Rob's Blog

PC World... better than Amazon and Ebuyer?!
Aug 20th 2010 08:08

I've just ordered a new printer, and a full set of ink. Of course, the first place that I checked was ebuyer.com - because it's always been my favoured source of all things computery. I was utterly disappointed, not only was their choice of sub categories for 'Printers' utterly unhelpful, but the listed specifications and product descriptions was pitiful. It made me feel very much that some stores take their repeat customers for granted, so I promptly started looking elsewhere.

After eventually settling on a product (an HP F4580) I added it to my Amazon basket along with both black and colour ink cartridges. I was a little surprised to see on the checkout screen that all three parts of my order were coming from different sources.

I didn't want to pay for priority delivery but if just one of those three items turned up at the tail end of the 3-5 day delivery it was going to cause me a headache. I trust Amazon to deliver items on time... but I'd never heard of the three companies that were going to be fullfilling the three parts of my order (and it seemed very odd just having the colour and black ink cartridges coming from different sources!).

So, I thought I'd see whether PC World had the same model in stock. I would never normally use them, having seen the enormous price difference between Ebuyer and PC World when looking for laptops, but I thought if I could go and pick it up then it would be a much better solution. I was very surprised by what I found. PC World not only had all the items in stock, but the order was £15 cheaper than it was on Amazon AND they were going to throw in loads of free paper.

In the end I opted to have PC World deliver the order for free rather than going out to pick it up from the store. The whole experience surprised me. Faced with competition from Amazon and Ebuyer, PC World were cheaper and provided a far nicer shopping experience. Maybe, just maybe, the high street still has a chance.