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Shopping fun in the 1950s!

April 10, 2023

jimpageadmin Adventures as a customer!, Family Fun, Food, Interesting Places, Old Jobs Leave a comment

Since opening in 1930, Publix Supermarkets have been a Florida favorite. Shopping there is still a pleasure, and many of us worked there in our high-school days and beyond!

First Publix in Winter Haven, Florida, 1930.

Typical Publix in the late 1950s.

Just for fun, AND NOT FOR CURRENT-DAY PRICING, here’s a Publix ad from September, 1956. For those who may never have seen it before, the “C” after the price indicates “cents,” so a pack of hot dogs priced at 39c meant they cost thirty-nine cents! Easy and fun, right?

And, for those unfamiliar with the concept, S&H Green Stamps were a neat little freebie dispensed at the checkout based on your purchase total; so many stamps per dollar spent. You pasted those Green Stamps in a little booklet and redeemed them for nifty household items. I’m still using the drill I “bought” with Green Stamps back in 1968! Not only Publix gave these to customers; so did gas stations and other stores. There were a few different kinds of stamps, too. I remember Top-Value stamps. But S&H Green Stamps were the biggies.

Lick those stamps, paste ’em in a book, and buy a lamp or a TV set!

PRICES ARE NOT IN EFFECT TODAY!

Why have you gone, Joe Dimaggio, and take this stuff with you!!!

February 10, 2023

jimpageadmin Adventures as a customer!, Art, MYSTERIES!!!, Strange and Pointless, Weird Leave a comment

Slip on these anti-static slippers and turn the temp down; these computers run hot! Plug into an orange outlet and let’s welcome the day by saying goodbye to some old friends:

Goodbye to QuarkXPress, Aldus Freehand, Pagemaker, WordPerfect, Word Star, Ventura Publisher, Harvard Graphics, Corel Draw, Digital Darkroom, ColorStudio, ImageStudio, Aldus Persuation, Lotus 123,Lotus Symphony, StuffIt . . .

And to our old pals, Digital Nation, Apple eVillage, and Compuserve.

It’s been fun, floppy disks, Winchester drives, Zip disks, SyQuest disks, Jaz disks.

I still have my Mac Portable but I waved bye-bye to my Apple IIe, my Apple Newton, my Apple Lisa, and my Timex/Sinclair! I never could afford the Next!!!

My wife made my toss the little aquarium I made from my original Mac after our second replacement beta fish died

Whirlpool makes me feel like a whirled-class fool!

February 8, 2023

jimpageadmin Adventures as a customer!, Family Fun, Weird Leave a comment

In our former home in Maryland, the Kenmore dishwasher we had was amazing. We replaced certain minor parts in it, like a rack element or a water-spinning arm, but the appliance was over 25 years old and worked well, day in and day out. We could find the parts needing replacement ourselves online and could do the repairs when needed.

The folks who bought our home may still be using that Kenmore dishwasher for all I know.

In our new Florida home, we replaced our dishwasher at the end of November, 2021 with a Whirlpool unit from Loew’s. It got pretty good reviews, it fit the space, and it was white, like our other appliances. We couldn’t find a suitable Kenmore.

The Whirlpool dishwasher cost $496.44 and the install was an additional $175.00.

This new Whirlpool dishwasher has never seemed as good as our old Kenmore, or the Frigidaire dishwasher it replaced. The Whirlpool is noisy, finicky, and the cleaning cycles were very long. Once the machine did its thing, it seemed that the dishes weren’t really clean.

A week or so ago it finally stopped working at all. One month after the warranty expired! Seems like a tired old punchline, doesn’t it?

The repair (replacing the motor) cost us $454.75, which was 91.6% of the purchase price!

So far, so bad. But here’s where it gets good: The very next day after the repair, I got an email from Lowe’s Protection Plus, with this banner promoting an extended warranty on this dishwasher!

As Lincoln used to say, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. But don’t bother to ask me if I’ll ever buy a Whirlpool product again.

Here’s some parting advice to Whirlpool:

Don’t let your customers be in charge of your quality control. They already control your reputation.

UPDATE: 4/3/2023: Now the circuit or control board on this POS Whirlpool dishwasher has failed, and will cost $300 to fix. No. We will replace it with a new GE dishwasher and pay $30 to have this Whirlpool hauled off.

I can’t believe a once-great company now sells products this bad. WOW! And we are still getting emails from Loew’s asking if we want to extend the warranty on this unit.