I was thinking this week about King Camp Gillette, erstwhile razor mogul. He’s often credited with inventing – and certainly warmly embracing – the business model that sees organisations ‘give away’ a product and then continually charge for essential accessories that are locked into the giveaway.

In his case, it was a razor, but the blades were the ongoing essential purchase. Of course, only his blades fitted his tool.

The grift that keeps on grifting.

You see the same with funky, affordable coffee machines and the subsequent ambush with extortionately priced pods.

Similarly, software manufacturers lock you in with freebies and tan your hide with subscriptions and add-ons once you’re dependent on their product.

And of course publishers sell magazine subscriptions at a loss, but that creates a customer base that convinces commercial monothiths to spooge up on advertising to a captive audience.

The list goes on. It’s a cracking ruse and all perfectly legal.

Now, spare a thought for whomever is heading up sales at Remington.

Remington make great products that seemingly last forever. I’ve recently bought one at a steal, and it’s the best thing since sliced beard.

They too follow the model, but there are a few ingrowing hairs in its application.

First, they apply all sorts of technical coding to their replacement products but don’t publish anything that clarifies compatibility. As a result, it’s a battle to find which foils & blades fit which implement. They don’t even sell most of them on their own site.

Online retailers are equally in the dark, so search for replacements on Amazon or the like, citing your model, and the wrong results come back.

Those retailers who have worked it out (bravo!) have a further problem – they cannot get hold of stock.

No matter how ingenious the model might be, it isn’t going to fly if customers cannot hitch onto the second, lucrative leg of the journey.

I accidentally creased and split a foil during the cleaning process and was suddenly gagging for a replacement.

A swift communication to customer services via their, ahem, contact form seems to have not turned a hair. I must be at the back of the barber queue but already feel frazzled.

I’m not sure that Victor Kiam would’ve been so impressed as to buy the company on the current showing.

After all, how are they making any dough?