In Moscow says the Foreign Office recent incidents of robbery and violence reinforce the need to take care when
In Moscow, says the Foreign Office, recent incidents of robbery and violence reinforce the need to take care when meeting casual or new acquaintances in bars, restaurants or night-clubs.”Drinks should not be left unattended as they may then be drugged,” says the Foreign Office.In Latvia, “The number of muggings of foreign visitors has increased over the past year; some have had drinks spiked in casinos and clubs before being mugged.”The US State Department says that villains in Istanbul are drugging foreigners with nembitol, known on the street as the “yellow bomb”, and benzodiazepine. In one case, “an American died from the effects of the drug that had been intended to put him to sleep”.. SHOPPING LE SHOPPING An international language for an international pastime. Cut-price fashion? Try Tuscany’s Villa Fontelugna for coach trips to the factory shops of Prada, Dolce & Gabbana and Armani.
Christmas? You want Concorde to New York City for a weekend of retail frenzy at Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. Cheap booze? The hypermarkets of Boulogne and Calais are the place. You can even take your euro to French branches of British supermarkets: the wine departments of Tesco and Sainsbury’s are the same as those in Britain, only cheaper
Shopping Le shopping An international language for an international pastime. The shopfront is almost identical to those of the UK photographic chain Apparently, that’s just coincidence. There’s another Jessops at Las Cucharas on the Costa Teguise in Lanzarote Neither is the real thing.
While Jessops has 210 stores in the UK, it has none in Tenerife.Such stores promise bargain prices, but offer nothing of the sort. And most importantly of all, they have no connection to the real Jessops. So, if you need a repair under warranty, if you’re just not happy with your new camera and want your money back, you have no legal right to walk into your local Jessops back in Britain and demand anything.Jack Wilkins, of Preston, went to the Tenerife branch of Jessops in January and bought an Olympus C-1 camera. The price was £998, including some accessories that have a value of around £100.
When he got home, he was horrified to discover that his local branch of Jessops sells the same basic model for £220.Mr Wilkins wrote to complain about Jessops overcharging abroad, and was even more shocked by the reply. “The company in Tenerife has never been supplied by Jessops, and were completely unknown to us until late last year when we were alerted by a customer reporting a similar incident. We are naturally very sorry that you have been innocently duped in this way.”Jessops in Tenerife has a strange way of doing business. They offer customers a bargain, then after you’ve handed over payment, start to rubbish your choice. Their aim? To persuade you to part with more money for a superior camera (they say), and one which isn’t a bargain Jack Wilkins succumbed to the sales pitch. “I didn’t ask whether it was Jessops – the sign on the shopfront looked so much like the real thing it never occurred to me to ask,” he says.”I thought if I’d made a mistake, I could always go back – knowing what a reputable company Jessops is,” he says. The Leicester-based genuine article was generous to him: “They did give me £100 worth of vouchers – but it was quite a shock to discover the shop was nothing to do with them.”For Watchdog, we went into the Tenerife shop undercover and had an experience almost identical to that of Jack Wilkins.
