Locating stock at Argos

Ed_Stirling

Any ideas for locating stock - i.e., getting a list of stores at which an item is available... rather than having to check individual stores with the "super efficient" online stock locator where you have to check (tick box) one store at a time after putting in the post code or town?

33pelter

You can phone the one near you and go through all the press 1 press 6 and all and then type in the item number and they will say if they got it thought it is quite slow

Ed_Stirling

Actually I was looking at some clearance items and there was this process of checking your local store, then one by one other local stores...

Very time consuming and hit and miss. I just wanted to quickly find where they had stock of that item... without having to call an "0870" number...

A sort of country-wide stock check that cuts to the chase!

Lugh_Chronain

Try phoning head office 01908 690333, I found this more helpful. There head office is in Milton Keynes.

seth

Ed_Stirling wrote:

Any ideas for locating stock - i.e., getting a list of stores at which an item is available... rather than having to check individual stores with the "super efficient" online stock locator where you have to check (tick box) one store at a time after putting in the post code or town?

It would be possible to check an item against all the stores by post code, automatically.

I do this manually with local stores post code taken from the store locator (using near by town names) to broaden my local search.

As you say there is no easy way, but with a list of post codes of stores it would be possible to write a something to automate the search. Would take 7s times the number of stores to run, as that is how long the stock check by store takes (worst case). So say 700 store (just a guess) that is 7x700 or 4900 seconds or about 81 minutes to run an automated scan on a store by store basis country wide. But a localised scan would e quicker: Had a quick scan and the google mapping API returns a good hit 100% for "argos ltd" this could be used for post code extraction and look would take a 50 mile radius scan down to under 4 minutes.

Perhaps the mods could ask the flightchecker crew or Martin to look into this? An argos stock scanner? Problem with having a centralised one would be that Argos could just black list its IP address. So a program you installed on your PC might be a better solution?

Seth.

Ed_Stirling

That's probably what is needed!

Just a pity the Argos search is so restrictive... I mean being able to check all the 'local' stores at once (say up to 10) instead of one at a time would be better for the customer - no?

Maybe one of our MSE computer whizz kids can come up with something...