White goods

I found a great way to spend Saturday afternoon in Shanghai. We have been suffering with a washing machine which doesn't drain and a (brand new) tumble dryer which doesn't dry. Desperation set in and we decided to invest in a new tumble dryer and persuaded the landlord to buy a new washing machine. Juli, our guardian angel, took me off to her favourite white goods place. First she harangued the sales ladies about the uselessness of the tumble dryer and then entered into protracted negotiations on our behalf as to which machine was the best. No sooner had she agreed which machine we wanted, we then had to agree a price. Everything is negotiable but I have no idea why some things are more negotiable than others. The tumble dryer went down in price from about £500 to £200 in the space of two minutes but the washing machine only went down by about £20. As soon as we had agreed a price, we then had to locate a chain of managers to sign off on the reduced price. Once this was done, we found out that they didn't have that particular model in stock and would have to import it from Europe. This was fine but it happened about four times. Nothing was in stock except the samples in the store. Undaunted, we entered into fresh negotiations for the samples. Two hours into the buying process and we were finally able to go to pay for the machines.

You would think they would have been happy to take our money but our troubles were only just beginning. For reasons which remain unclear to me, I had to go to another store out in the boondocks to pay for the drier so off we set with a sales lady in a taxi. When we turned up at the second store, a further chain of signatures and permits were collected and then....my credit card was refused. A hunt for an ATM which took foreign cards ensued and then, finally, we bought the drier. Total purchase time, over three hours. If you think this story is boring, you should experience the real thing. The pay off though is it gets delivered and installed the same day. Not even John Lewis would do that in the UK.

So, on to televisions. Those of you who have paid attention may have noticed that we had a rather small TV in London. During our negotiations for the house, Juli was keen to make sure we were fully TV'd up. She was rather puzzled when I said I only wanted one TV. What, nothing in the bedrooms, the study, the kitchen? Of course we would want a flat screen in every room. We finally settled on getting one new TV and keeping another that was already in the house. 'Don't get anything too big' I warned Juli. To no avail. On arrival we found a new flat screen TV about the size of our living room at home. We were so upset that it was so big that we considered getting rid of it and buying another smaller one. That was before we found out from Juli that it had cost nearly £1000. 'I told you not to buy a big one, I can't believe the landlord spend all that money on it' I said, stunned. 'But the landlord wanted to get you a 47 inch one. I had to talk him into the 29 inch one". Apparently, we are the only expats Juli has ever met who have required only one TV and have requested that it be small. This does not bode well.