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I have some neighbors who truly love to buy things that they see on the infomercials that appear on late-night television. I won't name them but let's just call them Wally and Wanda, a nice couple approaching retirement age.
Wally is always picking up the phone and responding to the ads and infomercials for special “male products” such as the Enzyte Male Enhancement Formula
Wanda, on the other hand is somewhat more practical, and orders such products as The Clapper Sound Activated On/Off Switch, Mighty Mendit, and those ShamWow wipes from Vince Shlomi, to name a few. They have a closet full of things like this.
In any case, early last summer Wanda saw a television ad for
the Riddex Plus product which promised to turn their home's electrical wiring into “a pest repellent force-field” or something to that effect, and that they were having a promotion during their “chemical free campaign” to help eliminate roaches and rodents. At least that's the way that Wally remembered the dialog when Wanda woke him up to tell him about it.
Then she heard the magic words that went something like: “But wait... order now and get a second Riddex Plus for FREE!” That's all she needed to hear; she picked up the phone and ordered their generous buy-one-get-one-for-free deal. A few weeks later their Riddex Plus units arrived, and a grumbling Wally plugged them in for her, one upstairs and the other downstairs in the kitchen, according to the directions.
It should be noted here that Wanda and Wally have a nice two-story townhouse down the street from me, and it always seems very clean and neat when I'm there. They have never had a "bug problem" in the 12+ years they have lived there. But remember that townhouses share common walls with neighbors, and in their case that have a common wall on each side.
Moving time forward to the winter, and the weather had turned cold. I was returning home and Wally approached and asked me for a bit of help. It seemed that suddenly their home had turned into what Wally was referring to as “the Roach Motel” as for the first time they seemed to have an infestation of cockroaches... as did their neighbors on both sides. Angry accusations about dirty homes were flying back and forth between neighbors, and finally an exterminator was called to take care of three homes in one visit.
Don't know exactly what transpired when the exterminator went into Wally and Wanda's townhouse, but when he went into the kitchen and saw the wondrous Riddex Plus unit plugged into the wall, he is alleged to have pointed at it and told them that there was the problem, and that it was a “roach and bug magnet.” Wanda got upset and the exterminator shrugged his shoulders, pointed to their computer and suggested that she “look it up on the Internet.”
In any case, Wally and I unplugged the Riddex Plus units (he needed reinforcement) and threw them out, and he told her to just smack any bugs with a shoe or newspaper. Wanda was still looking for a more refined solution than that. I suggested that if she didn't want to hire an exterminator again or smack the cockroaches with a newspaper, then she just go online and get a tennis racket shaped Charcoal Companion Amazing Bug Zapper, load it with batteries and zap the bugs. Wanda said that she couldn't bring herself to do that.
We left it at that, but the next day Wally came up to me, chuckling, and told me that Wanda had ordered the Amazing Bug Zapper.
Hope that it works better for them than the Riddex Plus units.
[See my original Amazon product review on the Riddex Plus.]
