Dealers with well-stocked showrooms and knowledgeable staff are always at the mercy of pond-life customers who waste time asking questions and requesting demos - only to go off and mail order from an internet site where the goods are a few per cent cheaper.

Oh, how we laugh when they are stuck with faulty goods to return or can't work out how to make them work. But all too often, the only loser is the unfortunate dealer who effectively makes the sale for the online store.

As mentioned last week, there has been a large poster for Dixons on the northbound Northern Line platform at Euston tube station in London.

It tells how Cedric Prattletwerp, the mythical proprietor of a small second-hand bookshop on Bayswater Road, takes a bus to Oxford Street to buy himself a plasma TV.

He goes up an escalator, presumably to the John Lewis or Selfridges showroom, where "Noel the young assistant patiently demonstrates all 27 models available".

"The 53 minutes fly by for Cedric who singles out 50 inches of pixelated wonderment and, pressing the young man's hand warmly in pitiful gratitude, he goes to dixons.co.uk and buys it."

In other words, the customer shamelessly wastes an hour of a skilled sales assistant's time and then goes online to buy from somewhere else where it's cheaper.

How carefully did DSGi's management think about this sickening advert before signing it off for poster display?

Surely it condones the idea of someone browsing a well-stocked Currys Digital store, like the one in Oxford Street, to get the look and feel of a product range, and then going online to compare prices and buying from Amazon or any of DSGi's rivals.

Another even odder thing about the advert is the strap line at the bottom of the poster. "Dixons.co.uk. The last place you want to go."

I am not making this up. Take a look at the picture.

[Also, see Knightline, October 28, 2009]