Your friend still needs to be careful. Our daughter had an ex semi-boyfriend get crazy when he got more serious than she wanted to get. She got a restraining order. And things got quiet for about 2 weeks and then he came back with a vengeance. My God, the stuff he did AFTER THE RO was worse than what he had done before. Actually made an imprint of her house key through the lock (I didn't know you could do this)and had a duplicate key made. Bought an apparatus to get into a locked car, etc. Slashed 4 tires of her car. Went into her home, listened to her phone messages and called everyone on her phone list to threaten them if they befriended her over him. He even trashed the businesses her other dates worked at. The scary thing, among others, was that he was in the Coast Guard and was licensed to carry a gun. We hired a PI and did a background search on him. We learned he had done this in several states to other women and simply was transferred to other cities when he became a liability to the Coast Guard. He,too,was a real charmer but a real evil man. The PI followed him and had proof through phone records and pictures and fingerprints on the exterior of her car and in her car as well that he was violating the law. This was done over a period of 6 weeks and it cost us a fortune to have round the clock coverage of this man. But it also gave us protection for our daughter since investigators were right there should he have attempted to harm her. Well, we had proof but the police were dragging their heels. We got in contact with his commander on the base; met with her and he was permanently relieved of his duties. Then 2 weeks later, right after he called my daughter in the middle of the night, rambling and threatening, to explain it was all a misunderstanding, we left our home at 2:00 AM and drove all night to his home (crazy, I know) but we were desperate. We spoke to him and made him a firm offer he couldn't refuse. Well, what we said must have made an impression, because he packed his bags, left town and hasn't been seen there since. And that's been about 8 years ago. The police never did anything because the charmer explained it was simply a love affair gone wrong. Can you believe that?

oregpsnow said: You are certainly free to buy whatever you want. I am putting the money I don't spend on Persil into my retirement account. LOL! Believe it or not, I was a big proponent of Tide HE over Persil a few years ago. I even said the exact same thing you did - that people are crazy for spending so much on a detergent when they should be saving that money and putting into their IRA or 401(k)s. How well are all of our retirement accounts doing today, those of us who have anything left in them? I switched to Persil due to the fact that it cleans as well or better than Tide HE, the de facto leading domestic detergent, but doesn't cause skin irritation. My partner developed a sensitivity to Tide, and nothing else that I tried comes close to cleaning as well except for Persil. Bi-O-Kleen Premium does a good job, but it also lacks certain ingredients that prevent corrosion. I don't know if that's a big deal or not, so I'm proceeding cautiously in this regard. I don't want to use something that is not going to properly protect the metal parts of my washer, but then I don't even know if that's an issue at all. I had a choice of using a more sensitive detergent that didn't clean as well but also did not cause irritation, or using Persil which gave me the best of all worlds but at a higher cost. I chose the latter because I want clean clothes without itching. Persil Universal Megaperls contains five different enzymes to assist with stain removal, which I believe is more than most domestic products. Here is list comparing ingredients from Persil and Tide HE: Tide HE: Sodium Aluminosilicate Sodium Sulfate Sodium Carbonate Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate Water Nonanoyloxybenzenesulfonate Alkyl Sulfate Sodium Percarbonate Sodium Polyacrylate Polyethylene Glycol 4000 Fragrance Diethylenetriamine Pentaacetate (Sodium Salt) Disodium Diaminostilbene Disulfonate Palmitic Acid Protease Silicone Modified Starch ÃÂ Persil Megaperls: ZEOLITE SODIUM CARBONATE PEROXIDE SODIUM DODECYLBENZENESULFONATE TAED AQUA (WATER) SODIUM LAURYL SULFATE SODIUM CARBONATE SODIUM SULFATE SODIUM CITRATE 2-PROPYLHEPTAN-1-OL, 7EO SODIUM ACRYLIC ACID/MA COPOLYMER SULFONATED POLYETHYLENE TEREPHTHALATE CELLULOSE GUM PEG-80 ZEA MAYS (CORN) STARCH ALCOHOLS, C16-18, 7EO TETRASODIUM ETIDRONATE SODIUM SOAP C16-18 SODIUM BICARBONATE PERFUME CORN FLOUR HEPTASODIUM DTPMP PARAFFIN SODIUM CHLORIDE C12-18 FATTY ALCOHOL 5 EO SODIUM HYDROXIDE OPTICAL BRIGHTNER SODIUM GLYCOLATE PEG-14M COLORANT HYDRATED SILICA PROTEASE HEXYL CINNAMAL LINALOOL BENZYL SALICYLATE LIPASE AMYLASE MANNANASE CELLULASE

DB is creepy. That's exactly what I implied 9 years ago when this thread started. LOL. Article from Dallas News - Nov. 2016 This is a story about a creepy business gone bad that is now trying to go good. Do you remember DirectBuy? The company used to advertise in TV commercials as a members-only savings club for every kind of household item. You'd go to their showroom for a pitch and that's where the wackiness kicked in. If you didn't bring your spouse, you couldn't come in. If, after listening to the sales job, you decided not to buy a membership package right then and there (as high as $7,000), you were banned from coming back. If you bought and then found out that you couldn't buy what you wanted and the prices were not cheaper as promised, you couldn't get a refund. Lawsuits piled up. Consumer reviews were awful. I remember trying to interview franchise owners in 2010. They wouldn't talk to me. The PR guy for DirectBuy in Indiana didn't bother to answer all my questions. Yes, indeed. DirectBuy was a truly crummy company. Then the company disappeared. The TV ads stopped. The last of the 160 franchise stores, including one in Carrollton and another in Fort Worth, closed forever, leaving high-paying members angry and confused. Where did DirectBuy go? Answer: This month, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing $185 million in debts to the best-known home furnishing and supply companies in the world. Sounds like the final act of an old-line company that couldn't cut it anymore, right? Turns out, it may be the beginning of a new DirectBuy. Chapter 2 I'll admit that I had to alter the course of this story. A crummy company filing bankruptcy? What's left to save? Turns out DirectBuy has quietly remade itself, as executives describe it, into an Amazon wannabe with "concierge customer service." No more 20,000-square-foot showroom stores. Everything is now online and mobile-ready. You want a certain sofa? You take a photo of it, and the new DirectBuy app recognizes the sofa and shows you their cheapest price. If it's not low enough, DB will drop even lower. Need a home decorator to come and help you? Sure. Got that, too. Live chat? Yep. The price for this service is $200 for a one-time initiation fee, and $40 a month in a one-year contract. That's thousands of dollars cheaper than the old cost that came with a three-year contract. DB also promises a refund if not happy within the first 90 days. That's a jolting change for the company's old ways, fighting to hold customers to their wacky restrictive contracts. DB claims 200,000 customers nationally. They now switch to the monthly subscription model when their contracts expire. Six years ago, my records show, DB had 10,000 customers in North Texas. Chief marketing officer Curt Hilliard says his mobile-ready company uses search tools to find the lowest price, including delivery charges. "We don't just meet the price," he promises. "We drop the price a guaranteed percentage." The bankruptcy establishes a "clean slate," says spokesman Mike Georgeff, the PR exec who was hard to pin down in the old days. Now he's pretty talkative about the future. The company expects to be acquired by its lenders who become the new owners, he says. "We can establish a clean slate for our future business and prosperity," Georgeff says. Be skeptical The company must prove itself as a reincarnated version of its old self, says Julie Baker, retired TCU professor of marketing. She checked out the older version years ago and realized the offerings were better suited for someone furnishing a house or doing a major renovation. Otherwise, initial costs to join were too steep to overcome. She told me this week that turning around a company with a bad customer service culture is very difficult. "For me, it just doesn't make sense, especially over the long term," she said. "I don't see how they can be profitable charging $40 a month. They have to make a profit on the furniture even if they say they are not. There are warning flags for me." Can the same company come back in a bigger and better way? I hope so. Remember, this is a story of a creepy business that's trying to reform. Certainly, we need more of that. Staff writer Marina Trahan Martinez contributed to this report. Check out The Watchdog on NBC5 at 11:20 a.m. Mondays, talking about matters important to you.

I don't mind most scents in products, but with clothes nothing beats the smell of clothes dried outside on a clothesline. I guess I remember my mother hanging sheets and other items outside. And they didn't smell like fresh linen or fresh cotton artificial scents. Persil is very expensive around here at the grocery store. I tend to get what is on sale. If Tide is on sale I snatch it up. It cleans most consistently especially whites. I still wear white undershirts under dress shirts and don't like them getting dingy.