BOL vs. AMAZON (bol.com)

Member Name: r_machin

Product:	bol.com
Date:	14/10/01 (164 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very Fast Delivery, Cheap, Easy to use

Disadvantages: -, -, -

I am a student at Staffordshire University studying a Beng Software Engineering. We were told which books we would need to buy for reading material for the course.

So, tuesday evening at around 9pm, I decided to use my fathers credit card and order the books that I need. I decided to buy a total of 4 books.

I had a look at five different sources, 2 were high street bookshops(WHSmiths & Webleys), 1 was the university bookshop, and the other two were BOL.com and AMAZON.co.uk.

I found that BOL.com and AMAZON.co.uk were considerably cheaper than their high street rivals. So, I investigated further.

** AMAZON.co.uk **
For delivery of books, Amazon charge £2.16 per order, which I only intended on having 1, and a further £0.59 per item within the order. So, £2.16 and 4 items came to a total delivery charge of £4.52

The availability at amazon was 3 to 5 weeks for one, and 24 to 72 hours for the other three.

The price of the books at Amazon were slightly more expensive, between 1 and 5 pound difference.


** BOL.com **
For delivery of books, BOL.com charge £2.95 per order, no matter how many books you order. This gives a saving of £1.57 to start with.

The availability at BOL.com was 24 to 48 hours for 2 books, and 3 to 7 days for the other two books.

The price of the books at BOL.com were cheaper than amazon.co.uk


** The decision **
I now had to make the decision. Whether to go with Amazon or BOL.

Well, BOL.com were the obvious choice from what I wrote above, but I had already ordered from Amazon before and BOL.com would be a new venture.

The experience with amazon.co.uk was, what you could say, disappointing. The problem with Amazon.co.uk was with the delivery. I ordered two books, with delivery at 1-2 weeks. So I waited two weeks, and received 1 book, and an email saying that they could not deliver the other book, they gave me back the mo
ney for the book, but no money back for delivery. I purchased these two books using a gift voucher of £10. So, they gave me about £4 back, and as you can see, by time I pay for P&P again, I would not have enough for any half decent book.

Anyway, back to the books. I decided to try BOL.com. So, off i went to the website and ordered the books. This was about 9pm, remember, and went to bed. I went to university the next day, and it went slowly as you could emagine. The next day came (thursday), I was not expecting the books at all. One arived that morning, less than 48 hours later, I went to university again, and when I got back, the second book had arived. The postman could not fit it in his bag, thats why it did not come the same time as the first book.

So far, I am really impressed with BOL.com, they are a lot better than Amazon.co.uk.

It has now been 4 days and have not received the other two books, but it did say 3 to 7 days, so I am expecting them Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

My advise would be to scrap Amazon.co.uk, and join BOL.com. BOL deliver a lot faster, and dont mess you around.


** UPDATE **
I am just updating this opinion, to let oyu know that I have received all the books. I did receive them on the Monday, as stated above.

Also, I have recently pre-ordered Metal Gear Solid 2, which is a game for the PS2, which is expected to be absolutely brilliant.

I ordered this game from BOL.com, because once again delivery was cheaper, and the price was actually cheaper. I got my copy of the game for only £35 including delivery.

I did not, however, receive my game on the day of its release, which I was hoping for. I received it on the teusday (Released the friday before).

I also received another copy on the thursday, which was the copy that i had cancelled. I have contacted BOL, and they said that they would refund the price I paid, and if it was their fault
that it was sent, they would refund any postage I would pay to send it back, which is really fair I think.

Also, about the delivery of this game. I received the email saying that it had been dispatched on the monday night, and as said, it was in my post the very next morning. Now is that fast or what?

Summary: