Why smoking is good for your wealth! (smokecds.com)

Member Name: robkingston

Product:	smokecds.com
Date:	22/11/01 (275 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dirt cheap, good selection of artists, Quick reliable delivery

Disadvantages: Some CDs are foreign versions, My CDs travel more than I do :-(

SmokeCDs. Silly name (they're a bugger to light) but a great place to get your music fix.

In this strange globalised world in which we live, the cheapest place I've found to buy CDs is also just about as far away from my home as it's possible to get. Based in Wellington, New Zealand, SmokeCDs usually beats its online rival CD-Wow on price (especially if you order more than one CD at a time). What's more, if you've read the Dooyoo opinions on CD-Wow, you'll see that a common complaint is that the choice of CDs is limited to popular chart artists. SmokeCDs offers a much wider range: classical, world music, acid jazz, hip-hop, it's all here.

All prices are listed in New Zealand dollars. At the moment, £1 = NZ$3.45, so when I tell you that, for example, Radiohead's live album I Might Be Wrong costs NZ$18.95, you can see just how cheap it is. (That's just under £5.50, in case you've lost your calculator.) Most chart CDs are NZ$23.95 (£6.95).

Ah-ha, I hear you say, but CD-Wow's price of £8.99 includes postage. How does it compare? Well, shipping to the UK costs NZ$11.73 (£3.40) for one CD, but this gets less if you buy more than one. If you buy three CDs at NZ$23.95 each, the total postage is only NZ$18.56, making a total of NZ$82.43 or £23.87. In other words, you'd be saving over £3 compared with CD-Wow.

I've been very impressed with this site - the CDs arrive quickly (usually a week or less) and are very well packed (I haven't had any arrive with broken cases). When you order you can choose whether you want them to send each CD individually when it is available (in which case you have to pay more postage) or wait until they are all available and have them sent in one package. I always choose the second method and have never had to wait long. One thing to bear in mind is that the Australian/NZ versions of CDs can be different from the UK ones - make sure you check the track listi
ng on the site before you buy! (They don't accept returns except if the CD is damaged or faulty.)

One other thing to bear in mind - apparently, if you import CDs from outside the EU, you are technically meant to pay VAT and import duty (this is waived if the value of the goods is less than £18). But in practice I haven't had any problem with Customs officers turning up on my doorstep, so I doubt if it's worth losing sleep over!

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