Shopping Eagle

Great offers on a huge selection of Books, Stationery, Magazines, dvds, Music, Gaming, Gifts and Cards delivered FREE to stores.

The emphasis is firmly on bestsellers at W H Smith’s straightforward and accessible site. Ebook readers are particularly well catered for with a separate homepage, complete with featured titles, and a wide selection of titles throughout the subject range plus information for those new to ebooks. Click Features to find a small selection of interviews, extracts and magazine style articles or to search the archive for past features. There are links to Smith’s Education Zone, a website aimed at both parents and teachers, and to The Internet Bookshop (www.thebookshop. co.uk), a slimmed-down version of this site which includes bargain books on its subject pages. Navigation at this site is both quick and simple.

What is Additionsdirect.co.uk?
—————————————————
Additionsdirect.co.uk is the online facility to the Additions Direct Catalogue. It began life as the inspiration of Argos who wanted at the time to branch into the clothing market as well; however, it did not go all that well for them. In January 2004, Argos eventually decided it was time to sell the company so the Littlewoods Home Shopping Company purchased it from Argos and own it to this day. Although another home shopping catalogue it does offer slight variations to the other Littlewoods Catalogues available.

What do they sell?
———————————-
As with all home shopping catalogues, Additions Direct offers a huge variety of products, which would be impossible for me to list so I am going to do brief category descriptions.
Women: - They sell all sorts of women’s clothing, footwear, nightwear, sportswear and lingerie. They also stock perfume, accessories, jewellery and watches.
Men’s:- All sorts of men’s clothing, footwear, nightwear, underwear, sportswear, aftershave, accessories and jewellery/watches.
Children’s:- They have a somewhat limited selection of clothing and accessories for children from newborn to 16 years of age, plus accessories for bedrooms and nursery’s.
Sportswear: - This is an addition link and section to all the various products and branded sportswear available.
Home and Garden: - This section covers everything from furniture for the lounge and dining room to the bedrooms plus the entire home furnishing ranges, a limited selection of garden furniture and accessories and DIY products are available.
Electronics:- This section sells everything from mobile phones, sat nav, telephones, sound systems, TV’s, DVD players, VCR’s to PC’s and gaming.
Appliances: - This section is where you can find all your large and small household appliances as well as home wares.

Ordering / Payments
———————————-
Ordering from Additions Direct is very straight forward as with most internet shopping facilities, first thing you must do is register an account. This can be done on a credit card basis or you can apply for the Direct Plus Account which is a credit facility offered by Additions Direct. Add the items you wish to purchase from Additions to you shopping basket and then when you have finished placing your order you can view your basket at anytime from the link found at the top of the screen of any page. When you are checking your order from your shopping basket, you are able to edit your order if you need to and delete any unwanted items, before you proceed to the checkout. When you are happy with your order, you then continue checkout by clicking the checkout link, which will take you through the payment process of your order. You will need to have either a Credit Card or Direct Plus account to complete your checkout order and are requested to complete all the details requested as you proceed through the checkout. Once you have finished the checkout procedure you are sent to a printer friendly webpage with an order number for you to print off for your own reference, however you will also be sent a copy of the invoice to the email address you supplied during the checkout procedure. The site offers payment by all major credit cards and for other options of how to pay there are full details in the help section of the website.

Delivery
—————-
Delivery from Additions direct is fast on some items and can be delivered within 48 hours depending on the time of you ordering, but there is a £3.50 delivery charge on all orders no matter how big or small. Certain items can be delivered the next day if order before 1pm and providing the item is in stock, but this service carries a £6.45 delivery charge. You are also given an option to specify a delivery day, but again, be warned this also carries a £6.45 delivery charge.

Credit Facilities.
—————————–
As I said earlier there is a credit facility available from Additions Direct called the Direct Plus account. This allows you to have items on credit and pay for them over a selected period of time, however it is very important to know that this service charges a massive 29.8% APR. This can work out to be very expensive. They do offer a facility for you to pay over three equal instalments without any interest on the interest opt out plan but this is also subject to status.

Catalogue requests.
——————————-
You can now collect a catalogue from all larger Boots Stores if you prefer, but there is a facility on the website for you to order one to be delivered to your door. This is free of charge and there is no charge for catalogue delivery either.

Returns and Refunds.
————————————–
Should you have any problems with your order you are able to contact the customer services to arrange for them to collect the goods to be returned, but it is extremely important to read all there returns guides before even placing an order, as you have to be aware there are guidelines for unacceptable returns. Simply call the FREEPHONE automated customer service number 0800 096 6093 or speak to an advisor on 0870 413 6000 to make arrangements for collection. There are no charges for returning an item. Refunds will either be credited to your Direct Plus account or Credit Card depending on your payment option you used to pay for your goods. All items are on 14 day free home approval, but there are some exceptions.

Help and Advice.
——————————
This site offers an excellent help section that will be able to provide you the answer to any questions you may have with regards to shopping with Additions Direct and this link can be found at the top of every webpage clearly showing the word HELP. It will allow you to find out everything you need to know about returns, privacy policies, accounts, credit and much more. It will also give you all the contact details should you wish to either telephone them, write to them or email them.

Security.
—————–
Additionsdirect.co.uk boasts a 100% secure shopping feature on there online store, they state that this is possible because they use the following features. They use SSL (secure sockets layer) in there ordering and payment facilities and that all transactions are processed by there secure server in an encrypted format for added security. This process will also be securely closed immediately after the transaction payment has been processed for even more added security. Full details of this are available from http://www.additionsdirect.co.uk please see the privacy and security links available from the webpage’s help section. The site security is governed by IMRG Senate, which also governs all Littlewoods Shop Direct Home Shopping Limited companies as well as many other leading internet-shopping organisations.

Other Site Features.
————————————-
This site also features a sizing guide to help you work out the size of clothing you wish to order. There is a women’s size guide, a men’s size guide and a children’s size guide. In addition, the site gives you access to a curtain-sizing guide to help you know what size curtains you will need to fit you window requirements. There is a site guide for everyone to be able to use to help them navigate the site easily and this is available in a link from the help section.

Rent unlimited DVDs in the UK for only £9.99 per month. All postage paid. No late fees. No due dates. No strings. No fuss. Free trial period.

Which? does more than just test washing machines. We campaign to get a fairer deal for all consumers and publish expert, unbiased information to help you make the right choice, whatever you’re buying.

500 hands played at $1 and $2 real money tables will release the bonus money.

Bet Direct Casino is a new microgaming casino powered by betdirect. BetDirect, started in 1998, has a wide range of Sportsbook and gaming products across multiple platforms. BetDirect is owned by BetDirect Ltd a division of 32Red Plc. 32Red Plc is listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange. Sign-up at Betdirect casino today and take advantage of their grand opening offer and get a 100% welcome bonus - $100 FREE! It offers over 200 Microgaming online games including 103 Slots games available.Favourites like Mega Moolah Progressive Video Slot and the latest Summertime Video Slot and Multi-Hand Blackjacks Gold Series.

Sorry but this offer is available to US residents only.

Get 15 bonus ringtones, then 10 per month for only $9.99.

The Jessops site is an extension of their chain of shops which specialises in photographic equipment. They have become the standard yardstick against which other photographic suppliers are judged.

We had used the Jessops shop to buy our Canon G2 digital camera, having found the cheapest price on line at another supplier. We showed the evidence to the shop and, without much trouble, the shop matched it! Delighted with the camera we then wanted the Canon flash unit. This time Jessops online was the cheapest we could find and they did free postage too. The order system was easy and straightforward, processed promptly and the parcel arrived the next day . . perfect!

Dabs.com specialises in PC Hardware and Software including peripherals such as printers and scanners as well as accessories like MP3 players. If there’s something you need for your computer, dabs.com will have it without a doubt.
Dabs.com wasn’t the first place I looked when trying to find what I wanted (in this case a Pentium D 950 CPU - I’ll be reviewing that shortly!). I usually tend to check the obvious Ciao, Kelkoo, Pricerunner and similar sites when looking for a place to purchase a product, I also had an account from a family member to go by before choosing to purchase from here. Strangely enough, the verdict I actually got from my father wasn’t particularly positive. He had tried to buy a wireless keyboard and mouse set from here a couple of years ago and to his surprise it didn’t arrive! Apparently the customer support was atrotious and he swore never to purchase from there again. I thought i’d give them another chance, hopefully they’d had a little rethink with their policies since then.

The site itself is very easy to navigate. All the products are split up into categories:
+ Components & Storage
+ Computers
+ Electronics
+ Networking & Communication
+ Peripherals
+ Software & Books
+ Clearance Corner
+ Gaming
+ Mobile Phone

Within these categories there are subcategories to which you can add filters to narrow down the results. The search facility available at the top of the page allows you to not only search through the site but also through the filtered results which is really quite handy!
The site is very quick to load and is very easy on the eyes. The layout is such that it complements the navigation and helps you find some real bargains! The advertising on the page is appropiate and does not add to the loading time much with the whole page loading on my 1mbps connection in just under 1.2 seconds.

The prices particularly interested me as I found that they are incredibly competitive. The product I was looking for in particular was £30 cheaper on dabs.com than anywhere else I could find! There is no trickery involved as the delivery prices and VAT automatically updates in your basket before you get to the checkout so you are aware of exactly how much you will end up paying. You can choose for the items to display with or without VAT.

There is just about anything and everything on this site. The items I have found are usually in stock, if not “due in 1-2 days”. I have found this status to be somewhat unreliable however as when I purchased my Pentium D 950 the status was “due in 1-2 days” for a total of 6 working days! I was quite disappointed about this but when I enquired about it, customer support was able to give me an exact date when stock would be due.

Next day delivery seems to come as standard for any items ordered from dabs.com. dabs.com uses either Parcel Force (www.parcelforce.com) or Amtrak (www.amtrak.co.uk) who both appear to be very reliable couriers and a common choice amongst online shopping sites. My particular order was delivered from Amtrak at around 1pm on a Friday. Both couriers provide tracking and from previous experience, Parcel Force’s seems to be slightly more detailed which is a shame, particularly as Amtrak do not allow you to phone up to get an estimated time of delivery.
Delivery charges aren’t too high with prices ranging from £3.25 (£30 or less at 0.5kg or less) to £9.50 (over £125 at more than 10kg). Outlying areas have a further small charge.

I was very pleased with Customer Services when I had to use it.I chose the option of using their online help-desk which is basically a very small web application that is embedded on their web page. It puts your directly through to a member of their Customer Services avoiding phonelines and unmonitored email addresses. The most time I had to wait for the service was 4 or 5 minutes which I was particularly pleased with as I’m sure this time period would have been much longer had I chosen to use the phoneline as the preferred method of contact. The two representatives I was put through to were Jonathan and Debbie whom were both very helpful and managed to solve my very small problems regarding invoices (turned out that I was just being impatient with my email server!). Debbie did take a while to respond, but this wasn’t a problem for me as I just hid the helpdesk window in the background and continued with work, something that perhaps would have been slightly more difficult had I chosen to use the phone lines. Both representatives spoke perfect English, If only all companies’ customer services were like that!

Dabs.com have got a very good returns and refund policy. I would feel confident in returning a product.
+ If the product is faulty, the customer has the right to return it within 28 days of receipt, 14 days for business customers. The return carriage costs are paid for by dabs.com so there’s no reason to worry about having to pay extra charges
+ Goods damaged in transit should be reported within 7 days of delivery so that they can be returned and a full refund given. The charges will be paid for by dabs.com
+ After the 28 days of receipt, if the goods are damaged and the product is within the warrenty period, the customer is entitled to a warrenty repair however charges for the unit to be sent to dabs.com will have to be paid for by the customer. A refund for these charges will be given under certain circumstances, for example if the manufacturer has another plan for such items.
+ If you change your mind, dabs.com will allow you to return the goods if they are in the same condition as delivered. The shrink-wrapped or blister packed products must not be opened, software must not have been installed and the goods must be in a condition for dabs.com to be able to resell them as new. This can be utilised within 10 days of receipt and the return carriage costs are paid in full by the customer

Dabs.com allow for payment via many different methods. They accept major credit/debit cards excluding American Express, Visa Electron, Diners Club, JCB, and Discover. I can say however that I have managed to pay for an order with a Visa Electron card however I wouldn’t recommend it - just incase! A finance package is available to certain private customers between the ages of 18 and 75 who are current in employment. Credit terms can be offered to businesses provided they furfil a criteria on the dabs.com website. Personal Cheques however are not accepted for a number of reasons.

The quality of products from dabs.com is of a very high standard. The items I have ordered have never arrived damaged and have worked perfectly. Even the packaging has been in very good condition! There seems to be no expenses spared as it was packaged well to avoid damage in transit.

Going back to a point I made right at the beginning of this review (and I appreciate you reading this far), I mentioned about my father who had bad experiences with dabs.com in the past. I can gladly rule off any of those points as the customer services was perfect and my order went through with few problems! I’d happily purchase from here again especially with such competitive prices and a broad range of stock!

An extension of the hugely popular Mecca Bingo brand, providing bingo, slot and arcade games online and the opportunity to win big via unique progressive jackpots. The Mecca Games website has recently been overhauled and now looks even more fantastic than ever.