I do a lot of shopping on line.

I’m not fussy.  I will buy books, the weekly groceries, bits of electronics, pipes or just about anything.

Shopping on line has so many advantages that it’s hard to knock – no parking worries, no hassle, no temptation to buy what I don’t need and a far greater range of stuff than I will find in any shop within fifty miles of here.

A week or so I went to buy something from Oxendales.  No sweat.  I found what I was looking for and I stuck it in my basket and clicked on the Checkout button.

That’s when the fun started.

They asked me for my name and address.  Fair enough, they have to know where to deliver to?

They asked for my email address.  Fair enough, they want to b able to confirm my order, and I made damn sure to click the “no further emails” bit too.

The site then went on to a new page where I expected them to ask for my credit card number.  But it didn’t.

It started asking me what my income was, how long I had lived at this address, how many kids I have and personal shit like that.  What the fuck were they on about?  There is no fucking way I am going to tell them my personal details, particularly when they are completely irrelevant.

I read the small print.

It transpired that they were trying to get me to open a credit account.

I don’t want a credit account.  I want to pay for my item and they can fuck off after that.  I don’t want them to be hassling me all the time about some fucking account that I don’t want.  I went back to look for a straightforward pay-the-money-and-get-the-fuck-outa-here button but there wasn’t one.

Normally at this stage I would just leave a site like that and go elsewhere, but I had gone to a lot of trouble to find the item I was looking for and I was not going to be put off by their little scam.

I phoned them.

I got onto a very nice girl [phonewise, not literally, unfortunately] and told her I wanted to buy something.  She said no problem and that she would open an account for me.  I told her I didn’t want a fucking account and that I just wanted to buy one item, pay for it and leave it at that.  She said no problem again and took my credit card details.  She asked if I had any special offer codes or discount codes and I told her she must have a few lying around and she could stick one in for me [again – not literally].  She said she would enclose a free gift and we said our cheerful goodbyes.

I was woken from a beautiful deep sleep at the ungodly hour of half twelve this afternoon by a courier.

Two large parcels.

I have received the order I placed – twice.

I phoned them.

Apparently their system had picked up on my original efforts to buy on line and had blended it with my later details that I gave by phone.  Now that is one crazy fucking system they have that can do crap like that?

They apologised and said they would send a courier to collect the second box.

They’re not getting their free gifts back though!