Tesco Direct Delivers (mostly....)

Having a few spare bob in the bank, we decided to order a new tele and some living room furniture - and doing a search it looked as though the best buy coupled with the range of furniture we wanted was from Tesco .

So we had our self assembly furniture and 32" LCD television delivered, on time, as promissed. They even rang before delivery to make sure we were in.

First the furniture : if you are familiar with Ikea stuff then this is almost identical, perhaps slightly better quality, and certainly better instructions! My biggest concern with this type of furniture (Ikea Tesco or anyone elses) is the use of a single bit of re-enfororced cardboard nailed to the back to maintian the 'squareness' of the units. No complaints. Happy bunny.
Now the television - we went with a Bush 32inch with inbuilt Freeview - it's got some incredible model number IDLCD32TV22HD ! Great picture, too many features to comprehend quickly, good (but not great) sound - excellent connectivity. Strange that the main power button is on the back - you have to fiddle round the back or leave it on standby - bad design there chaps. The problem - there has to be one - was the remote control dying on me while I was setting it up. I could get many of the functions to work with an old Bush CRT remote, so it was definately the remote, not the set. So - I rang up Tesco - first mistake, big mistake! They offered me a refund of £20 or an exchange television - but they couldn't swap out the remote; only when I got assertive did I get the advice that I should have had in the first place - and I should have tumbled before I picked the phone up - to ring Bush directly. (Excellent manager on the phone at Tesco - bloke called Silas - who calmed me down a treat, and told me what I needed).
Bush's phone number was not that on the instruction book, but hey-ho! I spoke to a very nice young lady (possibly in Newcastle) who offered to send me a new remote, which I received two days later as promissed. This didn't work either - so I rang bush back, and got an Indian call centre this time (how does that work?) - who was flippin' useless - all she wanted to do was to send me another remote. Only when I asked if there was a way of resetting the remote and the TV was I given that info - for the remote you hold the left, right, down and 1 buttons down together for 4 seconds - this sorted the remote out, and now its' fine. (Before you ask- that did not cure the original broken remote!).
To reset the TV apparently you leave it unplugged for 30 minutes and that does the trick.
So great TV, great service from Tesco Direct delivery people, mixed service from Tesco Direct support, and Bush.
My faithful Phillips SBC RU 865 universal remote copied the codes off the Bush remote fine.

The other new toy is a Bush 2500 amplifier from Richer Sounds. Great price, easy to operate, does what it should. The only irritating thing is that the display on the front should have an option to change the source name, because I don't have a DAB radio attached, but I do have a satellite tuner, for example.

Don't recognise the living room now though!!