Shop Talk: It'll all come out in the wash (hopefully)

Much of the shelf space, inevitably, goes to supermarket own brands, so this week, we've just concentrated on them.

We also found the ideal test for most of them - Smaller Son spent the summer working in Little Chef and each day came home with polyester trousers, shirt and apron that were covered in grease but could be washed only at low temperatures.

Did he go back to work every day sparkling clean and spotless? Well, not always...

PROBLEM 1

Some of these tablets go straight into the drawer of the washing machine. Others require a nifty little net to put them in, which is a bit of a chew because the net gets lost or falls behind the back of the machine or clings to the drum of the tumble drier.

More importantly, not all packs include a net. You can ring a helpline and get one. But that could mean waiting ten days before you get clean clothes.

PROBLEM 2

The tablets come in little packs of two, meant to be the right dose for each wash. Most of them say to use three if you have very hard water or very dirty clothes. But, unlike with soap powder, it's much more difficult to vary the amount you use.

PROBLEM 3

We all know that things dissolve more easily the hotter the water. Some of these didn't work well at low temperatures and clothes sometimes came out covered in soapy smears and slime and had to be re-washed.

(Price per wash is based on using two tablets. If the water where you live is very hard, or if you are a particularly mucky family, or have a boy who flips burgers for a living, you can add another 50 per cent on to that as you'll need three tablets.)

WORTH TRYING

SAINSBURY'S PERFORM AND PROTECT

24 for £2.49 (20.7p per wash)

This is the new name for their old own brand, Novon. And we think it's more expensive. No net, tablets go straight in the drawer and work very well, even at low temperatures.

ALDI ALMAT

£2.99 for 40 (15p per wash)

Not brilliant on the greasy stains at low temperatures, but you could at least bung in another tablet without breaking the bank.

ASDA LOGIC

£1.97 for 24 (16.4p per wash)

Reasonable performance at a reasonable price.

CO-OP ULTRA BIO TABS

£1.69 for 16 (21p per wash)

Good at high temperatures, not so good at low.

NO THANK YOU

MARKS & SPENCER COLOURS

EASY IRON

£3.99 for 32 (25p per wash)

These were quite effective in washing but made not a jot of difference to the ironing and were also the most expensive. However, they did at least include a net.

SAFEWAY

£2.69 for 24 (22p per wash)

Hopeless on low temperatures. Didn't dissolve the dirt and didn't even dissolve themselves properly at 40 degrees but left slimy white bits on work clothes.

TESCO 2 IN 1 TABLETS,

£2.09 for 24 (17.4 per wash), including fabric conditioner

What is the point of saying that you have to put these tablets in a little net when they don't provide the little net? If you need one, you have to call a freephone number. Fine. We rang it and waited. And waited.

We tried the tablets without the net and they only half dissolved, leaving a mush in the front of the machine which was hard to avoid when taking the clean(ish) clothes out.

When our net eventually turned up - after ten days - we tried again. No mushy lumps but still not good on grease at low temperatures.

CONCLUSION

We cannot see the point of these tablets. They are expensive, not very flexible and, unlike the even more expensive but very efficient capsules, they don't even get the clothes very clean. So why bother?

Don't be fooled or misled by these gimmicks - just keep buying the soap powder. Otherwise, before long, it will have utterly vanished from the shelves.

ORANGE WARNING

If you try to end your contract with Orange, beware! After you've done all the cancelling, they will ask you if you want to keep your old phone as a Pay As You Go phone.

Why not? you think, it's always useful to have a spare phone. And when the new sim card comes, you fling it with the old phone in a drawer until the day you might need it.

What they don't tell you is that by saying you'll have a sim card you haven't actually cancelled your contract - even though you thought you'd done so and just spent ten minutes doing just that. And the spare phone sitting in the drawer is racking up a charge of more than £40 a month for absolutely nothing until you actually register for Pay As You Go.

Well, that's how they caught me.

"It says here we told you," they said when I rang to query a whopping great bill. Well, it's my word against theirs. I have no memory of it and certainly had no idea that I was continuing the contract I'd called twice to cancel. If I had, I certainly wouldn't have accepted their offer.

And if they had actually told me the conditions, I would have registered the sim card as soon as I got it. But no one told me.

Sneaky, I call it - at best. Other descriptions would be seriously misleading or downright devious.

Interestingly, when I complained to a fairly helpful person and said that it had not been clear to me and the least they could do was improve their staff training, she agreed and said they'd had a number of complaints.

There's clearly been a mistake. The phone obviously hasn't been used. But will I get my money back? No, not all of it.

I'll tell you one thing - it just proves how right I was to cancel the contract with Orange in the first place.