new one has to be returned?  We have nowhere to store a King-Size mattress in case a new one is unsuitable and how does one dispose of a King-Size mattress if the new one is satisfactory?

It is wrong, in my opinion, that a manufacturer can sell merchandise without giving the customer the opportunity to try out the product first, although I understand that with some things there are health or other implications. 

For instance, I certainly wouldn’t want to try a razor that had previously been tested by someone with facial psoriasis or buy a mattress that some sweaty person had tried for a couple of months before returning it to the store.  The only answer I have to this problem is that the retailer should be prepared to make a refund for up to a week on any product that doesn’t come up to expectations.  Very few will do that and will only make a refund if the item is faulty.

Before 1964, in the days before Pirate Radio, Radio 1 and the Internet, there were very few ways to hear new music.  I would sometimes go with friends on a Saturday morning to Morling’s, Lowestoft’s only music store and listen to records in a booth.  I rarely bought one but the store hoped that I would and then, I might pay 6/8 (6 shillings and 8 pence or 33p) for a record.  “Because They’re Young” by Duane Eddy was the first I ever bought in 1960.

I once got into a lot of trouble at Jarrold’s Bookshop in Lowestoft when I asked if I could take “Our Man in Havana” away to read it so that I could decide whether or not to buy it. 

“Why not?  Morling’s let you listen to music first,” I protested to the assistant.  I think I must have been a bit of a pain when I was thirteen.

There is a delicatessen near us that actively encourages customers to try their olives or cheeses before they buy them.  Electric razors and books are at the other end of that scale in that they may only be bought on trust and reputation alone.  That, in my experience, can be a problem.