I broke the main fuse seal

[morqthana]

do you weigh all the items you buy from supermarkets/wherever?

I have to confess that for things not sold by weight (e.g. packs of fruit or veg, or individual items) I will take a few off to the scales to check them. Sometimes the differences in weight can be significant.

If when weighing out something that was sold by weight, to print a price sticker, someone was presented with a choice of, say, £1/kg or £1.30/kg for the same product, I think it unlikely they'd pick £1.30.

I also photograph special offer prices on shelf-edge labels and then check the receipt before leaving the store. Trust me - it really is the case that you don't get the offer price often enough for that to be a good idea, especially when it's £2-3 off a bottle of wine.

 

[morqthana]

Taking a fuse out under no load is pretty safe in my opinion...

Unless the whole thing disintegrates in your hand.

 

[pete01]

Unless the whole thing disintegrates in your hand.

Or a helicopter flies through the window and kills you?

I've pulled loads out, if it looks or feels in bad condition don't do it.....simples...

 

[JohnW2]

ESQCR

Indeed. As I recently wrote, ESQCR probably brings these matters into (potentially 'criminal') law, even if nothing else does ....

I think you'll find that the contracts (which we are all deemed to have seen {by using their electricity}, even though most haven't!) cross-refer to DNO regulations, not to mention ESQCR (which is 'law').

25.—(1) No person shall make or alter a connection from a distributor’s network to a consumer’s installation, a street electrical fixture or to another distributor’s network without that distributor’s consent, unless such consent has been unreasonably withheld.

Even if that doesn't catch removing the fuse. replacing it is making a connection.

Indeed so, provided that the cutout is regarded as part of the "network" (which I suspect it may).

 

[JohnW2]

Unless the whole thing disintegrates in your hand.

True, but I think the risk of that is minimised if one heeds ...

Quite so - and provided one knows what sort of cutouts 'to go nowhere near' (which may also be true of DNO personnel!), an awful lot safer than doing things with live tails!

 

[JohnW2]

I have to confess that for things not sold by weight (e.g. packs of fruit or veg, or individual items) I will take a few off to the scales to check them. Sometimes the differences in weight can be significant.

Fair enough - but if they're not being sold by weight, what are you actually 'checking'? If you're interest in merely in larger, or greater numbers of, items of fruit/veg, that's surely just a matter for your eyes, and your personal preferences, isn't it?

If when weighing out something that was sold by weight, to print a price sticker, someone was presented with a choice of, say, £1/kg or £1.30/kg for the same product, I think it unlikely they'd pick £1.30.

I'm not sure what you mean by "presented with a choice of ...".

I also photograph special offer prices on shelf-edge labels and then check the receipt before leaving the store. Trust me - it really is the case that you don't get the offer price often enough for that to be a good idea, especially when it's £2-3 off a bottle of wine.

I can believe what you say, but I don't think many of us would go to those lengths to check

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Indeed, if there were absolutely no risk to their personnel, then nor would there be any risk to anyone else ('competent') who did it.

That's why they are supposed to wear all that PPE.

 

[JohnW2]

That's why they are supposed to wear all that PPE.

I've never actually seen anyone wearing any more PPE than gloves (and very often not even that) when pulling a standard cutout fuse.

However, anyone doing it (whether DNO personnel or otherwise) is free to wear as much PPE (and as 'robust' PPE) as they feel appropriate or necessary.

 

[morqthana]

Fair enough - but if they're not being sold by weight, what are you actually 'checking'?

The weight of a pack/bag/box of whatevers, where the weight varies but the price does not.

If you're interest in merely in larger, or greater numbers of, items of fruit/veg, that's surely just a matter for your eyes, and your personal preferences, isn't it?

I'm not sure it's a strange personal preference to prefer to get 280g of tomatoes for £X than 250g. Nor am I sure that many people could tell the difference between the two weights by eye, or even by hefting.

I don't obsess over it - if time is tight I don't bother, and I don't lug entire cratefulls over to the scales, but if it's only a few steps from the shelf to the scales, why not pick up 2 or 3 packs of mushrooms and see which is best value?

I'm not sure what you mean by "presented with a choice of ...".

It's an equivalent example. If a bag of spuds is £1.30 and is nominally 1kg, but you have the reasonable option to pick out a bag which weighs 1.3kg, and you choose not to take it, then you are indeed choosing to pay more for your spuds than you have to.

You're being presented with a choice of bags of potatoes, all at the same price, and being provided with a handy way to easily find which bag (out of a few random samples) has the lowest (and therefore the highest) price per-unit-of-weight.

Were they sold by weight, and you were given a choice of price per-unit-of-weight you wouldn't tap the touch screen to pick the highest price, so why do nothing to avoid picking the lowest weight of a fixed price item?

I can believe what you say, but I don't think many of us would go to those lengths to check

The shop would not tolerate the converse. If there was a pack of beer on the shelf at £3 and you decided to just take it, and not pay them their £3, they would be, to say the least, aggrieved.

So why let them tell you that a bottle of wine is £9 but charge you £12 for it?

 

[JohnW2]

The weight of a pack/bag/box of whatevers, where the weight varies but the price does not. ... I'm not sure it's a strange personal preference to prefer to get 280g of tomatoes for £X than 250g. Nor am I sure that many people could tell the difference between the two weights by eye, or even by hefting. ... I don't obsess over it - if time is tight I don't bother, and I don't lug entire cratefulls over to the scales, but if it's only a few steps from the shelf to the scales, why not pick up 2 or 3 packs of mushrooms and see which is best value?

Fair enough and my apologies, because I clearly misinterpreted what you were saying ....

... you spoke of items which were 'not sold by weight', which is common for (amongst many other things) larger items of fruit/veg sold 'singly' (e.g. cabbages, cauliflowers, cucumbers, melons, pineapples etc. etc.) or sold in packs by number, not weight, (e.g. "3 peppers/onions", "2 avocados" etc.).

Perhaps without thinking enough, I interpreted that as meaning that you were talking about a situation in which the buyer (i.e. you) 'accepted' the fact that the item was not sold by weight.

However, it is now clear that you were talking about a situation in which, although it was not being sold "by weight", you nevertheless wanted to maximise the weight/cost of what you were buying. In that case, you obviously would (as you have implied) need an estimate of the weight (or, at least, 'size'). Whilst I suspect that most people would regard an estimate based on eyeballing or 'lifting' to be accurate enough, if one wanted more accuracy than that, then would obviously have to resort to scales/whatever.

We therefore don't disagree in principle, although I don't think I would personally bother to go as far as actually weighing the products.

 

[ebee]

I also photograph special offer prices on shelf-edge labels and then check the receipt before leaving the store. Trust me - it really is the case that you don't get the offer price often enough for that to be a good idea, especially when it's £2-3 off a bottle of wine.

I can believe what you say, but I don't think many of us would go to those lengths to check

Most would not, but many, OK then quite a few would, I live with one.

If "bargains" are not bargains it gets spotted almost always.
If offers on shelves do not show at the till she is straight on it, including the supermarket where she works.
She has been known to hold up several people behind her at the till until it gets resolved properly, quite a few times.

The majority accept what they see on the shelf, some double check at the till, the minority but not an extremely small one, more than 10% of folk I would guess at (unscientifically)

 

[JohnW2]

I can believe what you say, but I don't think many of us would go to those lengths to check

Indeed. As you will have seen, I made the same observation.

Returning to the question of goods sold 'not by weight' ... if, for whatever reason, one specifically wants/need a small/light or large/heavier product, then one obviously has to select an appropriate item - and if the need is for a small/light one, then they will get 'poor value for money' (cost per weight) if the item is not priced 'per weight'.

However, that's a rare situation. Much more commonly people will tend to just 'pick one up' (often essentially 'at random').

One imagines that when items are not 'sold by weight', the 'fixed price-per-item' is based upon the average weight of the products. If people buy such products regularly, if they selected items (of varying size/weight) 'at random' then, probability theory being what it is, in the long run they would all have got the same 'value for money' (cost per weight), since they would all, have (over time) paid a total amount appropriate for the total weight of products they had purchased.

However, if, rather than choosing items at random, some people (like morqthana) deliberately seek out the larger/heavier products which represent better 'value for money', then their gain (in terms of 'value for money') is at the cost of those who don't do that - since those others will thereby be more likely to buy smaller/lighter products which represent less 'value for money'. I suppose the question then arises as to how 'fair' (or maybe, even, 'moral'!) it is for those who can be bothered to take morqthana's approach to effectively be 'subsidised' by those who whop "can't be bothered"!

Kind Regards, John

 

[ebee]

how 'fair' (or maybe, even, 'moral'!) it is for those who can be bothered to take morqthana's approach to effectively be 'subsidised' by those who whop "can't be bothered"!

or perhaps justice for the ones who can be bothered?

 

[JohnW2]

or perhaps justice for the ones who can be bothered?

Yes, I imagined that someone would say that, and I suppose that can be argued. However, when something is designed to be reasonably fair 'on average', I'm not sure how acceptable it is for people to do things to make themselves 'better than average' (at the cost of others).

A similar situation exists with (the millions of) products sold by weight or volume. These days, the weight or volume is defined statsistically (the "e" symbol next to the weight/volume, rather than the "not less than..." labelling of days of old (which was burdensome on suppliers, and lead to things like the "bakers dozen"). With the 'statistical' labelling, the stated weight/volume is the expected 'average' over many examples of the product - and that means that, over multiple purchases ('at random') most people will end up with an average close to the specified weight/volume, even though some individual products will be below or above that figure.

However, if someone takes a trolley-full of packets of corn flakes along to the scales and then buys only those which, by chance, had appreciably greater weight than the average, then they would end up with more cornflakes for their money than would others who had not done that selection, since the latter would be left with more of the 'below average' weight ones to choose from - i.e. again, those latter people would be 'subsidising' those who had 'bothered' to do all the weighing - and I again would ask how 'fair' that is

Kind Regards, John