Comet soars above the rest (Clearance-comet.co.uk)

Member Name: kellylouj

Product:	Clearance-comet.co.uk
Date:	05/02/08 (1706 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lower priced products, bargains to be had, 12 month warranty.

Disadvantages: Not consistent stock levels

After moving in with my partner and leaving the luxuries of living with our parents and living on our own for the first time we both hit a problem....who was going to do the dishes? You may think with just 2 of us then it could be equally shared but no, my partner said he would only do the dishes if we had a dishwasher.... I was not keen and carried on washing up but coming home to a sink filled with plates and cold, smelly water was really starting to get on my nerves and after several arguments I found myself giving in to my partner and letting him get his own way and purchasing a dishwasher.

As I had set him a very limited budget I thought he would struggle and realise the true cost of purchasing one (he is a little ignorant to the cost of general household products and thinks everything we can afford!) until he returned home from work triumphant that he had grabbed a bargain from the Comet Clearance website.

*~*About Comet Clearance*~*

Comet Clearance auction website is part of Comet Group plc, which is the second largest electrical retailer in the UK.

All of the products that are featured at http://www.clearance-comet.co.uk/ are genuine products from Comet Stock, the main difference to the products being sold on the clearance website to those in the stores is that they are clearance products for a reason;

New, boxed and end of line items
Scratched and dented
Refurbished
Ex-Display
Used and returned

All of the products are full operation and come with a comet 12 month warranty for peace of mind....a little more about that later.

*~*Items for sale*~*

On the website there are 3 main categories;

Kitchen and Home
This category contains items such as cookers, microwaves, built in hobs, built in ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, fridges, freezers and other kitchen and household products.

Entertainment
This category contains items such as hi-fi's, DVD players, DVD recorders, Cinema Surround Systems, televisions and more.

Computing and Phones
This is a section where you can purchase laptops, pcs, speakers and monitors.

The products within these 3 categories change regularly so it is worth visiting on a daily basis.

*~*Registering*~*

In order to use the website you will need to register with them for a login ID which will store all of your personal details allowing you to bid for the items listed on the site.
Registration is free and easy to do.

You will need to create a user ID and a password which will be required each time you visit the site to bid on an auction.
To register you have to have a valid email address so that your confirmation can be sent to you and you will also need to provide your full name, address and contact telephone numbers.

Before you can submit your registration you will also need to confirm you have read the terms and conditions of using the clearance website.

Once you are registered you will receive a confirmation email with your login details and you are then free to go and bid!
You will automatically be redirected to your account when the registration has been completed and here you can view your bid status, view products that you have listed to watch, update your account information, edit your card details, change your email preferences.

*~*Bidding for an item*~*

If you find an item on the site that you want to bid on simply select the item, it will describe the items condition such as boxed, unused. It will give you a break down on the bidding status such as the starting bid of £1 and the bidding increments e.g price increases every £20 along with the auction open date and time and closing date and time.
Underneath the product is a full description exactly the same to that displayed on the standard comet website ,so you have all of the product details to hand on the bidding page.
An example of a product I am watching now is a Samsung RS21WASM 20.1 CU.FT gross capacity frost free fridge freezer which retail at £799 and the auction price is currently £380 with 5 minutes left which is a real bargain at half the price!
If you don't want to bid until the last minute simply select to watch the item rather than bid and then revisit the item before the end of the auction to place your bid.
The shop prices are always displayed on the item description which ensures that you know that you are getting a bargain!!

To bid simply enter your maximum bid amount and this will be kept secret as the website will increase your bid in specified increments until you either win the auction or are outbid. If you are outbid you will receive an email to confirm this allowing you the opportunity to return to the auction with a higher bid.
I find that it is better to have a maximum bid in mind and place it as late as possible in the auction to increase your chances of winning.

*~*Winning the Item*~*

If you go on to win the item as we did with the dishwasher your offer will be final and will be accepted and the price will include VAT and the winning bid will then be taken from your credit/debit card, along with any additional costs applicable for delivery. It is important to remember that the credit/debit card that will be registered on your account is the address that products will need to be delivered.
The only payment methods accepted are Visa, Visa Delta, MasterCard, American Express, Solo and Maestro cards on winning bids on the auction site

*~*Delivery Costs*~*

Home delivery service is offered on all products.
For larger products including washing machine, refrigeration and large screen TV's, delivery is via Comet's own delivery fleet of over three hundred vehicles. Large product delivery charges are:

Regional: £24.95 delivered usually within 10 days
National: £29.95 delivered usually within 14 days

On the product page you can calculate delivery costs before bidding, by entering your postcode and whether you win 1 or 2 items the delivery charges remain separate due to the nature of the location that the different products may be coming from.

Smaller products are dispatched via Royal Mail Parcelforce and are delivered within 7 days for a charge of £7.95 and it is important to remember that a signature will be required.

You will receive a confirmation email to your stored email address confirming when your item has been dispatched and an estimated delivery date so that you can arrange to be in for delivery.

*~*Security*~*

Many issues occur when making payments over the website and Comet has a very secure site that encrypts personal information to prevent hackers and misuse of this information.

*~*After sales Service*~*

The delivery of the product fell on my day off which meant that I would have to have it lifted into the house. When the delivery arrived one of the delivery men moved it round to the back of my house and left it just in front of the French doors, as there was quite a step into the kitchen through the doors, I was wondering how I was going to do this, thankfully one of the other delivery men lifted it inside for me.

I signed to accept delivery and quickly checked it over and waited for my partner to come home and fully inspect the item.

Installation is not included so my partner got straight onto that when he got home and within under an hour it was fitted and fully operational and he was gloating that he had done the washing up in less than a minute. Well his electric friend had.

We still have the item and it is going strong and gets used on a daily basis and I have to admit it is much more convenient than our lifestyle was before.

An aftersales service is provided and just before Christmas we found ourselves using the service when our dishwasher kept tripping the power supply. We phoned the dedicated after sales service line which tries to rectify the problem over the phone, as this could not be resolved with our product we had to book for an engineer to come in and investigate. My partner was not happy as it was a week before Christmas and he knew what would happen if it wasn't fixed.
The engineer was booked and a time slot assigned to us and he arrived promptly to look at our troubled product. Within a matter of minutes he had discovered that the product was with the element and that it need to be replaced, he checked the stock levels and saw that the item needed to be ordered and it soon looked as it we would be without our little dishwasher over Christmas and the engineer ordered the part and said he would be in contact to advise when the part was in stock and to organise a date to come in and complete the repair but said it would be likely to be in January so imagine our surprise when we were notified that the engineer would be back out 2 days later to repair the dishwasher just 2 days before Christmas Eve we were so pleased.

I really cannot fault the service from using the auction website and there is some kind of added security buying from a trusted company like Comet and knowing that you have got a warranty should anything go wrong.

Whenever we need to replace an item within the house we now find looking on the website our first port of call as the items are normally a lot better value than any other website or store that we have searched.

Summary: A great site for bargain household items.