TwinSpeak: When You Feel Ripped Off

Have you ever purchased something and it turns out you didn't get what you paid for? When you have really high expectations about something and then you are bitterly disappointed by what you receive and just feel plain ripped off?

Bella: I am pretty much a chocolate addict. I love, love, love it. On the weekend, I noticed a new flavour of Kit Kat Chunky. Kit Kat Chunky Cookies and Cream!! I love Kit Kat Chunkies and I love Cookies and Cream. It was my ultimate dream chocolate bar. Or so I thought.

With all the anticipation of a five year old opening their Christmas presents from Santa, I opened my chocolate bar only to find that it was a defect!! Sub standard and a reject at best. It should have never passed the Kit Kat quality test. Half the top of the chocolate bar was missing, leaving a crumbly mess of wafer. Then when I bit into it, it got worse! Half the actual cookies and cream filling was also missing! It was like this little guy tried to escape off the conveyor belt and missed half the process only to be packaged up and sent away as is.

So what to do??? I emailed Nestle to inform them of my customer dissatisfaction complete with photos. I was of course hoping that I would get a full box of Kit Kats for my trouble. Instead I was offered a cheque for $1.20 to replace the cost of the Kit Kat. It would cost me more in petrol, time and effort to just cash the cheque!

Oh well you can't win them all :)

Frankie: Well, I recently experienced a bad eBay purchase. You have to be careful of those shifty sellers on eBay and normally I am. I bought this beautiful dress, or so I thought, on eBay. The photo displaying the dress looked like a professional clipping from a magazine. I asked the seller if the dress is the exact same style, brand etc as in the picture and I was told yes. So for $50, I thought I was getting a bargain buy.

Fast forward 2 weeks later and I get my supposed designer dress. Not only was it a knock off version, the quality was abysmal. I've bought knock-off items before and you'd be pretty hard pressed to pick up the original and imitation in a line up. However, this imitation was a joke. It was made from some cheap polyester fabric, there were stitches loose down the side of the dress, what looked to be a shoe print on the hem of the dress and I swear it had been worn...to top it off, the dress was advertised as green and the one I got was a grey???

So yes, I felt mighty ripped and pissed off. I had to send the horrible item back to the seller I bought it from and was out of pocket $10 to post the hideous thing back. So beware people of dodgy sellers out there.

TwinSpeak...When times are tough

With all this talk of recession and the hard economic situation around the world, I often wonder how some people are managing. What do people do to get by from day to day. How do you save a buck when times are tough?

Bella: I ask this question of myself often. How can I save money? Where can I cut down on my spending? What can I sacrifice? Like the other day, I only bought one pair of Tony Bianco shoes instead of two :) On a serious note though I have become more conscious of things like, meal planning and organising meals in advance. Rather than just wait until the evening and then decide what to cook or go out and get something, I've become more organised in planning ahead and shopping for exactly what I need. I've started turning off appliances around the house of an evening or when I know they're not going to be used for awhile and even turn of the modem connection. I make sure to turn off lights when no one is in the room. I don't know if these things save a great deal money but it can't hurt.

Today I was in McDonalds and I noticed something that made me laugh.

There was a gentleman who had setup his laptop and was using the free WiFi. Not unusual, No. Until I noticed he had also setup his gigantic printer on the table next to him! He also had his mouse and mouse pad and what looked like a month's worth of paperwork on the table next to him. I assume he was catching up on his Internet banking and downloads??

Would you go that far to save a buck??? Me, personally, no I wouldn't.

I decided to dub this man Terri the Tightarse :)