Must have bought stuff from them in the past, I've been getting the various
Cats for a while.

Latest test'n'tools cat has a number of things I was after, I must have
ticked stuff totalling over £200.

But none of the catalogue codes or descriptions seem to work on the web
site. With partial codes or
descriptions, it takes two or three "refines" to find the item.

Half the stuff was out of stock. For the rest, all of the prices are higher
than the cat. prices. In some cases
the quoted prices are near (but not exactly) the multiple order price.
Nothing about this in the cat apart
from the usual weasel words in almost unreadable print about all prices
subject to change.

Just trying to decide whether to bother to ring them up and see if they
match the cat prices. What's your
experience of them? I think I may just be binning the cats in future and
sticking to people who seem
to be straight. At least Screwfix, Ebuyer, Maplin, Amazon, DABS, BES give
the impression of wanting
the business.............

"newshound" wrote in message
...
Must have bought stuff from them in the past, I've been getting the
various Cats for a while.

Latest test'n'tools cat has a number of things I was after, I must have
ticked stuff totalling over £200.

But none of the catalogue codes or descriptions seem to work on the web
site. With partial codes or
descriptions, it takes two or three "refines" to find the item.

Half the stuff was out of stock. For the rest, all of the prices are
higher than the cat. prices. In some cases
the quoted prices are near (but not exactly) the multiple order price.
Nothing about this in the cat apart
from the usual weasel words in almost unreadable print about all prices
subject to change.

Just trying to decide whether to bother to ring them up and see if they
match the cat prices. What's your
experience of them? I think I may just be binning the cats in future and
sticking to people who seem
to be straight. At least Screwfix, Ebuyer, Maplin, Amazon, DABS, BES give
the impression of wanting
the business.............

How they seem to work is, the normal code in the big catalogue is, say
AS0993 (I just made that up, its not relevant if it is something weird!)

Then they have a special offer flier, this item is in there, but at a
reduced price, so they then add more numbers on the end. So for example, a
catalogue I have titled "Septembers Focus" seems to be adding 02 to the end
of everything, so this item would become "AS099302"
Now when this special offer has expired, the codes will no longer work with
the 02 on the end, but removing this will still work, with the original
price.

Have a look at the front of the fliers you have got, they usually have an
expiry date on them, if they have expired, then there is the problem!

Toby...

rant snipped

Have a look at the front of the fliers you have got, they usually have an
expiry date on them, if they have expired, then there is the problem!

Toby...

Not in this case: "Offers Valid 27th September - 28th November 2008".
Allegedly!

newshound wrote:


Half the stuff was out of stock. For the rest, all of the prices are higher
than the cat. prices. In some cases
the quoted prices are near (but not exactly) the multiple order price.
Nothing about this in the cat apart
from the usual weasel words in almost unreadable print about all prices
subject to change.

Just trying to decide whether to bother to ring them up and see if they
match the cat prices. What's your

Ring them up, they will match the offer prices. You can't always get all
the offers on the web site (and there are vast swathes of stuff like all
the white and brown goods spares that they don't make any attempt to
include in the web catalogue)

experience of them? I think I may just be binning the cats in future and
sticking to people who seem
to be straight. At least Screwfix, Ebuyer, Maplin, Amazon, DABS, BES give
the impression of wanting
the business.............

IME CPC are usually pretty good...

--
Cheers,

John.

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On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 22:08:03 UTC, "newshound"
wrote:

Must have bought stuff from them in the past, I've been getting the various
Cats for a while.

Latest test'n'tools cat has a number of things I was after, I must have
ticked stuff totalling over £200.

But none of the catalogue codes or descriptions seem to work on the web
site. With partial codes or
descriptions, it takes two or three "refines" to find the item.

Not unusual. As you probably know, they add a two digit suffix to the
standard catalogue code for items on offer; this has a limited life
(until the flyer expires).

I've quite often received a new flyer (like the test 'n tools one) and
found that none of the new codes go onto the web system until after the
weekend. Seems the flyers get posted a bit too early sometimes.

The stuff out of stock often just means 'out of stock at that price'.

Try again tomorrow.

--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com

I've quite often received a new flyer (like the test 'n tools one) and
found that none of the new codes go onto the web system until after the
weekend. Seems the flyers get posted a bit too early sometimes.

The stuff out of stock often just means 'out of stock at that price'.

Try again tomorrow.

Thanks for the suggestion. They have already lost a couple of potential
sales though because I hunted round and found better alternatives.