Thursday, August 31, 2006

Clothes dryers


Blue clothes hanging, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

It was an expensive day yesterday. We paid 81 euros for someone from Miele to turn up at the house and spend one minute looking at the clothes dryer to see why it had broken down. he would charge us 500 euros to repair the damage to this twelve-year old machine or we could pay 900 for a new one.

It seemed that the damage was self inflicted as one of us had taken to cleaning it and had taken a piece out and had put it back wrongly. This was done without forcing the piece back, although there was an obscure message saying that it should be put back in a certain way.

So, although we are very happy with our Miele's we feel quite let down by the fact that it was so easy to break the machine by short-circuiting the systems. If the piece had been forced back in then we can say it is our fault, but it all seemed too easy.

The new one will be delivered on Saturday. It'll cost about 100 euros than one oredered from an internet shop, but internet savvy as we are(!), we still fel more comfortable buying from a local shop than through cybersapce for something like this. It so often seems with internet shopping that from the time one has started to try to buy something to the time that the final price has been calculated, including delivery and removal charges, credit card costs, administration costs and so on, that the saving has amost disappeared. This is especially so with specifying a Dell computer, if anyone has ever had that experience. I usually hack off in disgust at being led down such a long path by these internet shops that even when the total price is a bit less than the shop price I can very easily click away the window on the screen, angry that I have wasted so much time on a wild goose chase.

I will say however, that I DO like www.play.com for ordering books, dvd's and cd's. The prices are reasonable and there are no extra cosys for shipping or anything. Excellent... as long as the Dutch Post bothers to eventually deliver what has been ordered!


The man from Miele did mention that August had been an exceptionally bad month for clothes dryers. Normally, with summer weather clothes dryers are not used so much in August, but this August looks like, on average, it might be the wettest month ever measured in Holland! No-one has been hanging their clothes OUT to dry, and with a number of electricians on holiday, the one sleft over have been incredibly busy.

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