We buy quite a lot of stuff online these days. You still have to be careful. Here are two recent experiences…
One. For some years we’ve been buying travel insurance on-line from Worldcover direct. It’s not the cheapest, but it’s easy enough: fill in a form, get a quote, hand over your credit card details, print out a confirmation that you’re insured and also a few weeks later stuff arrives in the post. For our trip to Malta, we renewed our annual insurance as usual. A few months after the trip, Jane noticed that we’d not received anything through the post. Odd. Our credit card had been charged, so I emailed Worldcover and discovered that they had no record of our policy. Sure they were polite and helpful on the phone, but it did take a fist full of emails, and three or four calls over two or three weeks to get to the bottom of it. In the end I had to send them a photocopy of our credit card statement (they’d found records of all our previous policies, so they knew we’re loyal customers, but still wanted proof). It later turned out that “some files hadn’t been transferred from their web site” (or something like that). So… what would have happened if we needed some help while we were in Malta? Don’t know, but it probably would have been long and messy. Will I ever use this company again? Maybe if they half their prices.
And in contrast…
Two. A while ago we ordered a stack of DVDs from Splash DVD. One of the items, Moulin Rouge!, wasn’t out yet, so they shipped it a couple of months later and only then charged us. Checking the credit card statement, we spotted that they’d charged us twice. So, oh no, another email battle… I emailed Splash DVD asking them to sort this out. Less than 24 hours later I got this reply: “I have checked our records and you are correct. Apologies for the error. I have refunded your card £14.49 today and this should appear back on your statement within 2 working days.”. Now, that kind of mistake I can accept, and I’ve got no hesitation in shopping with them again.