Now we have set up this section, how does making a purchase work?
For our example, I quote here a real scenario that has happened to us today (1st December 2008).
I came home from work, to the news that the washing machine weve had for years has finally conked out, kaput, no more. (it has been making funny noises for sometime now)
I logged onto
Penny pinchers with a pad and pen handy, and selected a link for Currys, from the
Online shopping centre - company indexTogether with the better half, we established what functions/features we needed, based on our old washing machine. (1200 spin, 6kg load, various washing cycles that we use, colour)
I wrote them down, then narrowed it down to particular makes we would prefer, ie, hotpoint or zanussi, etc.
We found a better spin and a bigger load machine, then made a note of the model number.
Next we went through the
Online shopping - company index clicking on links to websites of trusted high street companies, that sell washing machines. (at each website I simply typed into the search box - "hotpoint" and viewed through the list for the model we wanted)
Here's the results (inc. delivery and removal of our old washing machine):
Currys - £342.99
Boots kitchen appliances - £322.88
Homebase - £436.00
Littlewoods - £399.00
Next kitchen appliances - £322.88
Sainsburys kitchen appliances - £322.88
I checked other companies also:
Argos
Tesco direct
Asda
John lewis
All of which did not list the model we wanted.
Now we have the best price (which surprised us) we checked the three lowest priced companies, on the discount section, to see if any offers were available. None (as is normally the case).
We then clicked on the chosen company, ie, Boots kitchen appliances.
We added the product to our basket, paid for it and booked a delivery slot.
Job done, on Thursday we shall have a new washing machine to plumb in (we could have had the company do it, but I am qualified to plumb stuff so it costs us nothing for that)
The company will ring us on Wednesday night with the 4 hour delivery slot details for the next day.
* We have checked 10 high street (reliable) companies
* We haven't paid a single penny in petrol
* We haven't had to waste anytime trawling around the stores
* In 20 minutes, we have chosen a washing machine and found the best price, out of 10 reputable companies.
No hassle, no fuss and completely safe!
