Reports that a crafty West Highlander
was using dummy seals to drum up trade from visitors
have been investigated by trading standards officers
and were discovered to be unfounded.
The incident has left Plockton man Calum MacKenzie
highly amused. Calum, who runs Leisure Marine in Plockton,
offers boat trips to see the sails which abound in the
waters off the village. And he is so confident that
visitors won't be disappointed that he guarantees them
their money back, or another trip free of charge, if
they fail to see any seals.
This has led to a standing joke locally that Calum
has an army of plastic seals at the ready just to make
sure he doesn't have to honour his committment.
And he was intrigued to hear recently that trading
standards officials from Highland Regional Council had
been asking questions in the village about his money-back
guarantee. “I heard weights and measures people
had been asking a local shopkeeper if it was true I
had plastic seals in the bay.” Calum said. “A
couple of weeks later I was talking to a girl on one
of my trips. She had a local accent, and it turned out
she was from the local trading standards office in Fort
William. She seemed embarrassed when I asked her if
she was checking me out, and said she was in the area
on business and was just taking a sail during her lunch
break.”
He said there was certainly no need for plastic seals
— on a good day he could see as many as 200 on
one of his trips.
Jennifer Jones at the trading standards office in Fort
William confirmed this week that a council official
from another department had heard the 'plastic seals'
story and had reported it.
“We didn't take it very seriously,” she
said, “but we were in the area on other business
a couple of weeks ago and decided to check it out. We
really had no doubts, and we did it kind of tongue-in-cheek.
We do get some very strange complaints.”
And she was happy to confirm that their investigation
convinced them Calum wasn't up to any funny business.
West
Highland Free Press 1996 |
