Phew, I’ve just had the nearest to a close shave in the car in a long time. I drove slowly up to a T-intersection on my well known path to the supermarkets. I came to an almost-stop, looked right then looked left, and in the time I was looking left, a car came from my right at probably only 30-40Km/h in a 50Km/hr zone, but I didn’t see him, or her, or it. My car was still slowly rolling forward and I had to slam on the brakes. It left me shaken. I’ve never had an accident in 55 years of driving and I don’t want to blemish my record before I go.

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Don’t shop at Woolworths! If you do, check your receipt very carefully. There are so many pricing errors, and they are always in Woolworths favour. Overcharging, in other words.

For more than a decade I’ve been noticing this. It’s usually when items are reduced, on special. You’ll pick up the item, but after you go through the checkout you’ll find the reduction has not been applied. Or an item has a reduction sticker on it, but the barcode scanner scans the original barcode and doesn’t see the reduced price.

I will make the statement: you will not get through a Woolworths grocery shopping trip without there being a pricing error, and in Woolworths favour! I’m sick and tired of it. It’s mainly Woolworths, although my local IGA does it to a lesser extent (maybe because I don’t shop there often because they have this problem, alongside their higher prices).

The latest is that yesterday I bought a bottle of Wolf Blass Chardonnay Pinot Noir Sparkling from the cold cabinet at Butler for $7. Yeah, classy eh?

When I got home, I found I’d been charged $12 which was the price on the edge of the ordinary shelves.

Today I  went back there, armed with a photo of my bottle on my phone to compare, and found I was right, the price was $7. I called a guy over and pointed it out, with my receipt. He didn’t say anything but went back to the counter and talked with another guy there. Then he came back and had a closer look at the $7 yellow price tag, went back to his mate and had another talk, then beckoned me over and just said, “Got your card with you, mate?” No apology, no friendliness, just that.

After I got my refund of $5 (nearly the price of the bottle and possibly the cost of driving there!), the big guy said “Enjoy the rest of your day.” I replied, above the noise of someone being reprimanded for going the wrong way around the counters, “For a long time, I have found I cannot get through a Woolies shop without there being a pricing error. This is the latest one.” The guy still didn’t apologise, he just shrugged.

Dammit, I’m tired of this. I’ve been noticing this since my Trigg/Karrinyup days when Woolies was my only real choice.

In contrast, Coles are exemplary. The difference is really noticeable. I usually check my till receipt when I get home but very rarely do I find an error, so rarely that I don’t need to check until I get home. If I have to shop at Woolies, I always sit down outside and check the receipt before I leave. This is atrocious. Sometimes I wonder if it’s deliberate. It’s a good way to keep the profits up.

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No doubt some people will call me a fool for allowing it, but I have Google Maps Timeline turned on in my phone. It logs where you go each month, or where your phone goes anyway, and you get a monthly report. I assume Google wants this information so it can sell it to marketers. I don’t particularly care, but I don’t go anywhere that I’d be embarrassed about either. If I were visiting brothels I’d be sure to turn it off, or carry a “burn phone” as they call them, a simple cheap pre-paid that you could afford to ditch if you had to. But anyway, I have nothing to hide and I don’t care if Google knows. Besides, I find the reports interesting.

The one today shows where I went each month and I can compare them Here’s March, before COVID became a big thing, fairly wide ranging:

But here’s April, when the COVID “lockdown” was in full swing:

It shows I only went within 5Km of my house in that month.

Here’s something that interested me – all my Bali travels since I installed the app and turned it on, about July 2017 I think:

There are stats on the left which tell me where I was on what dates too.

Here’s one small trip during my stay in Sanur in May last year. It was down to the Beach Shack restaurant at Semawang Beach (great place!) on Monday 27 May:

And a local drive on Wednesday 22 May. I also had lunch at the 104 Bar & Grill, a great Club Sandwich:

By the way, that Club Sandwich, with a lime juice, cost a bit over $12. That’s a Perth price. Bali is not cheap any more, not in Kuta/Sanur, anyway.

As I said, some people will say I’m foolish but I’m interested in this information about myself.

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I also went to Aldi this afternoon, to buy their coffee pods. I like their Expressi coffee enough to make the trip. Ten pods for $6, not too bad.

I also had to return a “bottle bag”, a good idea but it didn’t work. It’s a soft-ish bottle sized bag with sides that freeze in your freezer to keep a wine bottle cold. But the first time I tried to use it, I found the bag was frozen so solid that I could hardly get the bottle in, and when I finally got it in as far as I could, the neck stood out so I couldn’t close the zipped top. Useless. There were no quibbles about the refund, $14.99.

But it’s fatal – I intended just this, and to buy some beer, but fell for a wet-&-dry vacuum powered by a 20V Li-ion battery for $39.99. It’s not a toy, it’s quite substantial enough to do a job, but small enough that I’ll pick it up to do a job, where I wouldn’t get my full sized Miele vacuum out with its cord.

You don’t get a battery with it, of course, but I have three batteries to fit now, having two other tools in that range. Very clever – when battery driven power tools became the thing, then when you choose a tool, you buy into that maker’s battery system and one maker’s battery does not fit another maker’s power tool. So you tend to get locked in. As I said, very clever. Same voltage, but physically different connections.

A guy should make a universal adapter so that any battery can be used with any tool, say Ozito battery on Makita tool, or Bosch battery on Milwaukee tool. No doubt the lawyers would be issuing threats very quickly.