Are CPC clowns, or what?

[newshound]

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.............

[Toby]

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...

[newshound]

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

[John Rumm]

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)

IME CPC are usually pretty good...

[Bob Eager]

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.

[Owain]

Maybe they'll load up the new codes/prices when someone comes into work on Monday.

Owain

[newshound]

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