Argos is great. I think it was Jack Dee who I first heard say that buying something from Argos was like making a bet. You fill in the little slip, hand it in to the person behind the counter and you think, “Odds of 10 to 1 it’s going to be rubbish.”
I noticed many years ago that the Argos App was being updated by a Developer (a Dev) with a fantastic sense of humour. In general when an App needs updating, the Devs always add a few notes to say what the update does. Maybe they have added a new colour scheme, or maybe some new useful functionality. For the Argos App the release notes had very little to do with the App itself, and just went on a rambly word journey. They were great:
I would quite often take screenshots of the Update Notes and share them on Twitter, to help show the world how good they were. They often contained references to 80s things, or were just full of random thoughts and quote from TV shows. Things like this:
Then, one day, the fun updates stopped. The Dev updates went from fun things like these updates above to “Bug Fixes.” I happened to mention on Twitter that I was disappointed the fun updates had ended, and someone said they thought the guy who wrote them must have left Argos.
I tweeted something like “I wish I knew who wrote those update for the Argos App. I’d like to thank them for all their updates over the years,” because these random updates had been going on for absolutely ages.
Then I got a Direct Message:
This was fantastic news! Someone online knew the Developer guy who used to work on the Argos App, and let him know I really liked his updates. I’ve shortened his message above. He said he didn’t want to be identified online as the guy behind the updates, and that is fair enough. I replied in the DM to say thanks for providing the best App updates on any App I’ve ever read. He came back with:
One thing that had delighted me a few years earlier was, one time when I was sharing my appreciation online, I asked Argos_Online if they would be able to get the phrase 80sNostalgia into a future update:
I didn’t hear back from Argos directly, but a month or so later on their next update, this happened:
Man alive, I was delighted at the time, but now, a year or so later, I was delighted yet again. I was now able to thank the actual guy who made that happen. I sent him the above screenshot from Twitter and asked him this:
What an absolute legend! You never know who is reading your posts online. You can not predict where something you write will eventually end up, but I’m so glad I finally got to say thanks.