The Captain’s Blog ™

Mrs Consumer and I found ourselves in Morrisons the other week, where we happened upon a buy one, get one free offer for Lyons Treacle Tarts - located on a table at the end of an aisle.

Not having enjoyed anything nearly so sweet or rich for as long as either of us could remember, we bunged a couple in the trolley along with some (vegan) Alpro custard.

That night, we each had a slice for pudding - add a dollop of custard, chuck into the microwave for a little less than a minute and then rediscover a veritable treasure trove of childhood experiences. First, the anticipatory delight of the bubbling treacle surrounded by crumbly pastry. Second, the reminder that said treacle, even after it’s stopped bubbling, retains the ability to scald the living daylights out of your mouth. Followed, thirdly, by more prudently managed enjoyment of a delicious dessert.

So it came as little surprise that we managed to gobble up both tarts over the course of the next few days. Which makes us both porkers who lack the ability to self-regulate, I know. Still, once they were gone, they were gone, right?

Well, not quite. A week or so of tartless days culminated one evening earlier this week in an irrepressible urge for MORE TREACLE TART, NOW! So intense was this urge that I drove all the way to Morrisons - specifically and solely in order to buy said product, rush it home and resume the shared indulgence.

Upon arrival, I strode purposefully into Morrisons, intent on my mission. Only to find that the tarts had disappeared from the end of aisle. OK. So they’re on the regular shelves… No? Hmm.

I asked a likely looking chap, who advised me - to my jaw-dropping astonishment - that they’d only had the product in “as a special offer”. They a) wouldn’t be receiving any more, b) didn’t carry the product as standard and c) furthermore, had no plans to start stocking it!

Whilst I’ll confess to having been more upset by this news than would be considered normal by any usual standard (it had, after all, been the only thing on my shopping list), upon further reflection over subsequent days I’ve found this even more irritating than when I first stood aghast in the store.

What, after all, is the POINT of a promotion if not to generate FUTURE DEMAND for a product?

Nor was there comfort - in the form of aforementioned tarts - to be found elsewhere. Nary a single Lyons treacle tart could be found within a ten mile radius. Well, one probably could be, but not where I looked.

So in short we find ourselves bereft of a comfort food that could otherwise - and should otherwise - have been helping to soothe us through the daily drama of credit crunch-related economic mayhem. And wondering what on earth the buyers at Morrisons think they’re doing.

Incidentally, I left their store that evening without buying a single other product, purely as a matter of principle. Not the type of consumer behaviour they were aiming for, I suspect…

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By any measure, Dell has to be one of the UK’s most accomplished online retailers. Their website provides both home and business users with a diverse range of PCs that will cover most buyers’ needs.

Typically, when buying a new PC online from Dell, you start with a base configuration. You’re then given the option of either keeping or upgrading / downgrading various components within the overall build in order to better suit your requirements and budget.

For some people (myself included), this can understandably be quite daunting. What, for instance, are the relative technical merits of this graphics card vs that one?

Recognising this issue, Dell’s customisation process features content-sensitive help buttons, usually denoted by a big question mark in a blue circle with clickable text: “Help me choose”.

In principle, this is great, but the practice - in my experience at least - is disappointingly inconsistent.

It’s part of my job to try and keep on top of the latest products, so that I can relay particularly good deals to you. So I often respond to emails from Dell by clicking through to have a look at new PCs and play around with specs and pricing.

Take the new Studio range. Dell’s new Studio notebooks now come with a choice of fancy cover designs. And the Studio desktop PCs range from compact, coloured models to more traditional desktop designs.

But as a case in point, when playing around with the spec for a Studio desktop (D105403), I reached the stage of being asked to choose a graphics card from a choice of two. I didn’t know what either model offered in the way of features, so I clicked the help link. On clicking the “Compare side-by-side” option within the help window, I was then presented with specs for no less than six different graphics cards. Yet none of them corresponded to either of the two models I was being asked to choose between.

That’s really not very helpful at all. As I was only window shopping, I called it a day right there. But in doing so I was conscious that this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered the problem.

Dell is so close to getting it right that it sticks out all the more badly when the customer journey leads to a dead end. I’d suggest that Dell could do with paying a little more attention to the parts of its website that customers are likely to be relying on the most.

> See the Studio range at Dell’s online shop

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