I’ve always had a soft spot for Viking Direct. As a child I drooled over the monthly catalogues admiring the various office equipment and stationary as if it was a toy catalogue.
Just like the Remington Company Viking Direct then had a grey haired spokesman. Mr Irwin Helford. Under his tenure Viking sought to increase its customer base and mailed catalogues to potential customers who had never ordered from the company, it was not junk mail as it had genuinely interesting content. Irwin was an usual first name in the UK/Ireland so he was referred to by an initial, but this gave him more importance in my eyes. His distinguished appearance was a rubber stamp of quality, and consistency.
As time went on Viking grew and now is part of the Office Depot group and I Helford has aged and no can longer be seen endorsing products in the catalogues.
Moving onto the crux of this article you are probably wondering why I use the emotive word “suck” in the title. Well pay attention 007. As you will know most goods bought in the Ireland come with a 12 month warranty covering bad workmanship. It doesn’t cover accidents caused by a purchasers butterfingers or misuse. If such coverage is required then an optional warranty can be bought on most big ticket items (i.e. flat screen TVs, washing machines and so on).
Consumables should never have warranties. But I am sorry to have just learned that on the viking direct website a ream of blank paper has a warranty, as does a box of paperclip, and this is not a free 12 month warranty, it is instead an itemised and unavoidable warranty charged at 2% of the items price. Viking call it “Extra Protection Plus” but I would prefer to borrow use the lexicon of the Irish Government and refer to it as a levy.
The levy is not removable during online purchasing. It only appears at the final stage, and we all know that by that time the potential customer has put so much effort into choosing his exact products at his exact price that he will be inclined to press “order” regardless of any minor additional charge. This is already the case on Airline websites where a variable “fuel surcharge” appears. Viking must realise this because if one instead opts for a fax order form the name/address field is not pre-populated,so the form is too time consuming compared with purchasing online.
The levy extends the warranty to cover accidental damage. So, I presume if I accidentally drop my ream of paper and it somehow tears in half I will be covered. Does it also cover bad print jobs, I mean all those sheets of paper that I throw away because of typos, could I send them back to viking for a refund? Indeed could I send them my a4 junk maik, no that would be wrong, very wrong. I don’t mind upselling, in McDonalds the customer is always asked “and would you like extra fries with that”, but what I do not like is non-optional, sneaky extras.
You have been warned!
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