To use its full title, “Mum’s laptop woe as Amazon box contains cornflakes” is quite honestly a thing of local news beauty.
Published on 24th December, the BBC article (linked above) doesn’t contain the news bulletin VT. Someone would have to record it manually within 24 hours, before the transmission was replaced with the following day’s news. But who would be sad enough to do that? Oh, wait, that would be me.
(And before stones are thrown, the recording boiled down to me filming my laptop through my phone. If anything I think it adds to the effect.)
Give this a watch and let’s compare notes afterwards.
Here are some of my personal highlights:
- The dramatic reconstruction of ‘opening the parcel’
- Lizzie’s revelation: opening a parcel in December, two months after receiving it
- “This isn’t an isolated case” in Lichfield
- Lizzie’s fears for other disappointed children
- (And, best of all) Lizzie demanding people are made to open their parcels in front of delivery drivers
I probably shouldn’t laugh, but I will. And saying this could have been avoided if someone had forced her to open the parcel on the doorstep?
It also begs a lot of other questions…
1) How much money did Lizzie pay for this laptop? (As she and her daughter scroll through a shopping site at the end of the VT, you can see every laptop is priced at £500+. If Lizzie paid that much shouldn’t the gripe be that she was conned? If she didn’t pay that much, how can you be surprised this happened?)
2) Surely you’d know the parcel wasn’t the right weight for a laptop? Unless those boxes of cornflakes are stuffed with rocks
2.5) Why gluten free cornflakes?
3) Did Lizzie convince her friend in Lichfield to also buy the same product from the same seller?
3.5) When did Lizzie’s friend find out she’d been conned?
4) What sane person wraps up their parcels before checking their contents? Yes, the product might not be as advertised, but it could have also been damaged in transit. Very important details you’d need to know before gifting on.
5) What craziness is this demand of opening parcels on doorsteps? Lizzie, be reasonable here.
And finally 6) what ten year old kid gets a laptop for SATs revision? (And if this is commonplace nowadays it only serves as further proof that I was born in the wrong century.)
Conclusion
In all the craziness of the world right now there is one thing we can all take away and that one thing is this this news article. Local news, don’t ever change.
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My Housemate's a Mermaid 