Friday, August 28, 2009

Mail Order Madness

Mail Order was a big deal when I was a kid. Shopping was limited in the small towns nearby and trips to the city (Saskatoon and North Battleford) were few and far between. Eaton's and Simpson's were the source of all sorts of good things - clothes, household goods, tools, bikes and toys. Oh the excitement when boxes arrived at the Cavell Post Office which my aunt ran at the time.

Tanya has discovered the joy of on-line shopping. Interflora is a Dutch mail order company with retail outlets in several Ukrainian cities as well. Best of both worlds. Internet orders go to the closest retail outlet (in Dnipropetrovsk in our case). Tanya's order this spring had some problems, she chewed out the manager in Dnipro and replacements arrived in the mail.

Today she picked up a package of clothes, two tops and two pairs of mix and match PJ's that she ordered from a Slovakian company. PJ's were exactly what she wanted. Tops not so. But since there doesn't appear to be a return policy, she has already found new homes for them.

She is also having fun with the Foreign Exchange rates. Her USD account was only giving her 7.80 UAH to the dollar at the bank machine. The posted exchange rate at the bank, if you walk in with dollars was 8.10, and a friend of Andrei's will give her 8.40 which is quite close to that posted on www.oanda.com. For those of you who need to check FX, O and A give you official exchange rates on everything but Monopoply money. She took $200 out of her account (had to go to the main branch in town) and we went to meet the friend. He is fishing today.

2 comments:

  1. I recall my mom buying some suits for my brother and me for easter from a door to door salesman back in the 50s. I'm so glad I was only 7 or 8 at the time because they were ugly.

    Like the new header. You'll have to change the words to the opening song though.

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  2. But I'll still close with "Thanks for the Memmories".

    ReplyDelete

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