If you are a Mother maybe you'd Care to look at this... (Mothercare.com)

Member Name: English Lady

Product:	Mothercare.com
Date:	18/08/02 (101 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: quick, no need to leave your home, easy to use

Disadvantages: you need to have a credit card

My little girl had grown out of her first car seat and I needed to get a new one for the next time my mum came to pick us up in her Mo-mo. (this is what my mum call?s her car, worrying I know but well you?ve not met my mother!) As we don?t have a car actually going somewhere to purchase a seat was going to be difficult, we?d have to get there and then bring a bulky car seat home with us. Suddenly and idea struck!
?Why don?t you check out the mothercare website?? My husband suggested ?they'll probably have car seats and then we can get it delivered, oh and you can use your card too!?


I sprinted (ok maybe not but it sounds better than walked) over to my computer and found my way easily to mothercare.com. The layout of this page is simple and the page is mostly white in colour with a light shade of green highlighting some areas. The writing is in light colours but I could still read it quite easily.

The main menu is down the left-hand side of the page; this is where you go and browse for all that they?ve got. It is broken down into useful sections and I clicked on ?out and about? guessing this is where I would find the selection of seats. This opened another main page where I just clicked through on ?car seats?. And then the type of car seat I wanted which was a high back forward facing one. There were a few pages of seats to choose from, all well labelled with price and a description. I chose a ?Monaco forward facing seat? and clicked on the little shopping basket icon to show this is what I wanted to purchase. I then clicked on ?shopping basket? in the bar along the top of the page and there was my purchase. As this was all I wanted I clicked" checkout? to proceed with the actually buying of my seat. So far it had been practically painless and I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself!

I had not previously registered with the site so I clicked through to register. I was asked a series of easy and o
bvious questions including giving a name, email address and a password on the first page; then on the next you are asked for your postal address, postcode and phone number. Next you get to the painful bit, your payment details. You have to pay by credit card but it does stress that all your details are taken on a secure server and that web trader has approved them. I do not have any credit cards but I do have a mothercare card that my mum got for me, which is linked to her card and account and is for emergency uses. (such as this) So I bung in my mothercare card details and then get a screen telling me that this has all gone through and is being processed. It informs me I'll get a confirmation email and that it shell be delivered within 4 working days. I had been informed further back of the £3:95-delivery charge, which I thought was fairly reasonable.

Ok all I have to do now is sit back and wait. I got my confirmation email, it told me my car seat had been dispatched. This was around 3pm on a Wednesday afternoon. 9 am the next day we hear a knock on the door, I answer it to find there is my car seat in the hands of a lovely delivery gentleman. Wow. I was really impressed. It arrived in a good condition on the next day. I am sure not every order would be this quick but within 4 working days is still impressive.

My experience with mothercare.com was a very good one. I would recommend this site to any mum or mum to be as you can do it all from the comfort of your own home, have thins delivered straight to your door and all for a little extra charge of £3:95.

I have since taken another look at the site (as part of my research for this piece) and have found it to be fairly easy to navigate. There is a search box that you can put words or catalogue numbers in and the sub headings themselves are fairly helpful. There are guides for pregnant ladies, people with children under a year etc and these give you a list of things you
should be thinking of buying. Very useful for all you first time mums out there who don?t really have a clue as to what you need and when.


All in all I think mothercare have developed a good, easy to use and secure website and I would certainly consider using this service again.

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