Enjoy the price, but don?t hold your breath! (letsbuyit.com)

Member Name: macmatt

Product:	letsbuyit.com
Date:	26/09/00 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good prices, nice idea

Disadvantages: slow and inconvenient delivery

I?d seen all the commercials on TV for letsbuyit and thought what a wonderful worthy idea it seemed, but had never bothered to investigate further. That is until, bored at work one day, I found they were doing the Samsung 709 DVD player for a potentially really good price. Now I had planned to get a DVD player at some point and thought this would be the perfect opportunity.

Now the way it works on the site is that each product is a ?co-buy? with an end date. You can join a co-buy at any time before it ends, and the more people that join, the lower the price gets. There are usually three price levels, the lowest of which is the ?best price? . You can opt to buy the product at the best price only or at whatever price it?s at when the co-buy ends.

So far, so good. You?ve opted to buy the product at best price, now you have to wait until the co-buy ends to see if you?re going to get it at the price you wanted. Once this has happened you then wait for your new purchase to arrive, and this is where the main problem lies. They say you should get your co-buy within ten days of its closing date, or more, if it?s a particularly popular product. However, they only deliver between 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday using couriers so you have to be in to receive your goods. Nothing unusual there you may think, but as you don?t know what day your stuff?s going to be delivered, you don?t know if you?re going to be there or not. Now this isn?t a problem if, like me, you happen to live near to the courier?s depot, but I would imagine this could be a right pain if you didn?t live in a large town or city.

The Samsung DVD player that I got through letsbuyit took approximately a week to arrive after the co-buy closed (at a great price of £159). They did have some major ?systems problems? which nearly meant that I didn?t get anything at all, and their customer service phone line wasn?t the most helpful (not getting answers or returning calls etc.). This may have be
en an unfortunate coincidence, but I think it would have to be an incredible, out of this world type bargain to persuade me to use them again.

Summary: