Have you got an eye for a bargain? (halfpriceorless.com)

Member Name: mikeb

Product:	halfpriceorless.com
Date:	08/02/01 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brand names at excellent prices, good website.

Disadvantages: Slightly awkward scrolling, a bit slow occasionally.

Increase in postage update at end of op


A smiling drawing of Joe Morris, the e-commerce director of halfpriceorless.com, greets prospective customers to this site.

Halfpriceorless is part of the TJ Morris retail group which has over 60 stores throughout the UK and employs more than 1,000 people. The text on the homepage says that they sell a wide range of branded goods and make the promise that everything they sell is half or lower than the recommended retail price.

After clicking on the front door to enter, you are greeted by the lovely shop assistant Helen with details of how to shop at the site, delivery information, money back guarantee and payment methods. The important bits are:-


How to shop:

At the top of the page there are 9 links to departments, set out just like aisles in a shop. Clicking on one of the links takes you to that department and to the relevant products displayed on shelves. The departments are:-

Special offers.
Health & beauty.
Toys and books.
Food & drink.
Fashion & clothing.
Home & garden.
Gifts & stationary.
Sports & leisure.
Pets & household.


Delivery information.

This is normally within 4 working days for the UK mainland. There is a standard delivery charge of £2.99 for orders of any size (within reason). They will also deliver all over Europe at varying rates.


Money back guarantee.

If you are unhappy with your purchase for any reason you can return it for a full refund.


Payment methods.

They accept the following credit/debit cards:-
Visa, Mastercard, Switch and Delta.

They do not accept internet orders with:- Maestro, Electron and Solo cards.


The first thing to say at this point is how well the start of this site is laid out. There’s no searching around for details as it’s all laid out in plain language in front of you on one page. N
ow off to the “shop” itself.

I started with the special offers. The shelf was set out a bit like a conveyor belt. The products started on the left hand side of the screen and you have to scroll to the right to see everything in this part of the department. Just above the shelf were links to other areas of the special offers, such as the bargain basement and you have to go to each part to see all the available offers.The majority of the goods under special offer were smaller items, with one of the dearest being a Russell Hobbs blender at £29.99 reduced from £59.99. To get a better description and bigger picture of each item you simply click on the accompanying picture. I quite liked the look of a Parker pen set. The detailed info said this set included a Fountain pen, a ball pen and a pencil. It also contained blue ink, leads and an eraser, all in a gift box and with a lifetime guarantee. The recommended retail price for this was £20.30 but it was on offer for £5.99, very reasonable in my view. To add a product to your shopping basket you just click on the shopping trolley symbol, easy.

At the top of the each screen are six arrows to take you to anywhere on the site, including a handy search box that allows you to search by product description, brand name and even price range. On the shopping aisles information point you can also use a pull down menu to look at a specific range of goods and I decided to see if there were any bargains to be had in the electrical department. As in the special offers, these were items from the cheaper end of market like toasters and kettles, there were no televisions or hi-fi’s for example. Again the prices were very good – such as a Hinari Life-Style toaster for £5.99.

After spending a bit of time going round the various departments I would say there are definately some great offers on halfpriceorless.com. The vast majority of the brand names of the products were ones I had heard
of and so I would be pretty confident that they were of good quality. It is one of those sites that you can easily spend some time looking round and adding things to your basket. The summary screen shows you the contents of your basket, the price of each item, the total value of your purchases and your total saving against the recomended retail price. At any time from this summary you can go back to the shop, change the quantity of goods purchased, delete a product, clear your basket entirely or go to the checkout to confirm your order.

This site was brought to my attention by a couple of other Dooyoo reviews I had read which were very complimentary. After having a good look around a few times, I can see why my fellow Dooyooers rated it so highly. Although I’ve not made an order through this site yet, it is definately one I’ll be having a really good look at when I have time. With the set postage of £2.99 I’ll probably order a few items at once to make the best use of this. The site is very well designed and the only 2 minor critiscisms I have are that the pages sometimes take a bit of time to load and it can be slightly annoying to have to scroll from left to right with your mouse if, like me, you’re so used to scrolling up and down the screen using the mouse wheel. The prices really are at least half price and some are so cheap you’re almost tempted to get them even though you didn’t go to the site to buy that item.

Well worth a look if you’ve not tried it yet.
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Update 24th February:

Just a quick update to tell potential customers of this site that the standard UK mainland postage has now been increased to £3.59.

Other European delivery areas vary between £10.53 and £20.56 (Greece). delivery times for these areas are anywhere between 5 and 11 days.

With the site having a standard postage rate for a reasonable quantity of orde
r, this increase of £0.60 shouldn't make much difference to anyone considering placing an order. You can still easily save the price of the postage in the cost of the bargains on offer.

Summary: