The Joy Of Shopping

I’ve been buying some things online this week. There is nothing unusual about that in this day and age, it’s just that I found the experience to be a little unsettling. I was actually buying a full set of steel wheels and winter tyres for the Golf (yes, that obsession again) and the only place I could find that would do them at a reasonable price was MyTyres.com which is the UK trading name for German firm, Delticom. This is actually a large European concern and a firm with a pretty good reputation so it did make me wonder why their payments handling system feels like that of a cottage industry or a VAT-exempt sole-trader holed up in a Welsh cottage somewhere.

Initially, I actually found the experience very good with them having a huge range of stock available in various combinations. I managed to feed in my exact specifications of car model and desired tyre and was passed through to the checkout. I entered in my credit card details and this appeared to take the order with little trouble and I received an order confirmation. Things then started to go a little odd the next morning when I received an email telling me that for the order to proceed I would have to transfer money directly into their bank account. This sort of smelt like a scam.

I decided to phone up the firm's helpline (checked from an independent source) and it turned out that the email was genuine. They claimed to have tried my credit card but had it declined. This is not the first time this has happened and it usually involves a quick call to the bank to authorise payment but they were determined that I should pay by bank transfer instead. I’m always a bit uneasy about this as credit cards, at least in the UK, do offer a fair bit of added security whether it is down to the banks vigilance or the statuary guarantees that are in place. After doing a quick trawl of a few motoring forums I decided that this was par for the course and made the payment. I had expected to receive confirmation in a few hours but I actually received a response saying that I would receive a confirmation of payment in “1 to 2 days”. I did receive this but it was after 2 working days (right over the weekend) that the payment confirmation was received. During that time I was left sweating as to whether that money had disappeared into the ether.

The next part of this interesting transaction has to do with their chosen couriers, DPD. Now the first thing I would say about them is that their online tracking system is excellent but it also highlights the somewhat bizarre methods of transporting their parcels. I had assumed that as all 4 tyres were being transported from the same warehouse to the same destination that they would all travel together. There were actually 4 different package numbers for them so I just checked the top code. Whilst I was out walking the dog I got a text from Nina: Did you really only buy 1 tyre? When I got home I discovered that each tyre was in a different state: one in my garage in Scotland, one in a distribution centre in Warrington, one in a hub in Bavaria and the other in Baden-Württemberg. Now I can understand that the logistics could warrant splitting the order to get it to the distribution centre but I really think they missed a trick by not making a single journey to my house.

The rest of the tyres arrived this morning and the delivery driver was as bemused at his extra journey as I was. So would I recommend MyTyres? They do seem to offer a unique selling point with the combined steel wheel and winter tyre and their prices are very competitive. However, I found the purchase experience from BlackCircles and KwikFit to be far less stressful. Having used them once I think I would be more confident about ordering again. I’d certainly consider DPD for deliveries as even with the odd delivery their tracking was very good. They said that this morning’s delivery would be between 11:00 and 12:00 and it arrived at 11:03 which is pretty remarkable. Anyway, I suppose this just confirms something I’ve known for years: Germans don’t like credit cards.