Ah, the joys of Christmas!

After seeing a report on news-round about go go hamsters, my daughter instantly wanted one. No problem? They cost about £10 and look entertaining, little did I know I was about to enter the mad world of panic buying!

So, browsing the internet, they appeared to be about £50+ on Amazon! This couldn’t be right, checked all the other major toy stores “out of stock”, hhmmm. Apparently they are in extreme demand and selling out all over the place, including the U.S., things were looking bleak. Tried e-bay, the prices were better (a little), but the chances of bidding and winning against other rabid hamster hunters seemed unlikely.

I tried to resist the urge to be drawn into this crazy commercial stuff, then failed! Eventually I resorted to using an on-line hamster stock tracker! Yesterday it showed a new site with stock! I rushed to the site (seemed slow), it did have them! Went through an increasingly slow sign-on/registration process, selected one and added to my basket. At this point I observed that the stock count for the hamsters was plummeting (and the site getting even slower) – I watched in fascination, assured that I had one in my basket. Within minutes they were all out of stock by a considerable margin (from +30 in stock each to -100 in about two minutes).

Ho hum, went to the checkout, “sorry they have sold out”, WTF I had one in my basket when it was in stock!!! I gave up, went to e-bay and paid about £8 (buy it now) over the odds – Worried that all stock will evaporate and also to rid myself of the mad obsession that was forming within!

I wish they had GPS transmitters, would be fun to see the spread of these beasts across the land. Lessons learned – Don’t allow children to watch anything around Christmas (or ever, far safer), or possibly stop chasing commercial junk…