h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today's PH: Printer Ink.

I'd be surprised if this hasn't been raised before, but I seem to be going through printer ink at an alarming rate. I'm trying to move over onto one of those printer+ink contract things where I pay per sheet and unlimited ink gets sent to me in the post, but until I manage to stop having to keep buying cartridges to print what I need now, or until I get a cash injection, this is going to be difficult

£42.50 for a set of ink, £69.99 for a new printer and a spare set of ink.

PH; Disturbingly over-familiar greetings from retail/pub staff.

No, I don't mean ones you actually know. I mean what seems to me to be a new trend whereby you enter an establishment that you have never before darkened the door of and you are greeted thus;

"Hello!!! Hi there!!! How ARE you !!!"



At first I thought it was just the over-exuberant personality of the occasional staff-member, but now this seems to be happening too often in too many different places to just be a coincidence. I worked long-enough in retail and sales to recognise the stench of a new 'latest' revenue generating technique/fad spreading its insidious mantra around commercialdom, like a plague.

I imagine in the fevered imaginings of the pre-pubescent retail consultant (idiot) lapping up the latest ways to repackage age-old selling methods, this is ground-breaking stuff. But in reality there really have been no new ways to sell stuff to people for hundreds of years- all the psychological tricks are age-old and were employed by Roman merchants and further back.

"make them feel so at home and shrouded in lovely warm friendliness that they will spend more!", the idiot, might be saying.

Well maybe it works for some. But I find it disturbing uncomfortable. I am getting to the age where I do indeed sometimes not instantly recognise someone I have not seen for years. When, upon entering a shop, I am greeted like an old best friend un-seen for decades, my genuine reaction is to stop, look behind me, and then when I'm sure they are looking at me; question how I know this person and am I getting early onset dementia because I don't seem to recognise this person who knows me so well ..

I find it annoying too - along with people who keep asking me all about my plans for the summer in the barbers...

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Fully agreed. However...



"[...] in the fevered imaginings of the pre-pubescent retail consultant (idiot) [...]"



Why do you always assume it's young people coming up with this stuff?

More to the point, why do you assume they're idiots?

Because I've had the misfortune of working in marketing/advertising/how-can-we-extract-the-maximum-amount-of-cash-from-customers, departments and whilst their brain-power was never in question, I was firmly of the belief that the lot of them should've been on Douglas Adam's 'first ship' along with the telephone sanitisers.

And young, because whenever I have been able to put a face to the author of a 'brilliant' marketing strategy, they usually are fresh-faced oiks just out of marketing school. Invariably they are coming up with repackaged old ideas that they think they are the very first people to think of. It's folk who are longer in the tooth who have seen all the old ideas and tend to come up with the original ideas (in my opinion).

Pastey,

If you can live without colour printing get a laser printer.

I've had my HP 1018 for years, print frequently, practically daily, and have just fitted my 4th (I think) cartridge. It was not a genuine HP one and cost me £5.99. Great quality. And whilst slightly larger than an ink jet, not massively so.

PP.

I get the thing about over-friendly staff. I play a wee game at our local Maplins - see how far I get into the shop before one of the grinning goblins pounces, then immediately turn on my heel and leave. The average is about 15ft.

The staff stand guarding the stock at my local Maplins. It's a horrible experience. I guess that's the company way. I tell them I'll find them when I want them. Which isn't often.

PP.

Yeah maplins are bad for it. That said i do usually find their staff very helpful when i do need them. But yes you barely get a second to get through the door before they pounce and greet you like an old drinking buddy.

PP, I've got an old laser from the early 2000s for all my black and white stuff, still on the same toner catridge as when I got it.
Unfortunately I need colour to print the bottle labels for the brewery.

PHoTD: Rating systems on websites that allow users to rent and stream movies.

Sometimes after reading the scenario of a movie I am naturally tempted to rent and stream it on my PC. When I check the movie rating from other members however, I see the rating is low.

If I ignore these ratings I usually find very disappointingly that the movie was as poor as the raters indicate. Yesterday, trusting in the rating system I rented a movie with five stars only to find it was dismal.

Rating a movie is very subjective I guess, but I do wonder if some people play games with these rating systems and give poor movies high ratings, and vise versa.

Rating systems for ANYTHING. Look at any item on any website (hotels, CD's, electrical gadgets, books) and the users' comments will usually add up to "make your own mind up - some of us think it's pants, some of us love it".

It's fun reading the comments, but I don't take any notice of them. Hard facts is what will help me decide, not misspelt, unqualified and possibly biased opinions by anonymous internet weirdos.

What I look at is the proportion of low to high ratings, and some of the negative comments can be helpful. For example, in recent months I have looked into chargers for an Amazon Kindle and 7" tablets. Some negative comments on certain chargers told me the charger was unreliable and/or potentially dangerous. Comments on the Kindle Fire tablets put me off because you're tied to Amazon's App Store for apps, and you can't install from Google Play.

The 'reviews' that really bug me are:

1. The reviewer gives a star rating, be it low or high, and doesn't say why.
2. The review is as simple as 'Great' or 'Piece of ' with no explanation of what's so good or bad about the item.
3. The review is about the service received in the delivery of the item, not the item itself.
4. The review says something like, 'I bought this for a friend/family member, so I don't know how good it is', or 'I haven't read this book/watched this film yet, so I don't know how good it is'. If you don't know how good the item is, don't review it.

Never been pounced on in my local Maplins and I'm a regular customer...

"3. The review is about the service received in the delivery of the item, not the item itself."

This. Especially when they like the item itself but give it a low rating because it took a long time to arrive or something.

There is worse though. You can ask questions about products on Amazon. I asked about something and the answer was:

I bought one of these last week. But it's a christmas present for my mum so I have no idea if it's any good or not.

Don't ing well reply to a ing question if you don't know what you're

That's a pretty lousy reply - no more use than 'I saw one of these on sale in a shop window' or 'I saw an advert for one once'. I suppose it confirms that the product in question exists, but unless your query was about whether the product had an actual presence in this dimensional plane, is of no help whatsoever.

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Also eBay sellers who, when asked about something not in the item description, reply with "please see the item description."