Review on AppliancesOnline by Bruce Saywon

A couple of days ago I started talking with a friend about appliances and the conversation drifted towards shopping online. He told me he knows of an Australian e-commerce site that has good prices for their products, so I decided to take a look at it.

A little later in the day I was browsing Facebook, suddenly my desktop computer's internet connection stopped working properly (internet would run slow from time to time and sometimes just stop working completely). Everytime this happens my first action is to restart my router by turning the power off and back on again (I do it without even thinking about it now), but the same thing happened as before: after powering on I tried opening up Firefox and Chrome... And guess what? The browser didn't load!

I realised that the problem was not with my home internet connection so decided to make myself a nice coffee, while I did this I thought about my friend and what he told me about Appliances Online , since I had nothing better to do at that time, I started looking into them.

After reading some information about AppliancesONline (AO) in their FAQ section, and watching reviews on YouTube, I finally decided to place an order with them. And because it's this blog's policy that every review should be honest and as detailed as possible, here is a list of pros and cons for buying from AO:

PROS:   - great prices;



- delivery is free (for most items);

CONS:   - items are dispatched after 1-2 weeks;

- delivery has a fee for certain locations (as per AO, this is due to the long distance).

Besides this there were some other minor issues like web browsers not working properly and my order being cancelled 2 days after placing it (I was notified about that by email), we'll get to those further on in this article.

So, what else can you expect from an e-commerce site review? For me personally I think most people want to know about 3 things when they read a review: how easy was it to find the product I wanted (search engine); did I have any problems with anything during checkout/ordering process; and last not least, if and when I get my product is it going to work as expected (most people probably wouldn't care about my opinion on the quality of the product itself).

After filling out all the details required while ordering (shipping address, payment type etc.), we finally come to the "checkout" stage. I say checkout but in actual fact what you're doing here is more like creating an account along with your order. You could, of course, continue without registering but that would mean that from now on you'd have to fill out all those details every time you want to make a new purchase.

And let's be honest: no one wants that.

At least AO should consider adding some other options which would speed up buying process (for example, 1-click checkout if you've registered and signed in before).

After clicking on "place order and continue", you're redirected to a page with payment options (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal etc.) so that you can choose the one you prefer. During my order they were offering free delivery for orders over $100, but because I had selected standard shipping which cost me only $3.95 anyway, this offer didn't apply in my case. However it might be worth mentioning that AO also offers 'express' delivery option for some products (but not all of them) at extra cost; plus there is a special section where you can search for products eligible for free shipping. All in all, I think AO does very well in this area - especially given how many different brands/models they have in their stock.

The last thing I want to mention is that AO has one of the most generous refund policies you will ever see on a computer-related website (or any online store, for that matter). If you change your mind about product or decide it just doesn't suit you after all, they let you return it within 30 days and even provide option to pay for postage only if you live somewhere in Australia where returning items using post service isn't as expensive as elsewhere.