Caveat emptor

Two gripes tonight, both about outfits who are very glad to take your money but none too keen to give you anything in return, and they are, respectively, an online retailer called computerwebstore (do have a look - especially at their customer-care guarantees and other promises) and the NHS.

Let's take the easy one first, the online retailer.

On 22 May I ordered a replacement DVD recorder for a cheap one that had suddenly decided to initialise (ie wipe) everything it had ever recorded when I tried to play it back. I knew what I wanted (one with Freeview), but no shop locally had it in stock, and I was getting a bit desperate so I ordered one online from www.computerwebstore.co.uk, who were very happy to take my £117, with the promise of delivery within three days. Well, it was Bank Holiday (Pentecost, actually, and if I'd had any sense I'd have pondered the "-cost" element), so I thought I'd give them a few more days.

After ten days, when nothing whatsover had happened, despite my having sent a polite e-mail asking if there was a problem, I contacted Lancashire's Trading Standards people, who turned out to be the Office of Fair Trading in disguise, and they read me a resume of the Distance Selling Regulations, 2000, but they were obviously bored by the whole business, and I could hear them thinking "Oh, God, here's another bloody sucker".

Funnily enough, a couple of days after that, I actually received a nearly literate e-mail from someone at computerwebsnore saying "sorry for the delay - it will be with you tomorrow."

Well, that's a fortnight ago now. For a week we made sure that one of us would be at home all day to receive our £117-worth of goods, but it was a complete waste of time. No DVD recorder. Big hole, size £117, in bank account.

The saga continues (I cancelled the order this morning, four weeks after the money left my account) but I have a horrible feeling that I have been rooked out of 25% of my monthly state pension, and the OFT thinks it's all my own fault.

So, if you are ever minded to spring a few bob on a sure loser in the Grand National, don't waste your money - send it to another Liverpool outfit instead, www.computerwebstore.co.uk (please make a note of the name.) You might even be lucky.

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While all this hassle was going on, and without benefit even of recordable telly (though why I bother to spend good gin-money on a DVD recorder when I could get a whole year of the programmes I watch on one floppy disk, I don't know), I suddenly started falling over a lot, and vertical lines (such as in a crossword, the construction of which augments to a small extent my meagre private and state pensions) started to get kinks. I put it down to a cluster of migraines I'd had a couple of months ago, but it was so disconcerting to my wife that she booked me into our local, ahem, "health" centre, and thither I staggered my wobbly and reluctant way - wobbly, because I could hardly keep my balance, and reluctant, because given a choice between visiting our local health centre and having the last rites administered, rational people would plump for the latter. "Doctor", I said. "I've had it before. I need my ears syringed. But I am bothered about the residual visual disturbance following the last cluster of migraines."

Well, I am sure that he is a very good doctor, because he said "stick plenty of olive oil down your lug'oles for a couple of weeks, then trog off to the walk-in clinic." (Which is in Blackpool.) But to be on the safe side he referred me to a jolly pleasant consultant at the Old Vic, a specialist in strokes (which cheered me up no end, as you can imagine) who tested just about everything in sight, including the battery on my mobile phone, and concluded that a) my blood pressure was a bit up (I'd had to park about 14 miles away, and, if you have been closely following this narrative, you will know that I was having difficulty keeping upright for walking purposes, so I wasn't all that surprised that the old BP was having a bad day of it, too) and b) I needed my ears syringed (and he also said stop putting olive oil down your lug'oles - it just fills the gaps, sets like rock, and makes you go deaf.)

Please don't utter a hollow laugh at this point if you attend the same health centre, however tempted you might be.

The consultant said he would write to my doctor, with a copy of the letter to me. I waited, in a wobbly manner, for that letter for a fortnight, in between times managing to do my normal, and some abnormal, church duties, digging the garden and falling over a lot. Then today I discovered that although I hadn't had the consultant's letter, the doctor had. I hadn't realised that it was up to me to ask - I would have thought it was the "health" centre's job to tell me. They are obviously so busy being rude to elderly ladies that they don't have enough time for paperwork.

So, dear brethren, I do hope you see the connection between these two apparently unconnected items. I know I do, me.

I'm wobbling off to the "health" centre on Monday, to hear the verdict. If I survive that experience I might even have had my ears syringed by Christmas. 2012.