Yesterday I got a phone call to ask if I wanted to visit the roof of Newcastle’s CO-OP department store on Newgate street. The store is closing down and Westagte PAST, a local history project sponsored by the Local Heritage Initiative that I am associated with, is archiving images and tails from the store. A good brief history of the store in on this site.

Me being a mug for a good view I jumped a the chance and I am glad I did. There is a great view across the city and across the Tyne. I have uploaded some of the images here.

This Christmas we put up a tree in early December that we picked up form a local garden centre (for local people). It was a lovely tree and I cared for it greatly. Unfortunately I left the tree and the heating thermostat unattended and Gillian melted it. ;-)

So now on this Christmas eve we went out to look for a replacement. Most places had sold out and the one we did find was malformed and still at full price. Rather than keep driving in circles I hit the telephone and called Homebase who had a few trees left. When we arrived they were still priced at full price and the girl slouched at customer services confirmed that they were not reduced. Gillian was not to be defeated and asked someone else on the way to the car if they were going to reduce the trees at all, and to cut a long story short the chap was then carrying our new free Christmas tree to the car for us.

In summary a big thank you to Homebase for the tree, and if you need a tree on Christmas eve then ask for a discount as the shops would rather be shot of them than hold on to them.

No seriously. After posting my earlier blog entry regarding me experience with PC World I sent an email to them. To my surprise I did quickly get a response asking to speak to me, and asking for more technical details. I had a very fruitful discussion with the quality assurance manager who confirmed that what happened should not have happened, and filled in a few blanks as to why this was so unusual.

This is what appears to have happened… The product that I was trying to purchase at the offer price had been reduced since the prior Thursday, and was due to return to full price on the Tuesday gone. The problem was that a TV advertisement accidentally was broadcast nationally advertising the offer on Tuesday evening. PC World decided to honour the offer in stores if a customer asked about it. The problem with the web store is that you can not ask a web page for the price you have seen on the telly, so the offer was extended for a short time online. Although the price changes normally happen overnight when least users are shopping, on this rare occasion it looks like the price was changed back in the middle of the afternoon.

Apparently the person in the shop was correct and the price should have been honoured when I called up, but we are presuming that because I did not mention the TV advert this did not happen.

So although the call centre still scores a big fat zero, it is a good score for the store and top marks to the quality assurance team.

This weekend Gillian and I stayed in the Yorkshire Hotel, Harrogate for a Christmas shopping weekend break.

A few months ago I joined a gym (stop laughing) and got a free weekend stay in a Swallow hotel as part of the deal. I chose Harrogate (yes I was allowed to make the decision) as it was far enough away from home to make it a holiday, but close enough not to be a long journey.

The hotel building was nothing great special. It was refurbished a couple of years ago but is still an old hotel at heart. The thing that made the stay special was the staff.

Form the moment we arrived they were friendly and jovial. If you need a spare glass for the bedroom it was not a problem. We were worried about noise from a Christmas party on the floor above and were moved no problem to the quietest room they had, that was a full suite, as no extra cost. Instead of having to wait in a queue for a table at breakfast someone personally came out to the lounge and let you know when a table was available. The thing that really impressed me, and it might sound strange, was the staff were even concerned about the position if the handle of the tea pot so as to make it easer for you to pick up.

The behaviours of some of the other guests was a little upsetting with lots of drunken noise in the night, and a fire alarm being set off on the Friday night, but I can not really blame that on the hotel.

In total it was a great time we had in Harrogate and a great place to go Christmas shopping.