Vouchers, the greatest and bestest gift you can give someone, or the lazy man’s way out of thinking about a present. Whatever way you look at them, they’re useful. All the high-street shops stock them and online retailers do too which is why I ordered vouchers for my brothers Donal and Cathal, and my friend Justin to thank them for being best man and groom’s men respectively.
Justin’s over in the UK now, and I wanted to make things nice and simple so I ordered CD WOW! vouchers. At the time I ordered there was a handling fee of €1.20 for gift vouchers. That’s €1.20 for each gift voucher. They may provide free shipping worldwide but that obviously doesn’t apply to all their products.
When Donal went to redeem the vouchers after selecting the CDs he wanted he discovered that only one voucher can be used per purchase! Because the vouchers come in denominations which don’t match the prices of their CDs he would have ended up buying extra CDs and paying for them himself. I find that underhand and just a bit sneaky. It is stated in their terms and conditions but that only leaves a bitter taste in my mouth because I didn’t read them.
Imagine the consternation if you could only use one voucher per purchase in HMV or Virgin? At least they’d give you change in the form of money or a smaller voucher. In protest, Donal recommends that people do not buy CD WOW! vouchers and I have to agree with him. Go down to HMV, Virgin, Golden Discs, buy a paper voucher and the recipient can enjoy the experience of handling real goods immediately and savour the pleasure of rushing home to play a new CD.
Welcome CD WOW! to that place in my heart that I originally reserved for 7dayshop. Well done!
Voucher issues aside, I find their prices and delivery service hard to beat. I think it’s a bit harsh to put them in the same category as 7dayshop just because one area of their business sucks!
Well, ok, maybe a little harsh. The venomous feelings I have for 7dayshop would take something truely awful to be beaten. Still though, I’ll buy vouchers in dead tree format in the future instead of buying them online!
Glad you’ve eased off a little as I’ve just bought 4 CDs from cdwow.ie (don’t tell Sharon!) as surprisingly it was cheaper than cdwow.com. First time for everything, eh? Better to stick with the dead tree vouchers until that fiasco is resolved in the future.
Maybe you misunderstood. CDWOW do give change when you spend their vouchers; so I don’t understand your comment about having to buy extra CDs. If you don’t spend the voucher in full with the first putchase, the remainder can be used on a future purchase, until the voucher is gone!
Its a great post and useful also because today everybody want to buy shopping goods online.
Thanks for such an helpful post.