The one, where I try to order some CDs…

A friend recommended play.com for ordering english DVDs for a reasonable price. I finally wanted to give this company a try and registered and besides a lot of DVDs I also found a lot of relatively cheap CDs. Compared to the prices in German stores (online or else) I could save about 5 EUR on each CD, even the ones which were just released. So on November 23rd I placed an order for the new Killer CD and the new Dido CD for a total sum of 22+something EUR. It wasn’t that much about saving money, but I wanted to try out play.com because I know I would love to buy some cheap DVDs there some day. [I still have a rack of unwatched DVDs, so I try to restrain myself at the moment].
But back to the order business: I put the CDs in my cart and proceeded with the whole ordering process. I usually let any shipped items be delivered to my mom’s place, because she is home during the day and I’m not and I’m too lazy to have to get the item at the post office later on. So I put down my mom’s address as delivery address and billing address, because to me it doesn’t matter which address is on the bill. But it obviously does matter to play.com because just a few hours after I got my order confirmation mail I got another mail informing me that the given address doesn’t match with the address which my bank has for my credit card. Or something like that. I deleted the mail later on, so I don’t remember the exact words. I was asked to change the address accordingly though and I logged into my account again and changed it.
I didn’t get any more mail and checked the order status a few days later. It still had got the “wrong” address the status was still “Processing”. And than I forgot about the order anyway until earlier this week. Which is three weeks after I placed the order. It was still being processed and the address in the order was still wrong. Which was strange after all. So I tried to find a contact mail address to inquire on this order. There is now contact mail on this site, only a service phone number, which I didn’t wanted to call from Germany. And I’d have to speak English, which is much more difficult than writing it :-)

I searched some more and tried all the “If this and that occurs, do this and that..” links in the Help FAQ. Nothing helped me, so I googled a bit for contact mail address. I tried different ones and both mails were returned to me immediately. Great! At least I also found another phone number, because the given one seems to only be working for people inside the UK.

I still didn’t want to call. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money for an international phonecall and maybe even special service charge, just because they don’t offer any mail support. I checked my phone rates and found out that international calls to the UK only cost me 9 cent/min, so it was totally affordable. I was still reluctant though, probably because I was afraid I would be making a fool of myself trying to explain the problem in English. Speaking English that is.

But than I called anyway. I was on hold for a few minutes but that was ok, so I could re-read my mail a few more times to memorize the words I would have to say. When I finally got a woman on the line, the first thing I said that I was calling from Germany. To sort of apologize for my lacking English abilities in advance :-).
They obviously weren’t that lacking after all,  at least the woman understood my problem and I obviously even correctly spelled the order numbers and my name and address. Or at least in a way she understood. I had some problems understanding her every once in a while, because she had some accent. Northern England, Scotland or something. Not the way Inspector Lynley speaks on TV :-) Anyway, she confirmed the changed address for my account and said that the items now should be posted within the next 24 hours. And I should get a mail letting me know when the items will be on their way.

It was just a 2 minutes conversation but I still found it nervwrecking. guess I really have to talk more in English to get over that nervousness. Anyway now I’m looking forward to the “Your order has been shipped” mail and to receive the CDs after all. Maybe just in time for xmas :-)

This entry was posted in Archive and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.