Newshound, March 2022
Electricity
Knowing my electricity contract was up for renewal at the end of March, my broker had a quick look round in December and found a couple of suppliers who were offering slightly cheaper prices than I was currently paying. It was just pennies cheaper but I thought at least our electricity bill should remain stable for the foreseeable future – how wrong I was!
Unfortunately, I could not sign up for a new deal until February, but by then as we all know prices were going up. My current supplier offered a renewal contract at just over double what my current charges are, so I asked my broker to have another look around and mentioned the company we looked at just before Christmas. Well, it turns out they are now offering a contract at over three times what I currently pay, and the best deal I can get is to stay with my current supplier at double the current charges.
So, as of April 1, my electricity bill will double to just over four thousand five hundred pounds a year. And I don’t think there is anything I can cut back on to reduce the bill.
Most of our lighting is LED and, as we do not have gas in the shop, we rely on electricity for heating and we keep that to a minimum as it is. So it looks like it’s an increased overhead we will just have to accept.
We now get a phone call from our electricity supplier telling us our meter was disconnected last August so can they get the details of our current working meter? I did try and explain that the meter was updated with one of these fancy new ones last August but it certainly has not been disconnected as the lights are still on and we are still paying the bills! Goodness knows what is going on here, but the sooner the power company sorts this out, the better.
Christmas
Reps know that they should never talk to me about stock for the dreaded C word (Christmas) before July or August. We are in full swing with the holidaymakers from Easter to October so the last thing I want to think about is Christmas stock. If the reps have Christmas stock to sell they always seek out the wife, as she’s more of a soft touch! So I was a little bit taken aback when I was presented with a new range of Christmas 2022 stock in January. I was even more surprised when the other half appeared from out the back storeroom and gleefully put in an order. So we’ve ordered our Christmas stock for 2022 in January, just at the same time as we put away unsold Christmas stock from 2021.
Refunds
During last summer we had some Italian visitors in the shop and, after having a good look round, bought a dog harness on the understanding that if it did not fit they could return it. As this is a promise we give to all our customers it was not a problem and, as the dog was back in Italy, there was no chance of them coming back to the UK just to return a £16.99 dog harness. How wrong I was! In February they returned the harness as being too small and bought the next size up.
Squirrel proof
A customer was very keen to get a good quality squirrel-proof feeder for their garden as they were fed up with squirrels wrecking their standard feeders. We found some really good ones and got them in and phoned the customer. When she came to get them she was impressed with the quality and actually bought two of them. Then she saw something else on the shelf that she had to have – squirrel food!
The mousetrap
I was carrying a bag of horse feed to a customer’s car and she asked me to be careful when I put it in the boot as there was a live mouse trap in it and she did not want me to set it off.
Not many people I know have a live mousetrap in the boot of their car. Apparently she had taken the car into the garage for a service and they told her that mice had eaten away a substantial amount of the sound deadening lining in the car.
When she got home she set a mousetrap in the boot and in the first week caught 10 mice. In the second week none were caught, so hopefully they are now all gone, but she left the trap in the boot for a few more days, just to make sure.
