From: smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,rec.music.misc
Subject: Re: Seeking contact address/phone for UK "Our Price" stores.
Date: 1 Oct 92 09:25:40 GMT
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol

In article <1adgh2INN505@seven-up.East.Sun.COM> geoff@East.Sun.COM () writes:
>When flying out of Gatwick a couple of days ago, I stopped at the Our
>Price record store and decided to pick up a CD - an EMI "1968 Greatest
>Hits", actually. (No jeering, please.) This being Britain, the jewel
>box was empty, and I had to take it to the sales assistant who
>reluctantly interrupted his natter with a colleague to retrieve the CD
>from the back of the shop and put it into the jewel box for me. Naively
>I assumed that he'd done his job right, and I headed off to my plane.
>When I unpacked back here in the US, I found that he'd given me the
>1963 volume in the same series - a disc that, oddly enough, I had
>absolutely no interest in owning.
>
>(1) Do people find this happens often?

No.  On the other hand, people do check to make sure.  What is more
likely and bothersome (at least to me) is that the discs may be
horribly and visibly mishandled while being extracted from the storage
sleeves and put into the box.  There are a couple of shops which I
simply don't buy records from solely because none of their staff seem
to have a clue about how to handle them.  Other problem (particularly
with LPs and software) is that they may miss some of the bits.  I've
had shops try to give me albums without the included note-sheets (in
cases where I've know there were such), and software with bits of the
enclosed paperwork absent.

>(2) Is this a worthwhile way of avoiding the dreaded longbox?

Not convinced it's to avoid the 'longbox', which, for those who've
never seen one, is a cardboard box about twice the size of a CD case,
designed to make the package less susceptible to being picked up and
put in a pocket.  After all, they sell vinyl LPs the same way, and I
haven't yet seen a pocket you could slip an LP into.  It annoys the
hell out of me, especially when it applies to computer software.

>(3) How are CDs sold in other countries? Is this really a UK-only thing?

Never seen it done in any other country, but on the other hand the list
of 'any other country's that I've been in is pretty small -- US,
Switzerland, France, Greece, Viet Nam.  A few of the larger UK shops
don't do this, using extra shrinkwrap, with one of those 'encoded'
strips or tags inside which sets off an alarm at the door if you
haven't had it disabled by the cashier.  Most seem to use the 'remove
the contents' technology though, for all recorded media -- CDs,
cassettes, videos, records, computer software...

>(4) Anyone know the phone or address for the Our Price head office,
>    so I can mail this thing back and get it replaced?

I'd suggest you mail it back to the particular shop, in which case
something as vague as 'Our Price Records, Terminal <whatever>, Gatwick
Airport' ought to do.  You may find, however, that the cost of shipping
it back is enough that you'd be better off just learning to love it --
keep it as a souvenier.

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132
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