I’ve just completed my 2nd online shop with Tesco - and once again experienced frustrations along the way.

The problem last time was that my ClubCard is registered to my old address - so it would only deliver there unless I changed the address or added an additional delivery address. However, their secure server was down and it wouldn’t let me access the part of the site where I could change the registered address of my card. So instead I created an additional delivery address - but it would only let me insert a post code and then pick from a list of results. And as is so often the case with results like that, there wasn’t a correct option! I’m in a big old building that’s been converted into a few flats - and it just wouldn’t let me select the correct building number and flat number. Usually, you type in your post code, it brings up some options, and you can edit the options if it’s not quite correct. But not with Tesco - I have to leave a delivery note on every order from now on telling them not to deliver to my downstairs neighbour as the address states, but to find me instead!

So that took a while, but then I was flying and the actual finding of products was fairly straight forward.

One mistake on my part though - and I am sure I won’t have been the only one - was to fill in the feedback form at the bottom of the search results page! You do your search, and then there’s a heading that says “Can’t find what you’re looking for?” with a search box underneath it (shown above). So I retyped what I’d actually been looking for it and it said “Thank you! Your feedback will help us to improve the way Search works.” Umm…. ends up there was a line of text between “Can’t find what you’re looking for” and the text input field that said it was a form for letting them know what should have shown up on your page… It’s great that they’re keen to get feedback - but they need to make it look and sound less like a search box and more like a feedback form!

So anyway - it took a while, but my order arrived the next day and all was fine.

So today I went back - having been told by my boyfriend that I’d whistle through it this time as it’s so much quicker once you’ve got a list of favourites, and did just that! You get there, you select your delivery time, and you start shopping! It even knows the things that you’ve bought instore before if you’d used your ClubCard. However, around 30mins later I go to check out - to find that it’s going to be delivered to my old address! And there’s no way to change it, I have to start again! And once I’ve started again, I can’t just copy over my current order - I have to go through every item and add it again.

The site really needs to a) remember where you last ordered for as a default or b) (ideally) see that you’ve got multiple delivery addresses and ask you at the beginning which one you’re ordering for, rather than just whisk you away into picking a delivery time. At the very least it should let you change a delivery address (and reselect a delivery time if necessary) at any point during your order.

The actual shopping features and favourites make shopping with Tesco very quick and easy. And they can usually deliver (here, anyway) the next day for £4. But if you’ve got more than one address - careful! And Tesco - sort out your secure server! I was creating a new order today and it went down again.

Did you get a £10 House of Fraser voucher from Barclay card earlier this month if you are a Barclaycard account holder? I did - and I know others that did, but I also know plenty that didn’t so we’re not sure by what criteria they gave the vouchers out.

But anyway - when it arrived in the post it seemed to good to be true! £10 to spend in House of Fraser, no strings attached… even when you read the small print… admittedly House of Fraser isn’t a cheap shop, but still you’d be able to get something for a tenner. It wasn’t a complete con to get you to spend money like it would have been if it was a £5 voucher.

However, a friend of mine discovered the hitch.

He went to spend his voucher during July and when he got to the checkout was informed that his voucher wasn’t valid for his purchase because he was buying a sale item and sale items were not included in the promotion. Not a problem he figured - he’d just pick something else. Except everything else was in the sale too. He found 1 washing machine in Bristol’s Cabot Circus House of Fraser that he could have used his voucher on.

So - when did the sale end, he asked a shop assistant.

Ends up the sale ends around the 28th/29th of July. And the voucher expires on the 3rd August. And the sale had been going for the majority of the July - for most of the time since the vouchers had been issued.

So there was the catch. You’re given a voucher with a long lifespan - only to find there’s a small window when it’s actually valid. I wasn’t letting them get away with it though - I made sure I went to House of Fraser on the 2nd August and redeemed my voucher against a very nice recipe folder from Paperchase (which I can’t find on their website otherwise I’d show you).

So - everyone with a Barclaycard/House of Fraser voucher - make sure you redeem it at the right time! Don’t let them get around us with a almost-hollow gesture - get your £10 worth!

Being a clever shopper is about more than finding a good deal - it’s about making sure you get the deal you asked for, and watching that it stays like that.

Our phone bill had been sky high lately - and we didn’t really know why - so when we moved, I went on the war path with BT to get the best deals possible.

I finally got my broadband for £7.33 a month - I was promised this in a phone call and then was later told it wasn’t possible - but I stuck to my guns (I’d been promised it when I threatened to move to Carphone Warehouse) and the operator reluctantly went to her manager and got authorisation.

I also changed package to the Unlimited Anytime Plan, which on their shiny (new in places) website, offers “unlimited calls to UK landlines at any time” for £4.95pm. I’d been through all this before the move - but after the move it hadn’t been put into place/I didn’t receive the call back that I was told I would get, so I rang up and had to go through it all again.

Anywho, today I logged into our BT account to check everything was set up as it should be, and found we were actually being charged £5.95pm for our Unlimited Anytime Plan! Ok, so that’s only £12 a year - but it all adds up, and give them an inch and they’ll take a mile. This is how phone bills creep up.

I rang BT and was told that if I was happy to sign up to the Unlimited Anytime Plan for 12 months, I could get it at £4.95. Well, we’ve had to sign up to the phone line for 12 months, so we’d been resigned to the fact all along that we’d sign up to whatever got us the best deal for that long too. Bit of a gamble, as offers change - but £4.95 for unlimited calls was pretty good so we were willing to go with it.

So I now (apparently) have BT Unlimited Anytime Plan for 12 months for £4.95pm. But why wasn’t I told about the price difference when I ordered it? I categorically requested - and was told I’d got - the package for £4.95. I honestly can’t remember if I agreed to 12 months to get it for £4.95, or if that wasn’t mentioned. But I absolutely definately repeatedly reiterated the fact that what I wanted was £4.95 and they confirmed that to me more than once in the phone call. So whether they didn’t link the 12 month deal to my account by accident or otherwise, if I hadn’t have checked, I’d have been paying more than I’d agreed to. So check check and double check that the superdooper offer you see on the website or are promised over the phone is actually what you end up paying!

Also - I have a new theory when calling BT - they now ask if you’d be willing to do a customer survey after your call. Once this morning I pressed “No” - and got a bad line, with a quiet voice on the end which hung up after a couple of seconds. So I rang back and pressed “Yes” and got a much better line, with a very helpful voice that spoke good English.

Finally - on the note of BT - I made a complaint last week after all of the things I’d set up the week before not having happened and me having to do them all again. And I specifically ticked the box to say I’d like my complaint to be responded to by email. A couple of hours later I got a phone call. Great that they followed it up - but come on! If someone complains shouldn’t you make extra sure you respond to them how they asked to be responded to? Why ask if you don’t take any notice of it?!

BT rant over (temporarily).

I was surprised and delighted today to see a poster for woolworths.co.uk! The brand is back - but now owned by Shop Direct, the owner of Littlewoods.

I’ve just checked out their website (which doesn’t work unless you use www.!) and have mixed feelings about how the site will do.

I feel Woolworths worked as the shop in every small town across Britain that had everything you needed - no matter how random. Growing up, before Tesco came along and took over the world, if you needed something, you just went to Woolworths and they’d probably have it! They were convienience, they were tangible… I never took to their website in the same way. They were never really an online presence to me - they didn’t compete with the big online boys. If I wanted books or music, I’d go to Amazon/CD Wow/Play.com. If I wanted electronics I’d go to the same or to John Lewis or Currys/Comet/Dixons. However, I must say, when I did go to Woolworths online, they were generally the cheapest. Oh - may be that was their problem…

Their site now is relying solely on the brand. The home page etc isn’t particularly search engine optimised and neither are the category pages. Product pages are ok - but it takes a while to get to them in some categories, and in other categories it just looks like a basic, staid catalogue. This wouldn’t be so bad if the design made up for it - but it looks quite quickly thrown together and is quite lacking - plenty of orange (?!) space that could have been filled more nicely.

I find it a little bit odd that I can view on a map where other people are shopping - of all the cool interactive features they could have added I’m not sure that one’s a real points winner. The Very Important Families concept is nice though, with a smart flash animation. Shop with Woolies and get free Saturday morning Cinema tickets.

What is more fun is the Pick N’ Mix option - for some reason on it’s own domain woolworthsparty.co.uk. Despite clicking on a big icon on the main Woolworths home page to go to Pick and Mix, I then had to spend a few seconds looking around the find the pick and mix on this site… it’s just got a tab along the top menu, when your eye is being drawn to the big graphics and categories depicted below.

When you get there though - the flash ordering system does it’s best to recreate the fun of choosing your Pick and Mix for real. Of course there’s only so much a website can recreate, but at least it’s not as basic as clicking on it and adding it to your basket - you actually see the sweets flow into your bag. You have to select your sweet, so it moves over your bag - then you have to click on the sweets again to get them into your order… perhaps some more instructions would be useful here.

Their delivery prices for Pick N’ Mix are good - £1.50 for orders under £5, and £3.95 for orders over £5. Ok - often delivery gets less with bulk, but how they’ve done it makes perfect sense for their model. You don’t want to spend £4 to get a couple of quids worth of sweets delivered! Delivery for the normal shop is £3.95 for a next day service, or you can pick what day you’d like it delivered on. Larger items may cost more.

I hope the Woolworths brand lives on! I’m not sure quite how much Pick N’ Mix they’ll sell online, but I wish them the best of luck with it!

Marks and Spencer are celebrating their 125th birthday with a range of vintage 50’s inspired fashion, lingerie, and home items.

But even more exciting is the news that the major department store is going back to it’s routes of 125 years ago, when it was a penny bazaar, by offering 20 items in all it’s main UK stores for just 1p! The promotion starts today (Wednesday 20th May) and runs for 3 days - but we’ve heard many stores are already selling out of the bargains as the offer is strictly “when it’s gone, it’s gone”.

The goodies up for grabs include jewellery, scarves, purses, knickers, cufflinks, ties and socks, leather passport holders and luggage tags, tea towels and mugs, bags of retro sweets, cans of retro drink, beach toys, and beach balls.

If you do manage to catch a bargain and you want to pay more than 1p, all proceeds will go towards the M&S 125 Charity Challenge.

Today I stumbled across the wash company - and I loved their busy, colourful site! They’ve got a fantastically strong brand identity and they carry it through even to their ‘enlarge image’ graphics. I also - vitally - love their product line. With Beautilicious goodies for “hers”, and Thomas and Friends for “young hims” they’ve got all genders and ages covered if you’re looking for a fun but affordable gift. Suddenly giving someone soap doesn’t show a lack of imagination anymore!

Crucially the site has great photography (on a white background is so important, I always think!) and I can’t use the word “fun” enough about the home page.

You can search by person and then refine your results by subcategory, brand and price - all great features. But there are a few issues that I think could be improved on…

In the search results, you have to click on the image (which is too small) to view the item details. Ideally you should be able to click on the item description too. And we don’t really need to see the model number - keep that for stock inventory and make the images bigger for us shoppers! There’s also the small issue of some of the categories apparently containing (1) item, but then showing nothing when you click on them. Even some of the categories linked to from very nice graphics on the home page are empty - which immediately disappoints a shopper.

But overall, a great looking site with a great stock range… just a few little tweaks to entice us more and it would be even better!

(Oh - and from a techy point of view, as I’ve spent a while doing this on a few shops lately - each item should have it’s own title tag and search engine friendly URL. Remember the shopper, but always remember Google!)

This gorgeous brown bead necklace with a gold cord keeps catching my attention in French Connection (£18) - but the beads just start too low for me. The cord is quite long and the beads very heavy - so unless you’ve got a decent length torso (mine is officially 2 inches short and is a “child’s torso” according to a rather abrupt wedding dress shop owner in Somerset when I was trying on bridesmaids dresses) I think the neck area looks too sparse.

But as an alternative, Dorothy Perkins currently have quote a few chunky bead necklaces, all of which are - whilst more casual than the French Connection option - funky and attractive. Above on the right is the one I bought for £10.

I really am bad at skin care regimes - I have the best of intentions but generally quickly fall out of a routine.

But now I’m the wrong side of 25, my Mum presented me with a jar of Nivea Visage Regenerating Night Cream for my birthday. And I’m glad she did!

Apply it every evening in small, circular upward strokes, and come the morning your skin is left feeling refreshed and supple thanks to the Lotus Extract and ProVitamin B5.

So far, the fresh feeling of my skin in the morning (and the fact that I know I need to get into a habit!) is making me remember to apply it every night!

Mum also gave me Nivea Visage Facial Wash Gel - ideal for cleansing your face at the end of the day before applying your night time moisturiser. A little goes a long way with this gel and I love the fact that it is just that - a smooth, refreshing gel rather than a cream or lotion.

Nivea Visage Regenerating Night Cream, 50ml £4.55 from Boots.com

Nivea Visage Refresh Facial Wash Gel, 150ml, £3.09 from Boots.com

I know times change… and it’s good that food is kept fresh and hygienic etc etc - but it is a shame if that means a piece of confectionary from our childhood has to lose it’s trademark packaging!

If you are a fan of the Sherbet Fountain, with it’s yellow paper tube and liqourice stick, then you might not like the new plastic packaging (shown above).

Voice your opinion at AQuarterOf, the retro sweet shop that is running a campaign to save the cardboard classic!

I absolutely adore the fabulous Radley handbag I was given for Christmas - the quality shines through and you can’t help but feel like you’re dressed to impress when you’ve got it on your arm! Mine’s got a pokadot lining that means you just smile every time you open your handbag!

So when I lost my little Radley dog I was dismayed! I usually have him tucked in the pocket, but at some point he’d obviously got caught on something. 

However a quick email to Radley customer services, and one was in the post the very next day! In my choice of colour! Thank you Radley!

If you’ve got a Radley bag or purse, don’t forget to protect it with the Radley Leather Care Cloth, £2 or Radley Leather Cleaner, £7. I got the cloths and a few minutes later was safe in the knowledge my beloved bag was weather proof. I did look around for other alternatives first as I expected the Radley options to be expensive - but at £2 the cloths are ideal, and you know you’re using what’s recommended.