More Examples: Currys And Laithwaites

Here are two more frustrating online experiences, involving Currys and Laithwaites, the one much more frustrating than the other.

Currys

I tried to order a radio from Currys which my daughter had said she would like for her birthday and which I wanted delivered to her address in Scotland. Ordering it was straightforward until I got to the payment page, which insisted on my having a UK address. Since I live in France I obviously don't have one. I thought about giving a friend's address but then the credit card details wouldn't have matched. Annoyed, I sent Currys a snotty email, complaining. Currys did get back to me promptly but said it was company policy to accept payments only from UK bank accounts, further explaining that they were a national company and the UK was their only market. That was fine by me, since I have a UK bank account. The problem, it seems, is that Currys do not understand that people living outside the UK can quite legitimately have a UK bank account. Legislation introduced around the turn of the century to force a UK address for UK bank accounts was not retrospective, so existing UK accounts held by people living outside the UK were not affected. Currys do not seem to know this so I enlightened them, though whether they now do anything about it remains to be seen. As things stand they are unnecessarily limiting their market to UK residents. Yet there are thousands of Britons living abroad with perfectly legal UK bank accounts. That's Currys funeral but the irony is that they call their customer care team Know How when their knowledge is clearly lacking.

Laithwaites

I also wanted to order a case of wine for my daughter and went onto the Laithwaites site to do this. Once again ordering was straightforward but for some reason the last page which should have confirmed completion of the transaction didn't load. Laithwaites clearly noticed that the transaction had failed because they sent me an email asking me if I wanted to complete the transaction and to « click here » if I did. I duly clicked, expecting to be dropped back into the transaction at some point before I entered any security-sensitive details. In fact what I was faced with was a page that offered me two choices: to buy more wine or subscribe to their newsletter. I wanted to do neither and so sent another complaining email, this time to Laithwaites. This was acknowledged but followed by the same email wanting to know whether I wanted to complete the transaction as before. I was about to complain again when another email from them arrived saying they had completed the transaction and the wine was on its way.

That was good, as it happens, and justifiable since I had earlier clicked to say I wanted to complete the transaction. Between then and their final email, however, I could have changed my mind since a couple of days had elapsed, so it was slightly presumptuous of them. However, credit to them for noticing the failed transaction and doing something about it. The failure may well have been a result of the notorious « transient error ». They still need to do better on their offer to complete transactions however.