Fantastic Freemans! (Freemans)

Member Name: Loopykate

Product:	Freemans
Date:	24/07/04 (212 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good choice, Reasonable prices, No interest

Disadvantages: Womenswear a bit weird sometimes!

I have ben an agent for Freemans for over 7 years now, and I can honestly say that it is by far the best catalogue available.

I began using Freemans whilst still a very poverty-striken student.My boyfriend and I were moving into a new rented house and we were minus a sofa. At that time I certainly couldn't afford to nip into a big sofa shop and buy one outright, so I ordered one through Freemans. This meant that I could spread the cost but pay no interest.

The sofa was great...so was the next one...also the digital cameras..the home gym...the vacuum cleaner...the mattress...the microwave...the curtains...the CD player...etc etc!!

Over the years I have certanly spent a fair whack of my money via Freemans, but as you get commission at a decent rate I also found that you could inadvertantly amass some savings too. Recently I cashed in my commission and received a cheque for over £400! This somehow felt like "free" money, as it was collected over a good few years (NB I used it to buy a very swish sofa from that sofa shop I had avoided years back!)

The range of items in the Freemans catalogue is excellent: personally I tend to buy more for my partner than myself as the womenswear range is not as good as the menswear. For me, it has a mixture of the very young, hip, OTT fashions and the very frumpy stuff. Also, being the odd shape that I am I find that things may not fit. My partner finds exactly the opposite, and lots of his clothes, including some nice suits, have been bought from Freemans. He like the "Joe Browns" surf clothes and giftwear too.

The homewares section is very good, with some really reasonably-priced and very trendy furniture. You sometimes have to wait a while to receive a large object like a sofa or bed, but after having waited 14 weeks to get a piece of furniture from a well-known furniture outlet, this is not really a problem. The electrical items are also well-priced: recently I bou
ght a great stainless steel microwave for under £50 and a vacuuum for less than £80.

If you need to return anything then you have the choice of going through a courier or returning it at the Post Office. Both methods are free. If there is a fault with an item (a vacuum cleaner I bought stopped working) then Freemans is very good with returns. You just fill in a simple form stating the reason why. In the case of the faulty vacuum they arranged for a new one to be delivered within a matter of 2 days. They actually arranged it so that the courier picked up the old one at the same time to save me having to have 2 hoovers in my house at the same time.

Freemans regularly send out sale brochures with special offers, and these can be really good value. In the current one there is a Vodafone Sendo for less than £80 and a Fuji digital camera for less than £100. In the same mini-catalogue are plenty of brand-name clothes, such as Vans surf T-shirts for £10 and a DKNY cardie for £27.50. These are real bargains, so it is important to snap them up quickly as they sell out fast. You also get free offers come through the post now and again, where you get bags, umbrellas, jewellery etc for free if you order something.

You can usually get through to Customer Services or the Orderline very quickly, but these days I find that the website, www.freemans.com, is even easier. You can order items and pay your monthly bills here too. I wouldn't bother with the online Customer Service email facility...they take too long to reply and I think that a straight phone-call is far quicker and more convenient.

Freemans began for me a a handy way of obtaining a £400 sofa when all I could afford was £60 a month. I have continued to use it over the years because I feel it is a great way of spreading the cost of expensive items over a good few months, without incurring any interest at all. At Christmas time this proves to be invaluable, as I can buy plenty of press
ies and spread the cost over a few months. The catalogue prices are very reasonable: most electrical items, for example, are only about £5-£10 more than you would pay in a High Street store. For me being able to buy now and pay later is worth that £5. It's not like a credit card where you pay a huge amount every month just to cover interest: I pay about £62 a month and if I don't buy anything my account soon goes down to zero. You can even have the option of "buy now, pay in a year's time", but I don't bother with this as my monthly payments are fine.

In short I think that Freemans is a great catalogue, offers fantastic service, and is an excellent way of purchasing goods. Very highly recommended!

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