buy buy buy (buy.com)

Member Name: Cheuk

Product:	buy.com
Date:	04/06/01 (47 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good clean web site, Reasonably price, free phone customer service, and free delivery available

Disadvantages: Customer service still not perfect, Quirky search engine, Lengthy waits for orders out of stock or on order

Well regular readers of my opinions will be used to my criticisms of customer service. You may be surprise that buy.com has escaped relatively unscathed. Don't worry, I'm not getting soft in my old age, but customer service has been good.

GB Buy.com has been bought by John Lewis, and the price is not as cheap as it once was. However free delivery is available after a spend of over 40 pounds.
Also have free phone numbers as well.
Order tracking available and is good.


The website

Normally very quick to get to the site and very easy to move around, though the search engine can get rather quirky. For example creative labs doesn't get recognised, but adding a * afterwards corrects the matter. The site is clear but could do with more details of the products, as some product details are rather sketchy and two products may sound similar but vary in price.

I have shopped with buy.com mainly for consumables, but one experience in trying to purchase the Zip 250 USB host powered drive wasn't the best experience, with customer service telling me they can't divulge much more on the details of the products! However this was a one off (I hope) and I've bought ink cartridges since.

Taking part in an electronic coupon promotion wasn't particularly helpful either with the coupon being faulty. Thankfully customer service was on song. Expecting to be put on hold and in a queue I was pleasantly surprised to find my call answered instantly at 9pm at night! I was told to email them the promotion details and that the response time was about 24 hours. Well I was surprised to find a response the next morning. After following the advice I further emailed them and got replies the next day. After further solutions which didn't work, and customer service provided a step by step guide with them calling my mobile phone whilst I was surfing from my phone line. Again this failed, so I was told
to place the order as normal and to send them an email with the order number and the original promotions and this would be sorted out.

The order was placed and this was confirmed by email. I then started to track the order and was told that this was delayed because of problems. Tut tut, customer service should have got in touch with me. Anyway ringing them sorted out the problem, which was with the credit card, which needed to be authorised for use, (my mistake) but good to see adequate precautions against credit card fraud was in place.

The order arrived within 2 days. However I was charged the full price and before I could get round to calling customer services again, I received an email confirming my credit card was credited with the appropriate promotional refund. Well better late than never.

Overall the prices of most products are reasonable and delivery is normally good if the item is in stock. Less good when the item is on order or out of stock, but then this is beyond their control.

OK customer service admittedly is still not the best and could be improved much further, but at least I wasn't left on hold and frustrated as they pass you around. Best of all the number is free phone so they're paying for the call! Overall I was satisified. Yes you heard right.

Summary: