“After months of excited waiting, it’s finally arrived. OMG. A massive hamper full of festive goodness from Chrisco! Sure it’s a couple of weeks later than they said it’d be, but kids, come quickly – our magical Christmas is saved!”
This has been the triumphal squawk emanating from bogan nests around Australia as, one by one, they receive their big baskets of shit. After years of piously soothing advertisements from a middle aged woman with a vague resemblance to Mrs Claus, bogan families have fallen for Chrisco en masse. With festive food hampers ranging from $370 to a galling $1250, this clever company has somehow convinced bogans that waiting to have a massive basket of easily available foodstuffs sent to them is better than immediately getting the actual items they want from the supermarket up the road at half the price.
The key to the appeal of Chrisco is the idea of making direct debit installments all year, in order to have the hamper arrive for FREE* sometime in December. Clearly, this is a gift from the good people at Chrisco, massive earlier investment notwithstanding. As the bogan appears willing to invest $210 over 9 months in order to have a slab of Bundy and Coke appear magically on its doorstep, Chrisco appears willing to make enormous profits from their gullibility.
As the bogan ‘plans its finances’ in advance, it allows Chrisco to sit on a lucrative mountain of bogan bucks for months before it has to actually purchase inventory for the hampers sometime in October. In order to deal with pesky questions about value, Chrisco sincerely informs the bogan about the stresses and strains that abound when navigating the supermarket in December, as though there’s some kind of bogan demilitarized zone between the dairy aisle and the turkey fridge. Instead, it’s OK. Chrisco is here to help. Thank heavens for Chrisco.
The Chrisco company originally formed in the UK, where it was moderately successful. While Britain is riddled with boganesque , the founders recognised that, with its apparently far more limited grasp of accounting, the bogan populace in the antipodes could make them rich beyond their wildest imaginings. They moved to New Zealand, and from there, the company crossed the Tasman to storm the main bogan stronghold in 1997. Today, it fleeces over a million bogans per year, and turns over a cool quarter billion. This phenomenal cash harvesting often goes unnoticed, as Chrisco is a seasonal business without prominent shopfronts, and bogans rarely read anything with numbers.
In late 2007, a systems failure caused the company to fail to deliver thousands of hampers prior to Christmas, which made the bogans both furious and elated. Furious, because they had to go to the supermarket to chance their luck at Checkpoint Charlie. Elated, because it allowed them to conduct furious vox pops with 22 year-old Today Tonight reporters about a new, and enormous, rort. However, while bogan rage is intense, a crippled attention span causes it to also be brief. A month later, the bogans in question had already signed up for an extortionate 43 week installment plan for Christmas 2008. This is the distillation of everything that bogans love about buying things.
Like some kind of retarded Friedmanite, the bogan views Chrisco as a good deal. This is the bogan economy. In the belief that if something is paid for in installments, and purchased in bulk, it must be sensible commerce, the bogan parts with $4.70 a week. For 10 months. To get a slab of Bundy and Cokes and a towel.
As presented on their website, though, the hampers appear full to the brim with discounted factory seconds. This mass of consumerism tends to cause an eye twitch in many of us however, and we can find the ludicrous price/image conflation confusing. But it’s OK, TBL is here to help. Here is a breakdown of a couple of the simplest beverage hampers on offer:
Coca Cola Hamper:
Contains 2 slabs of coke (supermarket value $35), and a promotional beach towel, hat, Frisbee, and bag. Typically this stuff is only a few bucks each (or free) when coke puts a promotion on, because it’s basically advertising.
Chrisco price: $137.80, or ONLY $3.21 PER WEEK! Only $3 a week for all that cokey Christmassy goodness? Thanks for the 300% markup, Chrisco, Christmas will be magical!
Beers of the World Hamper:
Contains six 6-packs of mid-priced beer (supermarket value $15 each, total $90), and a 5 litre mini keg of Heineken (supermarket value $30).
Chrisco price: $202.80, or ONLY $4.73 PER WEEK! Only $3 a week for all that beery Christmassy goodness? Thanks, Chrisco, for only charging $80 for delivery. Christmas will be magical!
This is the most genius company in Australia. And bogans bend over and take it with a smile. Merry Christmas to you all.
TBL is going to take a break for a week, as we sit back, drink some hard-earned local label beer in a little-known inner city haunt while wearing ironic T-shirts. We will then head out and conduct some primary research into bogan mating season (i.e. New Year’s Eve), and return in 2010 with renewed anger, renewed vitriol, and a renewed mission to bring to you, the people, the truth behind the bogan menace. Merry Christmas!
“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
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Why use Chrisco when you can just send the help down to the wherever the food comes from?
From the looks of the boganettes in the video, they need the walk down to the shops.
I can not believe how full of goodwill I am to all in those last two paragraphs
wait a minute — there’s NOTHING remotely ‘exclusive’ about the chrisco hamper? it’s just WIDELY AVAILABLE products packages and marked up? scary…i always thought that there was SOMETHING unique (i.e., a ‘seasonal’ product, unavailable somewhere else. it’s the lean cuisine of christmas…
you must be a grade a moron , if you can’t tell your just paying 3x rrp for supermarket items…
who’s the moron? or is sarcasm a language not detectable by your people?
wtf are you on about? i wasnt even talking to you.
if you can’t tell from his second post , he was being serious, so thanks anyway…
moron? it looks like ‘your’ the moron…i’ve never seen a chrisco hamper, let alone opened one…
It’s okay, he’s from South Yarra…
Perhaps you should learn the correct usage of ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ before you start referring to the intellectual capacity of others in a diminutive manner…
You’re going to love this little fact then. My sister-in-law is a crime scene investigator (not nearly as glamorous or interesting as it sounds) and has worked in some bogan suburbs in her time, such as Mt Druitt. The police in these areas are aware every year that they will be hit with what they call ‘the Chrisco crime wave’.
the hampers are delivered. Someone who didn’t get one nicks a hamper. This starts a chain reaction of people replacing their own nicked hampers by going out, breaking into other bogn houses and nicking theirs.
I kid you not. The Chrisco crime wave, coming to a bogan suburb near you.
HAHAAAA! Gold.
Sadly, Kimota, I believe you.
Please tell me you are joking, Kimota! That is amazing as it is scary.
This phenomenon can certainly be confirmed. Tomorrow (02 December) is the 2011 Chrisco delivery date. How do I know. My cousin that is a cop knows all about it. The Chrisco Crime Wave is an annual event. In the underclass bogan community the hampers are simply referred to as “My Chrisco”, as in “He nicked me farken chrisco”.
I’m somewhat ashamed of what my family did to these people, but god is it funny when it paid off. About three years ago and three weeks before the aforementioned Chrisco crime wave was to kick off. Me and my family who were plagued with bogans in the street on the other side of mine, we had gotten really sick and tired of the bastards trespassing and tearing up the yard looking for a chrisco box to steal every year and we decided to give them something to steal that would put a proverbial wrench in their christmas cheer.
We still had last years box that we were using to store some books in and the manifest for it. We used the manifest to acquire the exact amount of coke slabs that we then tampered with. We injected each and every can of coke with liquid laxatives and then repacked them carefully into the box and resealed it and put it into the chrisco box. We took the token crap that came with it originally and put it too back in the chrisco box, but not before letting our contagiously ill grandparents in the nursing home handled them thoroughly over a two week period.
After packing it all in with the aid of commercial anti contagion suits and sealing the box back up, we waited about a day before leaving it where they would find it and after that it was only a matter of time before we heard the sound of revenge. On christmas day while we were tucking into last nights christmas celebration leftovers we heard the screams of shock when the coke took affect. Never had we heard such happy sounds as they were doing a spot of house painting in a lovely shade of brown while shouting that it was going everywhere, the icing on the cake was when they fell violently ill right before new years celebrations and re painted the house after cleaning it up from the last bout of painting they did and this time there was the added scent of alcohol vomit on top of the old man brown rain scent that was added from round 1 of revenge.
Now contrary to what some of you readers may think from reading this, my family are not even close to being bogans. My mum grew up in a family of bogans and it disgusted her to her very core to the point she aspired to not be stuck in the same rut that plagued her family and achived for the first in the family a university degree, which was in nursing. We know how awful this kind of family legacy that keeps perpetuating itself can be, but aside from the pity for these twits they do deserve a swift kick in the arse when they need it. Hate us for it if you will, we don’t care.
I am some what ashamed of what my family did to these people, but god damn was it funny when it paid off. We used to live in small suburb where it is bordering on bogan haven and respectable suburb, every year we have our property vandalised and trespassed upon by the bogans’ in the dead end street parallel to ours during this Chrisco crime wave. Six years ago we did something that kept them at bay for two years and it involved a pile of cardboard boxes we had left over from a Chrisco box delivery we won through a raffle the year prior, a few bottles of off the shelf tasteless liquid laxatives, a visit to relatives in a retirement home and some help from my mums uni degree in nursing the elderly.
We used the manifest of the old delivery to get the exact amount of soft drink slabs that came in the box and then opened them all to access the cans. We separated the cans we needed and those that we didn’t need and proceeded to injected the victim cans with the laxatives in a dose that would not do too much damage to their innards. we then patched up the small holes and packed the cans up into their respective boxes, loaded them into the family hatchback and drove to my paternal grandparents nursing home to visit them on their sickbed. They happily supplied the contagious germs that coated the lip of the cans after hearing how we were going to get back at the bastards that were causing hell for us year after year.
After all that it was a quick packing and sealing/taping of the boxes and a two day wait for the usual delivery day of the bogans’ hampers, we paid the delivery driver of the hampers to do a fake delivery to our house when he came to our street to drop off the hamper for our next door neighbour. Like clockwork the bogans came onto our property and skulked about looking for a hamper to steal and they took the bait and broke into our house to take the hamper we made and when Christmas day came we were awarded with the sounds of sheer horror from them when they felt the laxatives do their magic on them, I should like to mention the laxatives we used were for the kind of constipation where only a max power laxative can break the dam. So we sat there eating the leftovers from last nights celebrations listening to them screaming at each other about trying to contain the ocean of brown that they were passing violently for about five minutes.
New years eve came and the germs they picked up from the lip of the cans kicked in with a violent assault to their bowels and stomachs, it was great to hear them yelling to each other to find something to contain the mess they were creating in their half cleaned home. They had to gut the house and replace 90% of their possessions in their home because of the fact that they saturated with feces and vomit, they also had to hire a professional cleaning crew come to their home to clean up the mess they made throughout their house. The cherry on top is that they can not report what we did to the police because then they will have to admit to breaking and entering, theft, trespassing and destruction of property.
Pretty horrible when you think about it, but my family had by that point decide that they couldn’t possibly be counted as human beings with the amount of horrible crap they did on a daily basis ever since the plague manifested 12 years ago, after we had been there for a comfortable 8 years before they appeared mind you. Haters hate me and my family, but god damn did those bogans deserve a swift kick in the colon.
Jimmy,
That is hilarious. LOL
Well played TBL…..one of your best posts. It’s this sort of bogan economics that result in these low class fools always remaining that way.
The 2007 Chrisco delivery (or non-delivery) debacle still brings a smile to my face. How a company that just does Christmas deliveries can screw up said deliveries and still be in business is a mystery to me.
Similar to when petrol stations hold a one day ultra-discount of $0.79/litre fuel and bogans line up for hundreds of metres in their cars to “save” $0.30/litre. Nevermind that during their hour long wait they keep their engine running thereby wasting petrol, make three trips into the servo for magazines/chocolate bars/soft drinks/chips/etc……the main thing to remember is they “saved” a massive $10.
Let’s not bring ‘class’ into it, eh?
I agree. This arrogant supercileous attitude always amazes me. What is “bogan” anyway? I have ALWAYS found that those who point the finger of blame are ALWAYS hiding huge faults/crimes/sins anyway. You know the adage “Best form of defence is offence”.
The type of bogan thinking that believes that Chisco hampers are a good deal is the same that believes that buying a couch from Harvey Norman on a ‘nothing to pay for 3 years deal is great (totally unaware of the crippling interest bill at the end of it) .
LOL. But they can always complain to “Today Tonight” or “A Current Affair” about how they were “ripped off” by the “extortionist” interest rate: https://thingsboganslike.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/no-deposit-no-interest-no-repayments-for-18-months/
luckily we all live in TOORAK and can laugh, at all these plebs…hahha
Totally unaware M E N E ? I’d say they were made aware of the terms and conditions before signing the contract, however, like so many idiots before them, were too busy imaging how impressed their friends would be with the new black leather suite that they just nodded inanely when asked if they understood.
If you pay it off before the period is up its a GREAT thing to use. I’ve bought many a high priced item but I always make sure to pay it off before the interest free period runs out.
Of course the people who use these deals and then don’t pay it off, are dead set morons.
A shop clerk at Harvey Norman told me that about 80% of people who use the no-no-no terms don’t pay off in full by the end, and so get slugged with the back interest.
I have bought some stuff on these deals, and I paid them off well before the end of the arrangement, so no interest. However, I always find that the clerks will resist giving discounts if you take up the no-no-no arrangement, so what you save on interest, you lose by the higher up front cost.
Apart from that: thank you for subsidising my purchases, bogans!
Do Chrisco hampers have those bottles of Jim Beam or Jack Daniels flavoured barbeque marinade sauces packaged up with a cheap set of tongs? Bogans love those. If not, Chrisco should have the BBQ sauce hampers for Christmas 2010, at only $2.20 per week, they’d make a fortune and the bogans would be estatic. Win-win situation all round!
Anyone willing to sponsor a performance art project for someone to live on the contents of Chrisco hampers for the whole year?
Morgan Spurlock of ‘Supersize me’ fame would probably do it.
Centrelink? They already sponsor whole families doing it for months at a time.
Brilliant call.
No need for a sponsor, it has already been done.
Check out their other Chrisco video as well.
This is so true! Bogans have apparently never heard of a sub account.
LOL. Thank you for this insight into an activity of the lesser people I knew nothing about. And probably didn’t want to.
Fiona your from Toorak who cares if you know anything. A postcode does not give you immunity to being known as a useless shallow cow.
I’m pissed off I didn’t think of it first. Pure genius.
It’s evil genius, but genius still
X Employee
I used to work for Castle Hampers during Uni, same business, owned by the same people, run the same way, even lower down the socio-economic-food chain. They even merged the call centres a few years ago. I was in the call centre but did a bunch of other jobs. One time one of the bigwigs asked me to use my University research skills to get on the net and find out how much a single mum with varying amounts of children would receive from centrelink. They wanted to know their customer even better. I can confirm that 90% of the people who called that call centre were doing so because “I needs to skip me Castles payments because Centrelinks has fucked us again”. All said and done it was a really good place to work and if the office hadn’t moved to Sydney I would have stayed until the end of Uni.
Gold!!
My ex wife was one of the people who got complaints put through to them at the Westpac call centre. Remember her coming home in a foul mood one night after being called a “stuck up cunt” by some scrag whose account had been overdrawn causing her to have a nice little fee, screwing up “her fuckin’ Centrelink” The cause? Chrisco direct debit!
She couldn’t watch Current Affair/ACA ever again.
LOL. So it wasn’t a total disaster then?
Wino, wino isn’t Westpac the number one bank after the Commonwealth for repossessing people homes and laughing about it. AND doesn’t their CEO receive A$11M per year as income. AND you have the hide to sneer at a poor women’s distress. You cold hearted Ghoul you disgust me and make my skin crawl.
Yes, bogans are a stupid lot, and they feed hamper shit to their kids for christmas treats. But a company purposely sucking as much money from a single mother on benefits as possible? Pure evil.
LOL. I know this was posted on a previous entry and perhaps it even served as the inspiration for this particular post. Nevertheless, it deserves to be viewed again (and again and again and again) armed with the new knowledge TBL has given us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l3lSLdJ2ns
Dammit I watched that. Now I feel like scum. On Christmas Eve no less.
That’s sad, not funny.
Throw in kids and it becomes a deadset tragedy.
I can laugh at folks doing stuff to themselves, but this…
LOL. I wonder how many weekly payments they had to make to get their Chrisco video camera?
The video camera would have been free for 18 months and then ACA/TT will hear about it.
LOL. Good point.
Once again Fiona who cares about your opinion. Go away and crawl under the rock you slivered out from from you putrid scank…oops I meant snake.
That’s scarier than watching Paranormal Activity – same hand held style, I screamed when she opened the fridge!! How long do you think they will have teeth for?? Maybe Skyandra will still have a full set when she’s married off at 16….
LOL. MARRIED? Hahahahaha. *choke*
I screamed when I realised that was apparently a kitchen.
LOL. Exactly the sort of kitchen one would expect from a family that “prepares” Chrisco produce…
oh my god was that a kitchen!? AHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Be very careful what you say about the products provided for Chrisco as they ARE trade mark names and their quality IS NOT a question you should comment on unless you want to be sued by these companies for defamation.
Oh Fiona of Toorak that’s just horrible. I havent seen anyone use a crate for a chair since my uni days.
That is so terribly sad – the quiet desperation – Chrisco hampers are no longer a source of fun, they are savage indictment on corporate lack of ethics
LOL. “Quiet desperation”? Where? I saw unadulterated glee (and list checking).
I do not know quite why, but that left me feeling very cold and empty. Did anyone else get that feeling?
Yep … just as I thought. TBL were saving one of their biggest piles of gold as a Christmas present to their fans!
This Christmas wish was brought to you by 43 easy instalments of only $2.20 per week.
a coupla’ slabs seems a bit light on for a very bogan christmas but I guess at a hundred a slab they’ve got no choice but to ration. Maybe Chrisco is really performing a public service – reducing binge drinking.
Off the Chrisco hamper topic, with a request for the TBL team to produce something special for us in 2010…
We all know that ‘Bogan is as what bogan does’, however folk some are more bogan than others. I think that the TBL team should make a “Bogometer”, which measures the level of boganity in a person. This could be done through a multiple choice questionnaire scorecard system. You could either award ‘boganity’ points for a particular answer, e.g. 6 points for ‘fuckin’ boganic’, 4 points for slighly boganic, 2 points for ‘non boganic’, 0 points for ‘angry, arsehole, bogan hating, TBL blogger snob’.
Or it could be set up so if your answered mostly A) You are a Bogue Nouveau, answered mostly B) You are an old school bogan, C) You’re pretty normal, but with mild bogan tendancies or D) You are an angry arsehole, bogan hating, TBL blogger snob!
Any further suggestions from other bloggers welcome!
Classifying the different bogan types could be quite complex as some types may be location specific.
I like your idea of a BQ test though.
You are all nasty people, I’ve had chrisco delivered since 1997, I don’t have anyone to help me at Christmas, I suffer from osteoarthritis badly. I don’t hold a license as I have been an epileptic since birth and I didn’t want to take a risk of injuring someone. They are a godsend to people like me, I know they are much dearer but trying to save all year is very hard, I’ve had Christmas accounts before but when I had hard times I would draw it out, if not for chrisco I wouldn’t have anything much for Christmas at all. Yes we get very excited when it is delivery time because this is food etc bought with money that we have gone without all year. I hate having to ask charities for help so this is what works for me! I have an education too but I’m too sick to work, we only have a social drink at Christmas or our birthdays, we don’t take drugs, we struggle every day of the year do you no, get off your thrones and live for a fortnight in our shoes and we’ll see how you manage everything. My bills are always paid, I don’t ask for help, I am a human being, please don’t call me those horrible names, we are all human beings whether we are rich or poor, I pray daily that is the only help I ask for. Next time can you all think before you say those horrible things about human beings without a choice please. I hope you all have a safe and merry Christmas! 🎄
LMAO this is hilarious!!!! does anybody actually know anyone that gets these things?
Yes, I have relative what get their Chrisco every year
Obviously I mant “relatives” back there.
These are bound to be best sellers next year:
http://www.chrisco.com.au/Peter-Brock
http://www.castlehampers.com.au/AC-DC-Bar-Pack
Note the “packed glasses for display only”
Where they go to complain……
http://www.notgoodenough.org/viewtopic.php?t=34817&start=0&postdays=0&highlight=
Working in booze, I must say that if anyone purchases any of those alcohol hampers I will track them down and beat them like red headed step-children till they give me the dole money they wasted.
LOL. OMG, that is HILARIOUS! TBL, I DEMAND a post about how bogans love to complain – and that you use this as THE definitive example.
I can’t understand a bloody word of that. I get the sense she either got something she didn’t order, or didn’t get something she ordered, or something along those lines. But really I couldn’t make much sense of it at all.
YOU DISGUST AND REPULSE ME WINO. My son has a disability SHOULD he be “tracked down and beat” him too. NOT funny beware those who donot respect others and take a delight out of others distress/misfortune fate has a way of making them pay.
No self-respecting bogan would drink their RTD’s at 275ml at a time though, so the display glasses would never be opened.
Can TBL please please do a segment on AMWAY. At least Chrisco is only TV ads. I have had numerous bogans trying to push the AMWAY of life upon me! I will defend the bogan here though. Chrisco is great for people like me who have no will power. Money sitting in my bank account for Christmas can often be mistaken for spending money when hardly standing at an ATM, one eye open in the middle of a packed night club!!
To answer the above question. My Aunti gets the Chrisco hamper every year. I often find her offloading the products she doesn’t like in the months following Christmas. lol.
Otherwise known as Scamway Azza.
When I was quite young, some old family friends came to stay with us. They came with Amway and ended up leaving a box of stuff, a thank you gift perhaps. A curious boy, I asked my mother what Amway is and she replied “a good way to lose friends”. We never saw them again.
I remember even at the impressionable age of 16, seeing the Chrisco ads on TV and finding it kind of suspicious that all the ‘satisfied customers’ looked like they had just walked into the studio from collecting their weekly dole payment at Blacktown Centrelink…
This topic is actually a bit out of place when talking about the Nouveau Bogan. It’s more the lower socio-economic bogan that gets into this sort of thing. The NB is at Lenards buying rolled turkey breasts and the local fishmonger’s getting 8 million kilos of prawns for the $3000 barbeque that was put in when the back yard was done up (ideas stolen from any number of garden makeover TV shows).
I’m a bit torn on Chrisco. It’s a total rip off, but on the one hand I can understand why people who struggle to live on what they have would like the idea of putting away a small amount each week/fortnight for Christmas. On the other hand, have they not ever heard of a Christmas club account?
Today, Xmas eve, the NB wife would be whipping up a Donna Hayes marinade, she’d be looking forward to getting her teeth into the new Bryce Courtenay Christmas offering that she knows her sister will by her. (It’s like they wheel him out every year mid- November to start flogging his latest historical novel consisting of 600 pages of shit padded out with adjectives).
Either Donna Hay or 4 Ingredients. In fact, the two women who wrote that and host the TV show are pretty much the Poster Girls for Nouveau Boganism.
The poster girl could also be with that cleaning woman who is always on Sunrise, telling boganettes how to get pen stains out of vinyl shoes using only bi-carb of soda and a stocking filled with borax. Close race
I’m happy to say I have never seen Sunrise. And it doesn’t sound like I’m missing much!
that shoul dof been “buy” her, not “by”….
LOL. You pick up the “buy” mistake but then write “should of”? L.O.L!
tis late in the day, and i only read bryce courtenay (and virgina andrews)……..I should have known better….
Your Freudian slip is AWESOME.
actually that shoudl have been Virginia , not Virgina LOL… I give up
Have you been into the cooking sherry again, dear Shandarleeer?
LOL. I suspect she’s overwhelmed by the excitement of her Chrisco hamper arriving.
Yes, she has been enjoying a few too many of the $10 RTD cans.
There should, nay must be an entry on the Boxing Day sales. Bogan dipshits queuing up a dozen deep to buy piles of crap that wasnt good enough to be sold at Christmas. I dont know whether to laugh or cry when I hear about these retards who line up for hours and then get trampled in the inevitable rush for shit. Is it really worth all that desperation to save 30% on a Target Blu-Ray player? Usually these are the same knuckle-draggers who complain that they spent waaaayyyy too much on Chrissie and now we have to do this.
I completely agree. What hell is wrong with these people. They should be at home with a hangover like the rest of us.
I was expecting #56 to be “Returning Unwanted Presents For Cash or Store Credit”. You should see the lines stretching outside Big W / Kmart / Target on the 27th, all heading straight for the customer service counter.
That video screams out your point so well it almost hurts.
GET SOME FISCAL MANAGEMENT AND STOP SPENDING YOUR “SPARE” MONEY ON BOOZE AND WINNIE BLUES.
I worked from July to November of 2009 on the production line, packing frozen Chrisco hampers at Blayney Foods (Blayney is a small country town, kinda situated between Bathurst and Orange in Central West NSW). Blayney Foods is a mutli-million dollar operation, owned by a private consortium, and packs all of Australia’s Chrisco hampers at the one distribution point.
The management are incredibly frugal when it comes to their employees – they pay base award rate and treat them to the bare minimum of entitlements.
The amount of processed food included in most of the frozen hampers is astounding. Essentially, what I consider to be, inedible “glop”.
The carbon footprint that the operation runs at is enormous – acres upon acres of freezer storage, vast amounts of plastic (shrink wrap), polystyrene (hampers) and cardboard packaging.
In short, by buying Chrisco you are:
1. Getting little-to-no value for money
2. Feeding your body mostly processed food that it won’t thank you for
3. Making an extremely wealthy consortium even richer
4. Contributing to the detriment of the environment
5. Probably receiving items you didn’t really want (it is highly unlikely that every single item contained in a hamper is something you would otherwise have bought)
6. Running the possibility of the hamper being delivered in an unsatisfactory state (thawed/unrefrigerated/mixed-up order), or perhaps not receiving it at all.
Rather than ordering hampers, consider doing yourself, and the environment, a favour:
Open a Christmas club account, contribute to it on a weekly basis as you would with any of the hamper people, and have a big shop-up just before Christmas. You’ll get better value for money and exactly the items that you want.
aah Blayney, one of the fucking coldest places in Australia!
Just saw an ad for them on the TV just then. The old lady said something along the lines of “people get so much crap that they’ve had to buy a spare freezer to put it all in! Infact, we’re now selling them!”. Yes, crisco are now selling whitegoods…
Indeed they are – http://www.chrisco.com.au/FISHER-AND-PAYKEL-Chest-Freezer
Same freezer being sold $120 cheaper @ Good Guys – http://www.thegoodguys.com.au/portal/page/portal/tggwebportal/corporate/products/search?storeId=8&groupId=9
You could probably take another $40 off for cash at least, making Chrisco an unbelievable product margin.
Just another way they can rip you off!
Bogans like payment plans, because it allows them to get shiny new stuff RIGHT NOW. The genius of Chrisco (aside from these phenomenal margins) is that they get the bogan to pay installments for 12 months BEFORE receiving their overpriced product. A stunningly rare feat. TBL
it makes me sad that people through their own ignorance or lack of intelligence have made a company like crisco and it’s directors/shareholders filthy rich. Could they not see that paying $100 for a case of fanta is just a rort??
No wonder that in the year 2009 the world is truly a fucked up place.
So sad.
Here, here. Everyday a die a little inside thinking about our world and where it is headed.
There’s a phenomenon in Queensland’s low socio-economic areas, particularly in the immediate south of Brisbane, where school absenteeism is rife in a certain week of the year, Chrisco Hamper Delivery Week. The bogans instruct their offspring to stay at home and let the Chrisco man in to deliver their overpriced bounty.
And how come Julia Gillard (different haircut) is sprouting the benefits of Chrisco? Shouldn’t she be running the country when Uncle Kevin’s away?
Just a suggestion for your NYE bogan research: a friend’s sister is one of those women who only dates HUGE men. The last one was an NRL player and she was seriously in shock when she discovered he had three other “girlfriends” at the same time as he was fully committed to her. Meanwhile she was choosing the ring and cutting out dresses from bridal mags.
Anyway, their plans are for a HUGE night at Harbour Party at Luna Park (Sydney we’re talking about). All the “communication” surrounding the event has been posted on Facebook and everything the bloke says involves a reference to how much they will drink and is signed off, in the manner of Jane Austen, with “fuck yeah!”.
Even the very notion of NYE is bogan to a degree, don’t you think? It is completely ephemeral (and capped off by the most ephemeral of spectacles, fireworks) and is used by bogans as yet another reason to get drunk, so that you can brag about the hangover and make banal exclamations along the lines of, “I can’t remember anything after nine o’clock!” and feel a part of something simply because there are a lot of people thinking and doing the same thing – just like the sporting teams they so ardently support. But in fact it’s probably one of the most impersonal experiences of each year. Celebrated in this way, NYE has as much authentic communal spirit as a bank ad.
Also, do consider homoeroticism for a future post. Bogan men are, I find, more than just a little obsessed with getting naked / having sex (with chicks!) in front of each other. Then there’s just the already identified preference for being artificially HUGE that concomitantly requires all the men to go without shirts at every available opportunity – as if it’s for pulling chicks.
Best post yet. Liked it.
is chrisco a NSW,Queensland thing? never heard of it,but does make me wonder the loudest people who scream aloud about the evils of boganism seem to be from these states particulary the country areas,from my travelling experiences of the people i have met in these two states you are surely on a river in Egypt ha ha(Fiona of Toorak is from Woolongong for sure)
Woolongong! Classic Bogan misspelling and all. Well done sir!
It’s not just the country. Bogans also infest the coastal towns and the N S W of N.S.W. Bogans are indeed everywhere. I should know, I grew up in Wollongong and took holidays was subjected to camping holidays in the South Coast. No Crisco hampers for me!
Not to be correcting you or anything, but these scams – er, I mean businesses – are hugely popular in the UK. Or they were, until the biggest one went bankrupt a few weeks before Christmas a few years ago.
LOL. Chrisco took their videos down from YouTube. I guess the derisive comments didn’t quite provide the marketing effect they were after:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ChriscoAustralia
I never knew what a Chrisco hamper was until this post. And now I know I’ll never want one.
Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.
Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.
Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in the world that’s worth a damn.
Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.
Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends’ houses but never has friends over to yours.
Being poor is living next to the freeway.
Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.
Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn’t mind when you ask for help.
Being poor is off-brand toys.
Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.
Being poor is knowing you can’t leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around.
Being poor is hoping your kids don’t have a growth spurt.
Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up before your mom gets home and then telling her she doesn’t have make dinner tonight because you’re not hungry anyway.
Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you.
Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.
Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal.
Being poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you.
Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights.
Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.
Being poor is a bathtub you have to empty into the toilet.
Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger’s trash.
Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.
Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.
Being poor is not taking the job because you can’t find someone you trust to watch your kids.
Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.
Being poor is not talking to that girl because she’ll probably just laugh at your clothes.
Being poor is hoping you’ll be invited for dinner.
Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.
Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.
Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.
Being poor is your kid’s teacher assuming you don’t have any books in your home.
Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.
Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.
Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.
Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.
Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.
Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn’t bought first.
Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that’s two extra packages for every dollar.
Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.
Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.
Being poor is knowing you’re being judged.
Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.
Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.
Being poor is deciding that it’s all right to base a relationship on shelter.
Being poor is knowing you really shouldn’t spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.
Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won’t listen to you beg them against doing so.
Being poor is a cough that doesn’t go away.
Being poor is making sure you don’t spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up.
Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.
Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.
Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.
Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.
Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.
Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.
Being poor is seeing how few options you have.
Being poor is running in place.
Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave.
Luckily you don’t need a chrisco hamper….
Well said! People don’t buy Chrisco hampers because they are ignorant! They buy them because the $10 – $15 a week that would otherwise get wasted on drink of ciggarettes by your spouse, or would get sucked away by everyday living, can actually go towards something practical. I have had 2 single mother friends buy a washing machine, sewing machine, lawn mower & other electrical apppliances from groups like this, knowing full-well they are paying $200 more than RRP for anything about $1000, but also knowing that the only other alternative is to use a credit card… Their kids are at school now & mums are working full time & have no use for Crisco etc, but gee, they were glad to have it’s use when they did!
I think that people who use the term “Bogan” in a derogatory way are one generation or less away from being one themselves, otherwise they wouldn’t be so desperate to point out how much better they are than these people.
One last thing:
Yes, yes, yes, you superior, witty oh-so-smug posters, products ARE cheaper when paid for by cash. WOW!! I am shocked that many of you actually went to the trouble of posting that, just so your fellow “I’m-a-Bogan-too-but-I-am-desperate-you-don’t-find-out” posters would see how smart you are. What people here don’t seem to understand is that many people do not have access to cash! DUH!!
sigh.
I don’t have a problem with satirical sites that poke harmless fun at generic groups of people such as “Bogans” or “Toorak Trash” or “Up-themselves Uni Students,” but when people publicly denigrate a group of children who have no choice in their particular lifestyle for enjoying an obvious treat that someone has undergone personal sacfifice to has provide, I find it absolutely offensive and disgusting.
And this rant is relevant to our post how? TBL
I agree.
Why can’t bogans just buy hampers from a site like http://www.thehamperemporium.com.au. Surely the beer hamper would be all they want compared to food for the family!
I myself have been ordering chrisco hampers for many years,and as suggested I knew of the extra I was paying to get these hampers.i live in an area where we always pay more because we live on an island in a remote area.so having the hampers delivered to our door was an not an unusual occurrence,as all of our groceries have to be delivered by barge or ferry.we have local shops yes,but in comparing the shop and the hampers there is not that much in price though there is in variety.so even though my children have grown up I will still continue to purchase from them until I either move or no longer can find anything to order. Okay you may say or call me a bogan for this ,so what,we are all different,no two are alike in our living arrangements,our finacial income,so each do what we have to do to get a roof over our heads and food on the table.this is my job as a mother and one I have not always got right,but to be called stupid or a bogan on these grounds I find offensive to say the least.
Re, I’m amazed there could be any location here in Australia where the price of goods is 3 times what it is at an ordinary supermarket.
What locale is that?
Chrisco is an absolute joke
Instead of blaming and calling people names maybe you should all look at yourselves. From some of the use of language there are many Bogans amongst us here. maybe we should be applauding them for actually trying to provide their kids with a good Christmas. there are many out there that don’t even bother. Maybe if banks bought back the old Christmas Club accounts where you could put away each week an amount that suited your financial situation and could not get it out till a certain date in December then these people would not need to rely on these companies.
maybe the greedy supermarkets which have been over charging for decades could introduce a system to help families struggling. give something back.
bogan is such an ugly word used by ugly people.
Australia’s supermarkets (read: Coles and Woolworths) are highly efficient, and run on pretty low margins by international standards. It’s deeply bogan to think that “big business” is automatically ripping you off, and it’s enthusiastically cultivated by Today Tonight and A Current Affair. TBL
Thank you, I used to deposit money in Christmas accounts once but they stopped the fact that you had tomleave it there until December, they were giving it out as a normal account, when times are tough of course you’re going to withdraw it, which means nothing at Christmas.
It’s not just ordinary grocery items now either they now have the Chrisco Travel Club where bogans can pay off a holiday in advance and pay at least double what it costs to book it all yourself.
I believe everyone that posts on this forum is probably from Broadmeadows or some similar working class suburb. You’re all just don’t want to admit it
Whoever wrote this article is a real jelous tool.
omg you have to be kidding me right I don’t think any of you know what it is like to live week by week and make sure that your kids have a decent up bringing and have things that they deserve I am a mother of 3 I am on centrelink I can not just go out one week and say yes I want that for my kids and pay the $300 price tag you can all call me a fucking bogan for all I care being a person who did grow up poor and was lucky to get 2 presents under the tree well I was grateful I watched my mum struggle all those years resorting to stealing so we could have a Christmas. I never wanted that for my children and yes I will pay more by buying chrisco but at least I know my kids will get the Christmas every year that I never saw as a child obviously all you fucking assholes have money to throw around and waste well I don’t I have $50 left over every week and I chose to put that towards chrisco so when Christmas does come I don’t have to stress about buying my kids stuff they would never be able to have if I didn’t so yes I spend that money on chrisco my kids get there awesome presents and by the time Christmas comes around and I have spent all my money on food bills clothes and anything else that needs to paid with no money left I will always know its all good I have chrisco and I can give my kids a Christmas they deserve like many families who do the same see unlike all you fuck heads I put my kids first and provide for them I don’t buy booze hampers or food hampers etc I buy toys I buy stuff for my children and I am so very grateful to chrisco
How is paying 3 times the recommended retail price for stuff not wasting money or properly providing for you kids? Ever heard of setting up a christmas account? Talk to you bank and have them automatically set up monthly transfers just like Chrisco does and then you can get the money out before christmas and go and buy them 3 times the amount of stuff that you would have gotten through Chrisco. If you can’t see that Chrisco are ripping you blind for things you could easily get yourself at a third of the price then you truly are a bogan.
Lol see I compare the prices to the shops and I’m spending an extra $10 omg what a mark up you don’t see the point obviously. You all say the mark up is 3 times the amount what a load of bullshit it isn’t I got gift cards this year so I did have “money” to spend and omg I spent an extra $8 per gift card. With everything I bought this year through chrisco I spend a whooping $60 extra than I would if I went to the shop what a big deal and as for this stupid Christmas account shit you are all going on about well both my banks don’t do it and I’m not going to open another account with a different bank when I don’t have to. See I’m not fucking stupid I do my research I compare prices if something is more than $10 compared to the shop I don’t get it but $60 is here nor there I count it as a delivery fee which is a cheap fee considering for example I got toys r us gift cards I went to buy something online a big play table and train set they wanted $107 in delivery so please once again how am I a bogan when I’m saving money. I use my common sense maybe some of you should to.
Arrgh, I’m spewing because I’m not a fucking asshole with bags of it.
Chrisco isn’t for normal, forward planning people. It’s designed to take small amounts of money from someone who would otherwise spend the money on gambling, booze and ciggies. It’s a total scam, but at least those people’s kids won’t go without at Christmas, because their slack parents cannot budget. I think case workers help people sign up when they think that the family may be in that situation. I can’t imagine how sad it would be for the children that go without food during the year, not only Christmas. It’s unfortunate that Chrisco capitalizes on these families but at least some good might come of it.
How is chrisco bogan?
i know people with over a $350,000 salary that get chrisco!
How dare you .idiot, some people do look at the prices they over charge and only order items that do not have much of an inflated price .never buy their food .Get store cards instead. How dare you call everyone bogans you arrogant fool .People on low income do not need your opinions. If you had some positive information on ordering from these predators,you have insulted everyone .Grow up immature one.
Only thing more bogan than Chrisco is BigFooty.com.au.