The Kitchen Shelves

Extending step shelves for cups.

I have been reorganising my food cupboard because I’m only little and I can’t see the stuff at the back. Up to now I’ve made do with standing back row tins on a long bottle box.  About three months ago (or maybe longer) I looked at the cupboard and decided it was time I got off my butt and bought some extending shelves. I have them in the crockery cupboard (see left) but never got round to providing them for the food store.

Of course as time goes by these things go out of fashion. I spent a lot of time surfing the net looking for suitable shelves and came up with a set at Amazon which seemed promising. I ordered them and couldn’t wait for delivery. Sadly, when they arrived, I found they weren’t really suitable. The lower ‘step’ wasn’t quite deep enough for cans. After a few days of trying to stop the cans falling off the step, I hunted the Net again. This time searching for the product under a different name and, guess what, I found just what I wanted. The exact same shelves as seen above. 

The company selling them was Kleeneze, a company that uses agents to sell their wares.It works like this: an agent for a particular area distributes catalogues to householders and if someone wants to purchase something an order is placed when the agent returns to collect the books. It has been going on for years. I put a stop to it when I got fed up with having brochures shoved through the letterbox, hence the fact that the name Kleeneze had gone right out of my head. Needless to say I ordered the proper shelves on line. The usual acknowledging email arrived and with it the name of my local distributor. I had believed that ordering on line meant delivery from warehouse ... I was wrong. Oh well, I can't get it right all the time. I just had to be patient and wait for the agent to deliver and collect the cash. 

Now comes the crunch. After a couple of weeks I began to wonder what happened to the delivery. I checked Kleeneze’s acknowledgement email and noted the agent's name and phone number. I rang to query the delivery and was told ... wait for it .... oh you won’t get the parcel for several weeks because I have to wait until I have sufficient orders before I ring them through to the company. There was no indication on line that this had to be the case.

Emailed company to complain. They were changing the system, they said. Customers could now order on-line and for a small charge the goods would be delivered to the agent, who would then deliver to customer. The only snag was that I needed to reorder, using the same email address and password. Password? I couldn’t remember it and wasn’t offered the facility to change to a new one. What a way to run a business ... and what a way to keep customers happy.

That's better!

Two months later, I discovered the same item on the Lakeland site. The shelves were duly ordered and delivery took place two days later. Think I’ll stick with Lakeland in future. I had previously looked on their site and those particular shelves were not listed. I can only assume they were newly stocked ... and I can’t help wondering if the new stock was by public demand ... maybe by dissatisfied Kleeneze customers.

By the way, I never did hear from the Kleeneze agent!