A while ago, the customer service of ebuyer infuriated me to the extent that we went about creating a new category here (bad shops<\/a>) and I genuinely intended to never buy from them again. Sadly, market forces have worked against me and I find myself about to make another purchase from the customer service vortex that is ebuyer.<\/p>\n

Recently I have discovered that I need<\/em> to get a DVD-Recorder. This is OK, because they are reasonably cheap now – Tesco’s sells Liteon models for under GB\u00c2\u00a370. As I was looking through the shops, considering which model to get (I want one which has built in DivX for example), I found Sainsburys sells a DVD-recorder which is DivX and<\/strong> has an 80gb HDD for \u00c2\u00a3130. How can you turn that down? I went home and checked online to see if there were any other deals and, blast,Evil ebuyer do a Liteon DVD-recorder with a 160gb HDD for \u00c2\u00a3124. Blast and double blast. It is hard to mentally justify spending the same amount of money for a machine with half the capacity, so another order with ebuyer was put together. I hate myself for it.<\/p>\n

Comically, ebuyer seem to have done everything in their power to stop people purchasing products there. The DVD Recorder I want to get is the Liteon HDA740GX which I have seen in Currys<\/a> for \u00c2\u00a3182 and on Froogle<\/a> should cost over \u00c2\u00a3156. It is, from what I have read, a good model. Most shops (eg, PC World) sell the 80GB version for the price eBuyer is asking for the 160GB monster. Ebuyer, being cheaper than anyone else I can find by a fair amount, get the order. Blast, double blast and triple blast.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Now, the strange thing about ebuyer is when you try to navigate back to the product page you come across this conflicting bit of information<\/a>. If you look at the second and third entries there you can see what I mean! (screen capped in case they ever fix it… \ud83d\ude42 )<\/p>\n

For some reason, the e-commerce site returns two identical products with different prices. One version, with a manufacturers part number of H DA740GX<\/span><\/a> is going for the reasonable price of \u00c2\u00a3124.5, but should you be foolish enough to buy the HD A740GX<\/a> you will have to fork out \u00c2\u00a3202.93. As far as I can see (with admittedly only a basic search for the manufacturers details), these are identical products.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hopefully ebuyer will manage to deliver this to me by Wednesday as they have promised (and I had to pay for, as they don’t deliver for free to the remote places in the UK) otherwise I will have to resort to my somewhat impotent ranting against them and boycott them again (until I need a new tech order…)<\/p>\n

On the e-commerce front, it isn’t just ebuyer which is insane. I was in PC World<\/a> today (in the real world shop) and I saw a Belkin WiFi Phone which looked interesting, but there were no prices on it in the shop. Basically, this is a phone that connects to your Skype<\/a> account via a wireless connection to your router. So, no need to have your PC on to use Skype which overcomes the main hurdle I have to using this wonderful service. Now, to prove this product exists you can look at it on the Dell site<\/a> (which seems the cheapest) or on Froogle<\/a>. It is real. It is what I wanted and it was in the shop I visited – they had dozens and it looked like they had been there for ages.<\/p>\n

On the PCWorld website, however, can you find one? No. I tried searches for “Belkin Wifi” “Belkin Wireless” and even “Belkin.” At best I got a list of cables and network cards. No signs at all of the phone. Crazy.<\/p>\n

Still, Dell sell it, so anyone reading this and looking for a present to buy me – consider it!<\/p>\n

[tags]Bad Shops, Ebuyer, PCworld, Dell, E-commerce, Technology, Customer Service, Shops, Society, Froogle, Skype, Belkin, WiFi, Wireless, Telephony, Phone, LiteOn, DivX, Tescos, VoIP, Sainsburys, Currys[\/tags]<\/p>\n