Services

A lot of services are available in our town. These are tailor shops, shoemakers’, barbers’ shops, dry
cleaner’s, watchmaker’s, photographer’s, repair shops for radios, televisions and household gadgets.
At the photographer’s:
- you can have your photo taken, photos developed
- you can have snapshots printed.
At the watchmaker’s:
- you can have your watch repaired, set if it is slow or fast
- you can have the battery changed if it has run down.
At the shoemaker’s:
- you can have your shoe heels or soles repaired if they want repairing
- he can sew or patch them .
At the dry cleaner’s:
- you can have any stains removed from your fur coat
- you can have a piece of clothes dyed if you want to change the colour of it.
At the barber’s:
- you can have your moustache and beard trimmed
- you can have a haircut, shampoo or shave.
At the hairdresser:
- you can have you hair cut/ permed /dyed/tinted according to the dictates of fashion.
At the tailor or dressmaker:
- you can have a new suit made, your ready-to-wear suits altered
- you can have your dress taken in/ let out/ turned up/ let down if it is too baggy/too tight/ too long/
too short…
- if you want to have a new suit made, you need lining, buttons, zip-fasteners…
(At home you can sew the come off buttons, you can darn the socks if they have a hole in them.)
At the garage:
- if you have got a car, you need to take it for the usual MOT
- the car mechanics gives it a check-up and repairs any parts that do not work properly
- he changes the plugs, replaces the oil filter, re-sets the ignition.
At the post office:
- you can buy stamps, coins, postcards, letter writing papers and envelopes at the counter for the sale
of stamps.
- there is a newspapers and magazines counter which sells the latest issues of all dailies, weeklies,
monthlies, quarterlies and annuals. You can buy them at the spot or subscribe to them.
- there is the parcel post, which handles all parcels and packages. There is a parcel balance where
your parcel is weighed and you have to fill in a form.
- you can send money by money order or by cheque at the money order counter
- you can send letter by registered post, air mail, express, recorded delivery, ordinary mail or slip it
into the post-box
- you can send a telegram
- you can have a saving account or buy bonds
- you can pay your rent, your bills for gas, electricity, telephones, insurance etc.
- you can buy lottery and football pool
At the bank:
Banks offer a wide variety of services. They deal with savings, payment services, lending, insurance,
foreign currency exchanges, leasing, giving advice on investments. Nowadays banks provide
telebanking services, it means that people use their phones or the Internet to give orders to the banks
to carry out different business transactions. And customers can check their accounts on the Internet
or by phone.
At the petrol station:
People go to the gas station to fill the tank of their gas. There is usually a shop next to the station
where you can buy refreshment drinks and different kinds of food. You can drink coffee and buy
newspapers, magazines etc. If you travel for a long time, you can relax a bit, refresh yourself and
then go on travelling. One of the advantages of the petrol stations is that they are open non-stop.
However, they are usually very expensive.