Someone may be interested enough to help with this. Apologies for its being slightly OT - but I don't know where to ask. Please ignore the article ... unless you are kind enough and have time enough to answer.
I went into PC World to buy a printer for a disabled friend. He had given me enough cash to buy it.
When I got to the till, the cashier wanted full name and address details. Even though I was paying cash. This caused a lot of problems - because I didn't know his formal address or postcode.
But do they have a right to demand personal data when selling something for cash? It seems preposterous! I wouldn't want to give a company personal information, which might be used for marketing. In fact, that's why I would often choose to pay by cash.
What have you found? Is it possible to buy things with cash without giving personal information?
They can only demand your address if they are selling TV receiving apparatus. If it's anything else just refuse to give it. If the cashiers are experienced they'll put in the shops postcode, otherwise they have to go and find the manager who'll tell them to do that.
No you are not required to do that regardless of the form of payment. The request is for marketing. Just say no thank you.
Their other favourite trick there is to ask if you want a VAT receipt or to buy for a business. If you agree to that, you are buying the product as a commercial and not a consumer transaction, thus losing the benefit of consumer legislation.
Finally, it is unwise to make medium to large purchases in cash. Again you lose a means of using consumer legislation in the event of a problem. If you pay by credit card and the transaction is for more than £100, the card company becomes jointly liable with the retailer. Even if your friend had given you cash, you would have been better off keeping that and buying the product in your name with a card.
Finally, finally; if you are going to use PC World, it is worth using their web site to order and then arrange to collect at the store. a) the price is usually lower, sometimes a lot lower and b) they will reserve the item for you for a day.
Finally, finally, finally. Watch out with PCW on consumables and small items. They are bandits in this regard. Example from yesterday. I needed a couple of 5m RJ11 leads to connect a router to two phone lines for ADSL service. PCW price is £19.99 each. A very quick look on the web, with no real attempt to find cheapest brought up Broadbandbuyer for £3.41 for the same item. They were here this morning.
I've had this in a few shops recently namely the DSG retail group. I was told it was purely for research purposes i.e. how far a customer has travelled to the store. I was also told it was on a voluntary basis.
Tandy (Radio Shack) used to do this, if I was in a hurry I always used to give their head office address and postcode - none of the sales droids ever noticed.
No. It's simply to get you on their database for follow-up advertising.
It is.
Yes, if you have the time make a fuss at the checkout and have varying salesdroid of increasing rank summoned whilst loudly declaiming their shoddy practices to other customers. If in a rush give the advertising standards agency address of 71 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6QT :-).
This was a particular product CC3011aed15 with screened lead. The cable run is along with a substantial bunch of network cables and the signal is weak. With un screened cables the error rates increase and the DSLAM reduces the link speed. These cables are substantially better based on measurements at the router. Ebuyer do do this product but at £3.38. I am not going to tit about for 6p.
I do, very closely. When they are running an offer, I can sometimes buy original printer cartridges from them for several pounds less than from my trade supplier. However, you need to get in on the first day of the deal to find any in stock.
AFAIK, and IANAL(BMWI - Scotland ) ( BMWI = But My Wife Is )
A retailer has the right to refuse to sell to anyone for no reason at all. There is no obligation on anyone to sell anything. That extends to retailers who run shops.
Having something for sale in a shop does not constitiue part of a contract ( at least in Scotland ). A contract comprises an Offer and Acceptance. A shop display is an "Invitation to Treat", in essence a pre-amble to a contract. It's inviting the shopper to make an offer. The shopper brings the item to the checkout and Offers to pay, and the shopkeeper Accepts. That is the contract.
This is how they can get out of honouring 50" plasma TVs incorrectly price-tagged at £2.50. The price tag is not part of a contract. The shopkeeper can decline the shopper's offer to pay £2.50, and there is no contract.
If the shopkeeper chooses to require you to stand on one leg, spin around, and sing the national anthem before they agree to accept your offer, that is their right.
Likewise, they may choose to ask you for personal information. You are not required to supply this.
If you don't like their terms of business, you also have the right to walk away.
Also, if they do collect information, then they will likely be subject to the Data Protection act.
Sorry, can't translate this for England ( but I'd be surprised if it's much different. )
Lets think about it.. the signal runs over POTS cable for few km and then through your super cable for 5m and you think it makes a difference? Would you like some super good ofc, silver plated, directional crystal speaker cable for your hifi? I can do a good price.
It is not a legal obligation to submit your name and address unless its a TV or associated apperatus that requires them to ask for it. Personally I give a blag name and address if buying such apperatus.
you could say the same about TV/SAT cable after all the signal has travelled tens miles for terrestrial tv or 20000ish miles from the transmitter on nothing but air,why bother with fancy screened coax cable ?
You think about it before commenting, or better still, go and read about EMC issues with DSL services.
You didn't read the details which explained that the cable run is together with a bunch of network cables which are unscreened. While they are twisted pair, there is a fair amount of radiated interference close to the cables because balance is not necessarily very good
This is a very different situation to the telco cables from the exchange where the induced interference is predominantly common mode. The DSL modem will take care of that. In the home it's a different story because there are many interference sources.
The RF signal levels at the upper end of the DSL range (1MHz or 2MHz) are at very low level and subject to all kinds of interference.
I set up tests with the router close to the phone entry point and obtained once set of figures.
I then installed it in its final location and used a cheap bell wire type of lead of the type you suggest. Several dBs went off of the CNR and after a while the DSLAM had reduced the operational speed by about
500k. When there is only 2.5-3Mbit to begin with, this is significant.
On replacing the modem cable with the screened one, the figures returned to the original values.
Obviously the screened cable doesn't improve the figures compared to when the signal enters the house. It certainly makes a difference to whether or not there is further degradation.
Assuming normal 10/100 ethernet equipment switches and associated why should the balance not be very good. We've run this over locations full of high RF energy, in fact we did one the other week 110 meters long underground in a cable duct , up inside a building out on to a roof up a mast along with around 12 other cables mains and co-ax and works fine!...
Even after going perhaps some miles on overheads?..
There's ISDN and other services, other digital equipment and goodness knows what. I was not about to pull it all apart.
Oh I'm sure. As you know, RF can be fickle stuff and problems are not always as a result of high energy.
This is all underground.
Interference is also about the interfering source and its location relative to the point of sensitivity.
No at the end of 5m of cable run with the others.
Some people might think otherwise, so I wanted to be clear.
Many years ago, I designed frequency synthesisers for mobile radio equipment. This was in the days when they had to be designed in discrete logic using 3 or 4 different logic families rather than all coming on a chip. All of this sat with a limited power source right next to a sensitive HF receiver front end.
Getting the interference behaviour to acceptable levels on that was a "challenge", involving a variety of different techniques including selection of different vendor components that were allegedly equivalents. They weren't.
This was a learning exercise in how and why sometimes screening and grounding helps and sometimes not (e.g. a different interference mode is invoked.
Ergo, I never assume anything where RF is concerned. In this DSL instance, the CNR had been made worse by use of a conventional cable and it was affecting performance. I don't have the opportunity to connect a spectrum analyser up to it. The results reported by the Alcatel chip set in the router are reasonably detailed, although obviously its view of life. Equally that is valid because it's that that counts in terms of the performance.
In this case I do not have the opportunity to run the cable a different way - which would probably also work. An expenditure of £3 produces a reliable solution, and that's what actually matters.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.