This is a guest post from George Kinghorn. He’s a Tamebay reader and the founder and head consultant at www.Bayacademy.co.uk. Bayacademy provide on-demand eBay consultancy and training for clients UK wide using the convenience and speed of their webinar and online training systems.
I was on the eBay site the other day and a banner promoting Click and Collect appeared so I decided to purchase something to see how it worked.
For those of you that don’t know, eBay has partnered with Argos to allow sellers to offer buyers the option to collect items from selected Argos Stores. eBay have been running a trial with selected sellers since late 2013.
So having been attracted by the banner, I found a range of goods available for me to collect. This page can currently be found by clicking the Deals & Special offers link on the eBay home page.
Among the deals I found a set of screwdrivers that I fancied so I clicked on the listing. Everything looked the same as it normally does but there was an additional Click & Collect field that allowed me to select a store to collect the screwdrivers from.
This feature then gave me the ability to locate and select the best Argos store to collect it from.
Note this doesn’t just default to the nearest store. This could be handy if your travelling and want items sent to where you are, I’ve personally had to have stuff delivered to holiday park receptions and the like so this could come in handy in the future.
Once I’d selected the Argos store that I wanted to collect from I carried on with Check out as usual. The check out process confirmed which store I had selected.
Immediately after paying I was then able to input my mobile number to receive a text notification of when my item was ready to collect. I made my purchase on a Monday at 12 noon and received my notification text on the Wednesday at 14.29 – pretty swift I’d say.
Subsequently I checked my email which told me that I needed to go to the store and told me the opening times 9-8 Mon to Fri 9-6 Sat and 10-4.30 Sun. So there was a good window of opportunity. It didn’t however tell me how long I had to go get it. I believe buyers have 7 days to collect purchases before they are sent back.
When I got to my selected Argos I found a dedicated collection point and was told by the enthusiastic staff I didn’t need to wait at the tills (this wasn’t pointed out in the emails).
My Item was quickly retrieved and I had a great chat with the guy in the store who told me that eBay collections are steadily increasing and only a couple of days before they had a “rush” when 2 people came in at the same time. He told me he liked it as it brought people who don’t normally use Argos into the store but he hadn’t noticed them purchasing extra items whilst collecting just yet.
He then surprised me by not only asking for my item number and PIN but also for some ID. Luckily I carry my photo driving licence so this wasn’t a problem but I had never been told I needed ID at any point in the transaction. So all in all a pretty easy experience with only a couple of bugs, which I’m sure will get ironed out in time.
18 Responses
Thanks for an interesting case study from the customers viewpoint.
“He then surprised me by not only asking for my item number and PIN but also for some ID. Luckily I carry my photo driving licence so this wasn’t a problem but I had never been told I needed ID at any point in the transaction. ”
Thats the point i would have told em to F’off and walked out.
Or rather gone to the tills and bought the item from argos with no id 🙂 then opened a non delivery case.
I can’t see how this scheme can last, its just costing argos money, from storage to you taking up a sales assistant’s time. As a catalog store they don’t even benefit from extra footfall.
Compare this to the excellent Amazon lockers in supermarkets. No extra effort for the stores, plus footfall that will actually buy things.
It’s just another reason to buy/sell with Amazon.
they can trolly out statistics as much as they like the success of ebay and e commerce is down to click and deliver ,if i wanted to collect anything there are thousands of shops already out there
Every other C&C seems to have problems with the buyer always expecting to collect the next day. Also there are problems with UPS not collecting from us. I’m not sure it gives buyers an estimate for this?
Once they start charging sellers for this, I’ll be off. The time and effort just to produce the C&C is not worth it
how much did you pay for parking?
This could fall as a victim of success.
Imagine all the Argos stores with hundreds more eBay C&C customers than buyers for their own stuff?
Ah hang on! ‘eBay to buy Argos’?
They may not buy at the time they are picking up their ebay c & c items. But what percentage pick up an Argos Catalogue? Take it home and then browse through it and now that they know where the nearest or most convenient Argos is, decide to buy. So Argos have a new customer, maybe even one who goes on to be a regular Argos Customer.
My wife found the ebay click and collect promotion frustrating – no local stores to collect from. However , the click and collect concept was definately something she latched on to , and explored other options, finally finding Tesco Direct deliver to our local Tesco Express, next day if ordered before 3. So another potential ebay buyer has migrated and Tesco have so far won 3 orders and more to come as my wife is inspired by the experience and fast service that Tesco offer.