You're going to have to trust me on this one, but QVC is a creation of utter genius.
I have just got back from a few days staying with a friend who is a QVC addict. I am ashamed to admit that I doubted her. I was wrong. QVC is the Pringles of television. Once you've popped, you can't stop. You can watch it for literally hours. Essentially, they spend all day and night trying to sell you bad jewellery made of stones you've never heard of (blueberry quartz, anyone?), pointless home "solutions", baffling beauty products, overpriced basics (watch them talk about tupperware for an hour!), all live, all unscripted. Unscripted is the magic. Recently I saw someone trying to sell jewellery from Brazil, a country which, she pointed out, is mostly famous for its milk. The key is that as long as they keep talking, it has a hypnotic effect so that all of the original thoughts are sucked out of your head and you genuinely start to believe that you need this stuff. I almost accidentally bought a full set of coathangers with useful trouser barbs. As an additional incentive to keep watching, members of the public can call in and discuss the exciting QVC products that they have already purchased. You'd be astonished how frequently the live phone-in is *not* abused.
Anyway, to convince you further, here are two brilliant examples that I tracked down on YouTube. They are both from America, so you will have to imagine the same thing for the UK, only a bit more Home Counties. The first clip is for a magnificent piece of exercise equipment that you can hardly do without, and the second is a glorious example of the joys of improvisation.
Can't resist? Just call in and buy...
Restaurant server decided not to disclose the price of specials, but when
customer was charged $65 for an entree, a problem arose: 'he was mad that I
didn't say the price initially'
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If you have doubts about something, you can simply ask…
Fancy restaurants have their own understanding of etiquette. You don't go
in with certain clothes, ...
17 hours ago
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11 comments:
Helen Lisette SWEARS by the insane addiction of QVC etc... really, it is just bonkers. What they manage to do - and, as you say, Home Counties - is just... beyond words. Yet somehow you DID do just that!
Have you ever bought anything from QVC? Now that would be a step too far.
amazing!
I laughed so much on the second one. Hilarious, totally incorrect ad-libbing.
I know - that second one is particularly brilliant.
I have not bought anything on QVC. Yet.
Marie. Don't. Talk. To me. About QVC. My husband watched it once and we ended up with a printer we didn't need that doesn't work terribly well. I had to ban him from watching it in the end. (He is the sort of person who ends up in the kitchen section at IKEA buying all the bits of crap for £2 that you might one day need and never use, so he is ripe for the plucking of the QVC monsters).
I have a secret suspicion that he might watch it when I'm out, but to my knowledge he hasn't bought anything since...
Don't do QVC. Just get up early to watch the infomercials on the regular channels. Works of brilliance they are. I particularly love the six-second abdominizer™. Just six seconds to perfect abs. With patented click action.
I lived in NYC for a few months, and whenever I was home alone, I couldn't resist QVC.
The enthusiasm of the US presenters and live phone-in buyers was so hideously entertaining.
Haven't checked out the UK version but I can't imagine that it provides the same level of entertainment as the USA version, as us Brits don't get half as excited about the products... or am I missing something?!
Sometimes I see vacancy ads for presenters on QVC, and as one who tends to run away at the mouth and talk piffle, it almost appeals... but would the money be worth the damage I'd be doing to the psychic wellbeing of the nation? I usually conclude not... so far (no, they're not hiring at the moment).
I like the names - Tanzanite, Diamonique... though I think Elizabeth Duke at Argos has 'Platino', which might well be the best 'sounds like a name I've heard somewhere before' name.
J
My favourite gem name so far is: Asparagus Stone. Mmmm, delicious.
I'm a bit of a fan of qvc on the quiet too but even worse I have a bit of a fascination for the other shopping channels who sell vastly inferior merchandise than qvc. I once bought something on the "pricedrop" channel which I didn't really need but I was ill and miserable and it was my birthday....
There's a fun novel about shopping channels by Augusten Burroughs called "Sellovision".
QVC is the penultimate of evil invading bored seniors' homes. My retired mother is so thoroughly addicted to it that she relates the personal details of the presenters as if talking about a soap opera.
Her home is littered with unopened boxes of QVC crap. Not just regular crap, but the kind that no sane person would purchase if you simply dropped the box in their hands. No, this requires true salesmanship to get you to purchase a Chinese-made, 100% plastic hunk of crap that is suitable to no actual purpose whatsoever.
Oh, and one is simply not enough. For fear that this fantastic hunk of crap might someday break and her life might be left wanting, she buys two of them.
Add to this that our xmas is brightened by more Chinese crap given as a gift. We also are the odd recipient of some of the edible crap sold on there as well. Again, nothing you would normally buy a craptastic FULL CASE of, having passed by this item at the grocer.
So, when she finally dies, I will walk into a house filled with crap that wouldn't possibly sell at an estate sale, flea market, or much anywhere else. My inheritance will consist of me carrying truckloads of crap to donate to Goodwill, and then I'll be left with a house that has fallen into disrepair because she is too horrified to have any repairman enter.
At that point, I think I'll grab a hunting rifle and pay QVC a personal visit.
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