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ARGOS - CURRYS - VIRGIN: How *NOT* to do e-business

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Comments

  • There is definitely a delivery charge shown on the checkout page

    The screenshot isn't of the checkout page its of the page where you choose store or delivery. At that stage the site doesn't know whether anything in the basket qualifies for free delivery . For all we know, had the OP actually gone through to the checkout the standard delivery charge wouldn't have been applied. We don't know whether anything else was in the basket to which the delivery charge applied.
  • QuackQuack_2
    QuackQuack_2 Posts: 268 Forumite
    edited 14 September 2011 at 3:16PM
    Techhead wrote: »
    I may be missing something but the Argos screenshot doesn't show a delivery charge, just the item price.
    Yep, you're missing something - it's highlighted in grey where I've dragged the cursor over it.

    This is opposed to it showing free delivery - like it does here on a Fridge Freezer - again, highlighted/marked in grey:

    argosdelfree.jpg
    Techhead wrote: »
    The screenshot isn't of the checkout page its of the page where you choose store or delivery.
    2 things. 1 - see above, 2 - naturally I went through the whole process to the point of putting in a card number before I bailed and I can assure you the delivery charge never gets taken off. As a rule I would not tend to go to the trouble of such a detailed post - with pictures - if I'd not gone through the whole process.

    Moving on to your next point:
    Techhead wrote: »
    That's entirely my point, not in a fibre optic cable area doesn't mean not in a cable area at all. (Traditional cable isn't fibre optic)
    Let me just clarify this for you - because despite the fact NTL/VIrgin have been delivering their services by fibre to the node/cabinet since it was installed here in 1993 - I wanted to be clear that they were not using any other technology. The wording on the website if you can get any services on 'cable' from Virgin reads:
    You're in a Virgin Media fibre optic cable area, so you can enjoy
    ...list of services follows.....

    If you are not in a cabled area (where the cable - be it coax, utp,wireless, wetstring or fibre is *not* owned by Virgin) the website displays the message I quoted yesterday.

    Virgin went on to say I could get 50Mb broadband over fibre on the phone - so even if there was some tiny, technical pedantic word-play on their website availability checker, it would still have been wrong.

    Back to Argos
    The Argos site went on to be a further delight with the fridge freezer that I purchased. You enter your billing address and delivery address (if different, which it is) separately, as I did. You double check this, as I did. You get to the payment page, put in your card details - confirming with a separate Visa security pop-up, which I did. Imagine my surprise to find they were the wrong way round in my confirmation email. A call to them and they insist it is my fault (despite the screenshots which I always take) saying different. Even stepping back from that and entertaining the 'perhaps I did get it wrong' notion (despite the fact I can see I have not from my screenshots)' how could they possibly have authorised the Visa transaction with the *wrong* billing address! That would make a bit of a mockery of the security.

    The moral of the tale - I'd have been better forgetting using the web and calling in the first place........
  • Just following myself up a bit - here is something else you *don't* do in e-retail, courtesy of Argos.......

    argosshut.jpg

    I first started to see it last night, it's been doing it much of the afternoon.

    It did cross my mind to follow the directions on the above page and call them to check stock, but after the 34 minutes it took me to get through yesterday.....
    argoscall.jpg
    ... I think I'll wait.

    As for Virgin - as someone rightly points out, they turned out to be so expensive and inflexible that I was left with no choice than to go with a Sky package.
  • tahrey
    tahrey Posts: 135 Forumite
    antrobus wrote: »
    Well they might be as far as you're concerned. However, as far as the rest of the world is concerned Argos is owned by the Home Retail Group (HRG) and Currys is owned by the Dixons Stores Group (DSG) and are thus two quite different companies, both of whom would likely be equally annoyed that anyone thought that one was owned by the other.

    Edit: Or what the previous chap said.:)

    Ha... I somehow saw my typo there before your post, so it's already corrected. Had a slight brainfart. Same as with the company groups. I think I confused Argos with Dixons or something.

    Argos is however affiliated with Homebase and a few others. I guess they guard their own niches quite effectively this way. Electronics on one side, general home and garden wares on the other.

    And heck, Virgin... meh. The cable service was a pretty coolio thing back in the day, particularly when they launched their replay thing before iPlayer actually existed. However, the prices keep going up, and the USP keeps diminishing. Practically the only one left is that they genuinely do offer unlimited bandwidth - when my brother was living at home, he would torrent so much, 24/7, that the 3rd party router would occasionally lock up. But our Bham Cable / Telewest / Virgin connection just kept on ticking, and never any letters, threats, etc.

    What they have started doing recently is quite sharply limiting transfer speed depending on how much you've downloaded that day. So, up to about 5~10Gb (still the full month's allowance for some other plans!) you get full speed... then about the same again at half speed... then everything else is at one-quarter speed. It sort of acts as a less intrusive (unless you're trying to stream HD TV!) overall transfer cap, but you can still chug through 40Gb in a day quite easily on "upto 10mbit" if you're committed.

    Myself, I got thru a little over 60gb total on Plusnet last month, and 94% of the 10Gb daytime allowance. Depending how things go this month, I may just pay the extra £5 a month in advance and stop worrying about scheduling the downloads, getting them whenever I want instead (and being able to watch live streaming stuff more often). It'll still be vastly cheaper than Virgin... and as almost all the main freeview channels have streaming replay services now, that's one of Virgin and Sky+'s main selling points gone if you don't mind the loss of premium channels (personally, I couldn't give two short poops)
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