Vacuum cleaner buy - Mark 2 :s

Attempt Mark 2 - An orgasmatronic bagless super duper vacuum cleaner for pet owners

Soooo...... we finally got our money back from "The Good Guys" after David did one of his classic dummy spits at them threatening to go to consumer affairs. It still took 3 days though for the bloody banks to return the money to my account. 

Interestingly about that, the official paying back invoice thingy they sent us had a different reason why the second time around their crappy vacuum cleaner failed, saying on the invoice "MACHINE IS TRIPPING THE POWER". Oh really? This was after they told us it didn't work because after cleaning all of half a rug it was clogged with cat hair. *Pffft* So who were "The Good Guys" lying to? Us or the supplier? +Pfffft+ again.  

We'd already looked up 4 prospective vacuum cleaners after searching Godfrey's online, who were having a big sale like they often do. Unfortunately by the time the money was returned from The Ripoff Guys a lot of them were sold out at the warehouse, leaving the option to ring around nearby branches to see if any were still in stock there to be picked up rather than delivered. 

As we don't have a car and rely on public transport (I'm not getting a ride with my daughter as she's about ready to drop my granddaughter and I don't want to have to deal with that if that happens!) it soon turned into a possible big hike through yesterday's pouring rain and wind to get to the nearest place that had the first choice of ours; the Moore Park Super Centre which meant a long walk on that road going along between the two bits of the golf course to get there. Ugh, no it had to be delivered.

The only one left out of the four (BTW all bagless after I searched "pets" in the Godfrey's site. The Ripoff Guys had told us we'd have to use a bag vacuum for pets. *Pfffft* again) was a pretty standard looking super duper orgasmatronic bagless one on sale for half price - see picture above. I set about buying it online and getting it delivered.

But the story doesn't end there folks. Yes, there's more :s  Upon filling out all the usual bla and bla at the checkout, upon processing the transaction the site came up with "payment declined due to suspected fraud". WTF? After trying a few times I rang the 800 number in exasperation. Turns out they'd just installed some all guns firing anti-fraud software into their system that was rejecting heaps of innocent vacuum cleaner buyers. Like us. *sheesh*

I was put through to the accounts lady who was very Australian and quite jocular. Good grief, I was actually talking to an Australian in an Australian company on the phone upon trying to get help! *faints* After recovering from the shock, she bought up what I'd done online to get this processed, jokingly informing me that their system said I was in some African nation, and likely had rejected me because of that. We all know how those Africans like to do online fraud things you know. 

Suddenly I realised that my VPN was on (Virtual Private Network) as it always is. She didn't know WTF I was talking about. I informed her that many Aussies are getting a VPN now so the gov can't track our metadata, saying it was an outrageous invasion of privacy! Thus their system thought I was some ripoff artist in Nigeria or some such thing. She was quite amused about it and took note of it to refer it back to the numskulls that installed the anti-fraud software in the first place. 

Was glad the VPN (free with the Opera browser BTW) was working so marvelously. A simple piece of software that comes with the browser that completely gets around the Australian gov's attempts to get our metadata and block overseas torrent downloading sites - for movies, telly shows, etc. Our gov has not the slightest idea about the internet :)

Anyway I turned off the VPN at the top of the browser with a couple of clicks and tried again. Surprisingly  it still came up "suspected fraud". In the end I was put back through to the main phone answering help type people who did the transaction manually, which worked. *sheesh* again..... It was a pleasure though to be talking to actual Australian's who understood every word I said, and not some call centre in outer Mongolia in which I couldn't understand a word they would be saying. The lady even got my name right the first time; my last name is unusual and I usually have to spell it out slowly a couple of times to outer Mongolia type call centre people.

So this is Mark 2. So far the purchase has been made, but as yet I've not received andemail saying it's been shipped yet. We'll see how this one goes......