Why shop online with Carphone Warehouse? (carphonewarehouse.com)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	carphonewarehouse.com
Date:	15/08/00 (171 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of concise info, Easy to navigate, Fast loading pages

Disadvantages: No cheaper than High Street

If you are unsure of what you are looking for in a mobile phone, tariff, or service provider, then a trip to the Carphone Warehouse should go a long way to solve any problems you might have. As you may guess from the name, the shop originally started out selling car phones to businesses and people who spent a large amount of time in their vehicles, but this has now changed so that they sell mobile phones and accessories.

With the Carphone Warehouse (CW from now on) being an independent retailer, it is able to cover all the mobile networks with detailed information on all the products and tariffs that it offers, and not be biased towards a specific network due to contractual obligations.

So – onto the web site proper then. The front page loads fairly quickly to a plain-ish site with little information, but lots of promising looking links e.g. mobile encyclopaedia (wittily called "Encyclopaedia Mobilia"), online store, store locator etc.

There's a navigation menu at the site which helps you get around the site, and they have split the site into six main categories, some of which are links on the main body: home, online store, company information, contact Carphone Warehouse, Company Policies and the aforementioned "Encyclopaedia Mobilia".

First of all, let's take a look at the most interesting part of the site – the "Encyclopaedia Mobilia". It claims to be a source for almost all the information on mobile phones and mobile technology you could need, and to be honest, it does appear that they could be telling the truth. Not only does it downloadable customer guides (in PDF format) for you to read and use, but also has information on new technology, a complete guide to mobile phones, help on using the site, FAQs (frequently asked questions) and a glossary of all the terms used. All in all, this seems to be a very useful area of the site, especially if you need some information on what&
#39;s going on in the world of mobile telecommunications.

Their contact pages are very concise with not only lots of contact points via email and phone, but also a handy store locator that will locate Carphone Warehouse stores near a city/address that you type in.

The only other bit of information of any relevance is how good the online store is. From the main page of the online store, you can see that the CW sells mobiles on lots of different networks and tariffs, ring tones for your mobile, phones for landlines, PDA's (handheld organisers) and other accessories. CW appears to have a wide variety of things to sell – not only the phones themselves, but carry cases, leads, covers etc. from this point of view they seem to be very good indeed. Now, there's one thing I simply do not understand about the CW Online shop. The prices on the Carphone Warehouse web site are no cheaper than you would get if you walked into your local CW and bought something there. I know that it's not the law for online retailers to be cheaper than their high street counterparts, but surely CW should realise that people who use the Internet are now more than capable of hunting down the best prices?

As far as I can remember, this is the first online shop where the prices online are no cheaper than those in the High street, which I consider a bit weird and not really a good advertisement for WC Online.

On one hand their information is very good with an easy to navigate web site and some nice features like the "Encyclopaedia Mobilia" or the "Assistant" in the actual store part of the site, but the prices are just not going to tempt you to buy while you are there.

My advice is to shop around the Web - you're bound to find what you want at a cheaper price!

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