Richer Sounds - Poorer Delivery (Richer Sounds)

Member Name: john.sw

Product:	Richer Sounds
Date:	14/06/01 (573 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good Range, Good Prices, Good Guarantees

Disadvantages: Slow delivery, Poor order tracking

As well as its online store, Richer Sounds has branches in major cities around the UK, selling hi-fi separates at rock bottom prices. If, like me, you don’t live near a city the online store is useful, but be prepared to wait a couple of weeks for your goods to arrive!

The web site is not the most intuitive to navigate, but once you find your way around you will find an amazing array of bargain hi-fi from the big names.

In the middle of June 2001 Richersounds.com still has one or two “Christmas” offers – which shows that they are not exactly on the ball when it comes to updating. Neither are they on the ball when it comes to e-commerce. My order was placed and an auto-responder confirmed the order immediately.

The site warns you to be prepared to wait seven working days for delivery and claims that they will contact you by email or telephone if there is going to be any delay.

Having waited patiently for seven working days I emailed Richer Sounds to chase up the order – my email bounced back twice; this would have worried me if I had not been a customer for the best part of 20 years and had not known that they are a reputable company!

My third email got through and I was told that the order would be despatched that evening and should be with me by the following Wednesday. Two weeks after I had placed the order I was getting a little frustrated. I telephoned their after-sales line in London only to be greeted by a message telling me that all their operators were busy and that I should leave my name and number and they would get back to me in the next 24 hours! Twenty-four hours is a long time to wait, considering that companies like buy.com can take an online order and deliver it within 24 hours!

As it happens, the next day, the goods arrived – and excellent they are too. A day after that I had a call from Richer Sounds asking how they could help. It was a bit late, but at
least they returned my call!

If you are like me and like to get your grubby little hands on your goods as soon as possible, and unlike me, live near a Richer Sounds store, you may be better off going in person.

Richer Sounds is an excellent shop and has some unbeatable prices, but they really need to get their act together as far as e-commerce is concerned.

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