Wow? Hardly. (cd-wow.com)

Member Name: ben_83

Product:	cd-wow.com
Date:	14/07/01 (192 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very, very low prices (£8.99 inc. P&P), CDs are packed well

Disadvantages: Poor website, not much to choose from, CD is the only format available, the albums are imported, delivery times are ludicrous, they don't tell you if an item is out of stock, no paper receipt is sent out

Along with books, CDs are the things that technophobes and internet newbies are most likely to buy on the web, hence the proliferation of sellers. CD-WOW is a music retailer I hadn't come across since recently and, to be honest, would have totally ignored if they didn't sell CDs for £8.99 (inclusive of postage and packaging) and their name wasn't a blatant rip-off of e-commerce giant CDNOW.

Let's go back to the start though. To be blunt, CD-WOW's website is crap. I could knock up something of similar quality in half an hour with Notepad and Paint Shop Pro. If you'll forgive me for using technical terms, their use of tables (as viewed in Netscape Navigator at least) is atrocious leaving some of the pages optimised for 1024x768 resolution and some for 800x600. For those of us running low screen resolutions, this signals the totally unnecessary appearance of the dreaded horizontal scroll bar. Aesthetically, it's not much better. The colours clash, the front page is cluttered and the site has a general feeling of cheapness that is absent from more established web sellers.

When it comes to the selection of items on offer, CD-WOW also fails to impress. Most of the albums on offer were made in the last couple of years or so (don't go there looking for an obscure recording from years past) and they don't even carry the most important artists' whole back-catalogue. A search for the Red Hot Chili Peppers found only three items and the result for Michael Jackson was even worse at only two items. On top of this, every single album CD-WOW carry is available on CD only which is next to inexcusable when new formats such as MiniDisc and even MP3 (a lot of music sites are now selling music in data format) are gradually killing off our shimmery friend and vinyl is still so important.

Still, the prices are rock-bottom, right? Well, in monetary terms yes but there are other sacrifices to be made. Being a seasoned web sh
opper, I am very dubious when I see sites boasting seemingly bargain prices because there is almost always a catch. Usually it is a hefty postage charge added on to your order at the last minute but what makes CD-WOW slightly less good than they'd want you to think is that the albums they sell are imported from Hong Kong. This has two disadvantages. The first is that the album may not be the same edition as the one sold in the UK. If you want to make sure that you're not being diddled out of any tracks a visit to another music retailer on the web which sells the UK edition (such as Amazon.co.uk) is a must. The second disadvantage is that you have to wait ages for your CDs to arrive: your order is sent by airmail from Hong Kong which means it will take a week to get to you.

That is, of course, if the album you've ordered is in stock. I stupidly assumed that CD-WOW would tell me before I placed my order if any of the items were out of stock. However, I received an e-mail shortly after completing the payment process telling me that one of the albums I had ordered was out of stock and that it would take two weeks to reach me. How hard is it to inform the buyer before they place their order that their CD is out of stock? Could it be that CD-WOW are scared of loosing business to sites with bigger warehouses so deliberately neglect to tell you whether the album you want is in stock?

When your order finally gets to you you'll find that everything is packed well (although not quite as well as, say, Amazon.co.uk or Gameplay) but, annoyingly, CD-WOW don't send you a paper receipt (as apposed to an electronic one). This is the first time this has ever happened when I have ordered something from a website and smacks of amateurishness. I'd imagine it also makes it a lot harder to return items too.

In summary, CD-WOW's prices are excellent but a poor website, a serious lack of selection and the fact that the CDs are imported a
ll mitigate to lower its rating considerably. If you only buy chart music and can put up with playing out-of-stock-Russian-roulette and waiting for ages for your albums then CD-WOW is a site you'll use many times but I think I'll stick with its more comprehensive competitors.

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