How to buy a TV

Don't laugh. It's not as easy as it seems.

After 15 years of steady use, our 25" Philips TV has finally been laid to rest. So I wandered round the retailers' web sites in search of a new one: CRT, 15-year life, nothing fancy.

The following don't get a link, because their sites are lousy: Euronics/Prolar (under construction for 3 years, to my knowledge), MediaMarkt, Carrefour and Jumbo.

That left Fnac (where the site is poor, very slow), Radio Popular, where I drew a blank, and Worten, which actually had a conventional TV for sale!

Just to be on the safe side, I wandered along to Prolar, where the salesman obligingly told me that Plasma and LCD TV's are not suitable for locations where they are always on - that rules out any house with kids, as far as I can tell. It was a pity he only had top-end Sony conventional TV's, complete with stand.

So it was off to the Colombo shopping centre, to Worten, where the model from the web page was in stock. The only difficulties were persuading the salesman that I wanted to take the TV away, not have it delivered, and persuading the kids that we did not need to take plasma replacements for the 14" models that have not broken down yet.

So it was right product, right price, right publicity. Not really a surprise that Belmiro de Azevedo is loaded.