All in the privacy of my own home! (Iceland.co.uk)

Member Name: tange

Product:	Iceland.co.uk
Date:	18/08/02 (975 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use site, Convenient, Great offers!

Disadvantages: Have to spend £50...but, it's not hard!

I had never tried online shopping before. Apart from the occasional purchase on Blackstar, and the odd bid on eBay, I had been very wary of handing out my credit/debit card details out on the internet. I had heard such scary stories and, being such a technophobe, I thought that the conventional way of shopping was for me.

So it was with some trepidation that I had logged onto www.iceland.co.uk, registered and began to shop. I thought that if I changed my mind I didn't have to continue. That is one of beauties of online shopping; if you decide that you don't want all the things you have chosen, in your shopping basket, a simple press of the delete key is all you need. Just imagine doing that in the middle of Tescos on a busy Saturday afternoon!

The other great benefit of home shopping is for us non-drivers or non-car owners. We can do a normal, a large weekly shop without the torture of finding taxis or lugging the shopping back home on the bus - A godsend in our house!

The Iceland web-site was easy to navigate and I was pleased to find that I could benefit from the same offers that are advertised in store. Such a shame...we just had to take advantage of the buy one get one free lager! Prices were the same Iceland good value and I found that it was very easy to spend the minimum £50.

The site has since been revamped, but it is still easy to use. You can search for items in several different ways...you can use product name, the number out of the Iceland magazine, product type, special offers, what's new and browse the different sections of the store as if you were actually looking round the supermarket - well, not quite, but if you close your eyes, concentrate, tap your heels together three times and say "there's no place like Iceland" I'm sure you'll imagine you are there!

Once I had selected my products and saved them to my shopping basket, it was very easy to select a time slot in the
two hour windows shown. Still I was sceptical that it would arrive at the given time, on the given day and with the correct products in the bags. You can select the option that allows them to put substitute items in with your shopping if anything is not available...I would advise against this because on another occasion we ended up with about eight packets of mushroom Chicken Lattices (ok...but my husband HATES mushrooms)!

The price shown for your order is only an approximate figure - the charge for your order will be based on the prices of items in the store on the day that your delivery arrives. Every time we have used the total price has been roughly what we were expecting so it's not a bad estimate. You can pay using a debit or credit card and you need to supply a few details to make sure all is "above board".

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the goods arrived as asked and that the Delivery lady was friendly and helpful (despite it being a really hot day and my bags being very heavy). The frozen items were in large freezer bags and everything was well packed and undamaged - I was very impressed! The delivery van was chilled too so, despite it being hot, the food was fine and even my beer was chilled!

Since this first experience we have shopped with Iceland once a month. When you return to the site you can even see what you bought last time to jog your memory. It's very easy to forget your basic shopping list and go straight for the offers or luxury items - this was a good way of selecting these items that you may want to buy every time, such as bread, milk or other staple items!

I am surprised at the number of offers that are available and have tired some items I wouldn't normally have gone for because they are there for a trial price or are free with certain items.

Apart from the Chicken Lattice incident and the "going astray" of a packet of Cumberland Sausages, we have
always been satisfied with shopping at icland.co.uk. We phoned the Customer Helpline about the missing sausages...they were friendly, apologised and took them off the bill straight away.

All in all I can recommend Iceland online shopping to even the most hardened shoppaholic! I may never stir from my computer again!

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