Play.com - an alternative to amazon (Play.com)

Member Name: clairelw101

Product:	Play.com
Date:	05/11/09 (53 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great selection, free delivery

Disadvantages: Too much stuff???

Play.com is similar to sites like Amazon and sell loads of different products and like Amazon also have their own marketplace where you can sell things to.

So why use play.com? Play.com are based in Jersey and because of the various werid and wonderful tax laws that the UK has can offer products like CDs and DVDs at bigger price differences than UK stores can. The other difference to places like amazon is that the delivery is free no matter what you spend rather than amazon where you have to hit a certain amount (which varies depending on if they have an offer on) before you get this.

The site itself is very easy to navigate around and the only problem I sometimes find is that unless you are looking for something specific there can be too much on there and you can end up spending hours trawling through all the different pages to see if you can find something. I have had to do this recently when trying to buy Christmas presents for those awkward people who don't know what they want, just suprise me!

I have used play.com for quite a few years and have never had any issues with anything that I have ordered so I can't comment on what their after-sales team is like should you encounter any problems.

I have found that the delivery times can vary and have had some stuff delivered within a couple of days and others taking just over a week so bewarned just in case you want something quickly.

I've also not used the sell your own stuff section, as I tend to use ebay, from what I can gather the fees they charge are less than ebays but you put a fixed price in for the goods that you are selling and have to wait and see if anyone is willing to pay that for it or not. Personally I'm not sure on this as at least with ebay if you start off with a low price you stand a chance of the item selling. I'm also not sure on what you do if this service goes wrong from either a sellers point of view or the buyers.

Overall this site is great and relatively cheap, though sometimes it does pay to shop around, and if you know what you want it's easy to find but if you are looking for inspiration for that difficult someone then you need to put aside plenty of time as there is so much to go through.

Summary: Great site for different products but sometimes too much