An unfortunate online shopping error has resulted in a Surrey man being delivered a 300-metre skyscraper instead of the garden shed he thought he had bought.
"Instead of an 8ft by 12ft shed with a green glass window for my yard, I now have a thousand foot high, glass-green shard, which is clearly not what I wanted at all," explained Mr J Sutcliffe from Hinchley Wood. "It's infuriating."
The construction is casting long shadows over neighbouring gardens, and Mr Sutcliffe has received numerous complaints, as well as some offers from blue-chip companies wishing to relocate.
"Since the day that thing arrived, I've seen various people darting about my garden in a hurry and I reckon there's a tube station underneath, or something like that," observed Sutcliffe. I don't know what to do about it. I might try pouring a kettle of hot water down the cracks in the paving slabs, as it worked for the ants."
Garry Pratt, whose company “gardenshards.co.uk” supplied Sutcliffe, is unsympathetic. “Mr Sutcliffe quite clearly knew what he was buying - the clue is in the name for crying out loud. Nevertheless, we would have been happy to cancel the order had he returned the tower in the original packaging. But he’s clearly been using it, as evidenced by the lawn mower and packet of seeds in the foyer. We are fully determined that Mr Sutcliffe pays us the £2,199,999,950 he owes, that being the balance of the £2.2billion cost price minus his £50 deposit.
Which? the consumer’s champion commented “In a recent test of 20 garden sheds, the Shard came top for internal storage but was disappointing for ease of assembly. It didn’t get our ‘Best Buy’ recommendation, coming tenth in the garden storage solutions category - so we cannot recommend it as a shed."
"But it makes a lovely greenhouse.”
