Dear LPG, 

I want to talk about keeping things cool in more ways than one. 

Many of the older LPG readers might remember the good old days when the freezer in your kitchen was the little box at the top of the fridge where you put a few things.  I am so old that I remember the days when you put the jelly on the outside window ledge to get it to set but oh how things have changed.

I am sure many readers will remember the days when the average household experienced the big freeze divorce.  I am talking about the first time that freezers were thought of as separate entities from fridges and that little compartment at the top became a lot bigger or even separate.   I remember when we got our first purpose-built freezer that stood proudly next to the fridge and my mum no longer had to trudge down the road every other day for the family shop because what she did buy could keep for much longer… but I am losing my drift a bit; back to my point… 

It was not long before the emergence of the chest freezer and there will be many an older kitchen that has not caught up with the modern ‘¾ = ¼ fridge freezers’, the Side-by-side upright wardrobe chiller as I call it, not to mention the stand alone upright.  How the space we allot for our frozen food has grown over the years.  

When I retired I decided to spend my lump sum on a new kitchen and there was no more room for my freezer in it, but it is true what they say.  The more space you have; the more you find to put in it.  There are only two of us at home now and our very well-stocked chest freezer became relegated to the shed in the garden when our kitchen was beautified.  

For the past twelve or so years it has spent half its life being visited when the groceries go in and come out and all was good until one day last week when I opened the lid and ‘plick’ the hinge broke.  A neighbour’s strength and my weight got it closed again but I daren’t open it again until I get a new one. 

I have an emergency fund for such eventualities but it has been so long since I have had to think about this that things have changed.  There is the cost of the freezer, the cost of delivery, the cost of getting rid of the old one not to mentioned the new sizings to consider (whether we will be able to get it through the back door and the shed door).   I got all that sorted in my head, having chosen its replacement, but following all that there is the question of insurance.  

The food is safe and the freezer door has been shut for over a week while I have been trying to weigh up the pros and cons of paying out the best part of an extra £85 for five years insurance.  My friends must be absolutely fed up with my asking advice on this one and, while some say I should and others say I shouldn’t, I still didn’t know what to do… that is until I decided to press a few buttons on my mobile phone and asked the most well-known AI app, Chat GPT to help me out.  

Please don’t think that it will supply the only answer you will ever need but the answer it gave me was surprisingly helpful.  It gave an answer that came with a lot of back up information, statistics and facts to support it.  I soon learned to limit the amount of words you want in your answer.  

I asked ‘is it worth paying £85 for 5-year insurance on a £250 freezer’ and unlike all the friends I asked it came up with a definitive ‘no’ before telling me why not. It mentioned that you probably have it covered with your home contents insurance, the probability of it going wrong statistically, your statutory rights, alternative insurance that might be worth considering and so much more before recommending that I save the £85 myself just in case.  I am not saying that it supplies the only answer you will ever need but I think it has its helpful uses. 

I am not sure if I have written all this down to help any other reader who has a dilemma surrounding white goods insurance or if I am trying to say that if you ask all your friends a question and get conflicting answers, asking an AI app might not be a bad idea…  

In conclusion I am suggesting that AI can be an additional advisor worth asking as well as your friends when you have any question that is leaving you undecided…    

CI, Cristal Palace. 

CI has found some ‘how to’ videos that might be helpful for beginners although she emphasised that downloading it to your phone might be something to ask a computer savvy person to do for you… 

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