Analysis Topic: Consumer Watch
The analysis published under this topic are as follows.Thursday, December 07, 2017
B&M Stores Cheap Products Review - £4 Wooden Shoe Rack / ConsumerWatch / Shopping
BM Stores tops the list of where to shop for a bargai with its low cost products that tend to be significnalty cheaper than similar producuts at the more traditional retailers. So in this video we take a look at a typical low cost product, a self assembly wooden shoe rack that costs just £4! See whether we grabbed ourselves a bargain or if it proved to be a false economy.
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Friday, December 01, 2017
Online Accounts Risks, One of Largest Brokerages Halts Online Trading After “Glitch” / ConsumerWatch / Cyber Crime
– ‘Technical issue’ at Fidelity temporarily blocks access to online accounts and halts online trading
– Fidelity is 3rd largest brokerage by client assets: $1.7 trillion at the end of 2016
– NatWest, RBS, Ulster Bank have experienced online banking “issues” in November
– Clients left without access to funds & failed payments & little to no recourse
– Social media exposing the banks’ and online trading platforms’ shortcomings
– Reminder that online accounts can be rendered non-viable and vulnerability of absolute dependence and digital cash, digital gold etc
Editor: Mark O’Byrne
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Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Nabru Sofa Condition After 3 and 5 Years of Use Long Term Review / ConsumerWatch / Reviews
It's now 5 full years since we bought and assembled a large 7 seater corner Nabru sofa, so find out what to expect condition wise after relatively light use, i.e. what are the Nabru sofa's strength and weaknesses after a number of years as we compare the condition at the 3 and 5 year marks.
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Sunday, November 26, 2017
Sky Box Planner Rebuild Fix Technical Fault 7 (33) To Try and Fix Hard Drive Error / ConsumerWatch / How to Guides
If you suddenly get the technical fault 7 (33) or (30) error messages on your recordings, usually listed as partially recorded, which basically means the hard drive in your sky box is dieing that manifests itself in stuttering, freezing recordings that are near impossible to lost. However all is not lost because you can buy yourself some time to decide what to do next, upgrade or buy a replacement box as this video illustrates.
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Thursday, November 02, 2017
Fireworks Dangers Safety Tips for Kids, School Children on Guy Fawkes Bonfire Night 2017 / ConsumerWatch / Health and Safety
It's going to be bonfire night again soon and already groups of teens can be seen roaming the streets letting off fireworks in all directions. So here is a timely reminder that fireworks can be VERY DANGEROUS if not handled correctly even for adults, which is why children should never handle fireworks!
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Thursday, October 26, 2017
Amazon Frustration Free Packaging Memory SD Cards vs Retail Packaging / ConsumerWatch / Amazon
Here's a test to see what's the difference when buying memory SD cards from Amazon of the difference between frustration free packaging and normal packaging. As in this test purchase from Amazon we bought 2 SanDisk Micro SD cards.
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Saturday, October 21, 2017
Emerging Megatrends Hurting Consumers / ConsumerWatch / Shopping
I think Dilbert is hilarious. The comic strip’s creator, Scott Adams, has incredible insight into everyday life.More than a decade ago, he showed the cartoon’s title character in a grocery store. A clerk asked Dilbert, a white-collar, micromanaged engineer by day, if he wanted to sign up for the store’s loyalty card so he could save on purchases.
His reply went something like this: “So you want my personal information, which you’ll then use to track me and market to me, and in return I get the manufacturers’ rebates that I’ve always received? And if I don’t give you my data, then you keep the money?”
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Thursday, October 19, 2017
Virgin Media Broadband Down, Catastrophic UK Wide Failure! / ConsumerWatch / ISP's
Up until a month ago you would have found me singing the praises of Virgin Media broadband for being by far the fastest and most reliable service providers out there, definitely many times better than the garbage service offered by BT and those that rely on the BT network. But unfortunately over the past month the reliability of Virgin Media's broadband service has been diminishing in reliability. It started off with being down for a couple of hours every other day to becoming a near daily occurrence that come around 4pm to 5pm the network would go down for a few hours.
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Tuesday, October 17, 2017
How I Broke My Hand on Alton Towers Dangerous Rides! / ConsumerWatch / Theme Parks
It's SCAREFEST October at Alton Towers again when Britain's most popular theme parks stays open until late, well past nightfall. Just becareful on the rides especially in the dark because it is very easy to get injured if one lets ones guard down. For instance even going into a ride such as the HEX could prove dangerous as was my experience, going in all smiles, coming out with a fractured hand!
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Monday, October 16, 2017
SCAREFEST 2017 - Take Care on Alton Towers Dangerous Rides! / ConsumerWatch / Theme Parks
It's SCAREFEST October at Alton Towers again when Britain's most popular theme parks stays open LATE, well past nightfall. Just becareful on the rides especially in the dark because it is very easy to get injured if one lets ones guard down. For instance even going into a ride such as the HEX could prove dangerous. Of course not on par with the catastrophic failure of the Alton Towers SMILER ride a few years ago. But nevertheless injuries sustained can ruin the day and take several weeks to recover from as this video illustrates.
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Sunday, October 08, 2017
PassMark Bench Mark of OVERCLOCKERS UK Custom Built Gaming PC (5) / ConsumerWatch / Technology
Just how well built are custom built gaming PC's by OverClockers UK. For whilst the component specs on paper may be great and the machine looks all spanking brand new on delivery. However the only real test is how the PC performs. Where the starting point for such evaluation is to run a bench marking software on the system so as to reveal any bottlenecks due to a poorly built PC, i.e. cutting corners on internal cabling etc. So here with the system up and running for the first time having booted into Windows 10 we ran the popular PassMark benchmarking software.
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Tuesday, October 03, 2017
Used Car Buying From UK Dealer Top Tips, CarMotion.co.uk Real Customer Experience / ConsumerWatch / How to Guides
Here are my top tips for buying a used car from a UK dealer based on experience and lessons learned from my last purchase from CarMotion.co.uk that proved valuable in terms of lessons learned for next time, mistakes I don't intend on repeating for my next purchase of a USED car in the region of between £20k to £30k.Read full article... Read full article...
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Why Walkers Crisps Pay Packet Promotion is RUBBISH! / ConsumerWatch / Freebies and Comps
I bet most of you who have been buying hundreds of packets of walkers crisps trying to win from £5 upwards in their pay packet promotion will not have had any success. So here we stand having bought near 600 packs of crisps and with a big fat zero of wins, which brings us to the conclusion that this promotion is RUBBISH! About as good as their 2016 promo for winning 1 of 20,000 holidays that only resulted in about 800 holidays being won. And so I suspect we will see the same for Walkers Pay Packet promotion i.e. the total won is nowhere near the £2 million promoted prize fund. Anyway we shall see, but in our experience this walkers promotion is rubbish, so you should stop wasting your time and money in the remaining weeks because your not going to win anything!
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Tuesday, May 16, 2017
Walkers Crisps Pay Packet Cheats, Shoplifters and Staff Conning Customers / ConsumerWatch / Freebies and Comps
Unfortunately the Walkers Crisps Instant Cash Win Pay Packet £2 million promotion is bringing out the worst in people who would normally be law abiding. It looks like the temptation to cheat, steal and con ordinary shoppers is proving too great. From shoplifters ripping open multi-packs in stores to super market staff rather than working spending their time feeling packets for the fiver sachets, which amounts to conning customers into buying packs of crisps that have already been processed of winning fivers by members of staff!
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Friday, May 12, 2017
Walkers Pay Packet Instant Win Morrisons 17% Price Cut After 50% Price Hike! / ConsumerWatch / Shopping
It looks like Morrisons cunning plan of hiking the price of Walkers crisps multi-packs by 50% to ride on the coat tails of Walkers latest Pay Packet £5 to £28k instant win promotion has FAILED. As Morrisons has now cut the price of Walkers crisps multi-packs from £1.50 to £1.25 though barely 3 weeks ago they were being sold for £1. Find out more in our latest video in the Walkers crisps saga.
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Monday, May 08, 2017
Tesco Crisis - Dangerous Finger Cutting Trolleys Customer Warning Alert! / ConsumerWatch / Tesco
Tesco customers are not only having to watch out for sharp practices whilst shopping such as fake shelf prices that don't convert at the checkouts as the February 2017 BBC Investigation revealed, but also have to watch out for sharp pieces of metal sticking out from trolleys that can result in cut fingers as this unlucky customer experienced (Sheffield).
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Sunday, May 07, 2017
Walkers Crisps Pay Packet Instant Win Odds of Winning a Prize / ConsumerWatch / Freebies and Comps
The Walkers Crisps pay packet promotion has now been running for over a month, and so far we have bought over 200 packets of crisps but won no prizes. So we decided to calculate the odds of winning the prizes on offer that range from £28k to £5. So check out our odds analysis so that you are fully aware of how likely you are to win a cash prize.
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Friday, April 28, 2017
Walkers Pay Packet Instant Win Crisps 50% Price Hike! Morrisons / ConsumerWatch / Freebies and Comps
It looks like some of the major super markets such as Morrisons are attempting to capitalise on Walkers crisps latest promotion of instantly winning between £5 and £28k, by hiking the price of at least the multi-packs by 50% within a couple of weeks of the start the promotion. So instead of a walkers 6 pack costing £1 as they were a couple of weeks ago, they now cost £1.50. What's the odds they will soon be hiked once more to £2?
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Friday, April 28, 2017
How Morrisons Sells 120ml of Frozen Water for £1 / ConsumerWatch / Retail Sector
Find out how Morrisons is able to pull of a miracle, one of being able to sell about 120ml of frozen water to their customers for £1! The super market giants are always playing a game of trying to get one up on their customers. You all probably know about 'shrinkflation', the ever shrinking contents whilst the prices stay the same or even rise. Then there is the dropping the number of items in multi packs, any devious trick in the book is being pulled to get one over their customers, a couple of months ago it was the BBC revealing Tesco's fake shelf prices that fail to convert at the checkouts.
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Tuesday, April 25, 2017
Morrisons Frozen Fish 1/3rd Frozen Water? / ConsumerWatch / Retail Sector
The super market giants are playing their customers for fools, from Shrinkflation to dropping the number of items in multi packs, any devious trick in the book is being pulled to get one over their customers, a couple of months ago it was the BBC revealing Tesco's fake shelf prices that fail to convert at the checkouts. Whilst in this video test reveals that Morrisons frozen fish are actually 1/3rd frozen water! Which makes a mockery of the price labels when comparing store brands with the better quality brands such as Birds eye.
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