DVDs for £4.99, CDs for £6.99! (Music Box Online)

Member Name: oatmeal

Product:	Music Box Online
Date:	16/04/01 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some real bargains and good customer service

Disadvantages: A website that looks like a school project

Company Background
Music Box have High street stores in several major cities but their Internet HQ is in Romford, Essex. To find them you’ll have to use the address www.musicbox.CD. Accidentally use .com or similar and you end up at an entirely unrelated site. You can also find them at QXL Auctions as they have recently become a corporate partner there.

Range & Price
There is an adequate selection of DVDs with most popular titles and new releases catered for. For older and more unusual titles you’ll have to visit Amazon or Blackstar. A lot of the prices can be RRP but there is always a selection of bargains to attract visitors to the site. Several DVDs are £9.99 including titles like Frequency and Wild Things, while one or two others like Mickey Blue Eyes and Boiler Room are reduced to only £4.99!
There is a similar selection on video with a wide range of prices. The good news for video collectors is that there is a flat rate postage charge (See below) so you pay the same delivery costs for a video that you would a CD!
All chart CD albums are featured and sell for £9.99 each. Back catalogue stuff like the Corrs Unplugged and Oasis’ Standing on The Shoulder of Giants are up at £6.99. For a mixed bag of CDs these are good prices. The cheapest I have seen for chart albums is £8.99 delivered from CDNow but they don’t offer any discount on back-catalogue. Amazon UK have recently reduced their back catalogue but they are still £7.99 plus delivery and their chart albums are £9.99 or more. Music Box are well worth a visit if you want two or three CDs or a cheap DVD.

Postage
So long as you are living within the UK mainland there is some good news here. All orders, no matter what size or make-up, are charged at only one pound per order. Not great if you want only the one CD but fantastic if you want a couple of CDs and a video for example. Delivery is via First Class Royal Mail and is normally despatched within 24
hours. If you buy several items your order will be split into a number of envelopes containing only a couple of items each. I presume this is down to the £27 insurance limit provided by standard First Class Delivery but it also means everything stands a chance of going through your letter box while you are out and not being held at the local Post Office depot. Hard copy invoices are included within all deliveries.

Website Function
The overall presentation of the site could be a lot clearer. The home page strikes me as being cluttered with too many sub-menus. It really shouldn’t be, after all, they only sell CD, DVD and videos. Instead of having just the three distinct sections to visit you are confronted with bargains, the top 20, Region 2 offers, new releases and a link to QXL as well as the standard catalogues.
The front page is also swamped with tacky animated Gif adverts which give the site a thoroughly amateurish look. Surely a company of this size no longer needs to be part of a link exchange.
The speed of the site is only average despite it’s fairly basic content. It can also be long winded to browse, with items being split into too many sub-genres. When you visit you should search out the link to the full catalogue listing. While there may be a lot to look at it will be quicker than clicking through ten sub-categories.
Credit card payment is via a secure server. I have, to date, placed five orders with this company and never had a problem with billing.
Customer service is very good with queries getting a reply within 24 hours and orders being confirmed via e-mail.

Conclusion
While the auctions they have at QXL start at only a pound with no reserve, I have found the final winning bids are often the same, or more, than the price on the Musicbox website. When buying via QXL you will be charged postage at £1 per item rather than per order and you’d have to wait up to seven days for the auction to close
.
Give QXL a miss and have a look at Musicbox directly. If there isn’t a store near you the website is sufficient for you browse through the stock and pick up a bargain or two.
However, if you want just one, very specific, item you might need to go elsewhere afterwards.

Summary: