sunglasses-shop.co.uk > Reviews > My Summer Love

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Spoilt for choice
Disadvantages:	Long wait

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

For me the sunglasses trend really began last year, and since then they have grown and grown as a must have fashion accessory. Drunk last summer, I remember (in a daze) wondering around Cambs as the England game was displayed on a large screen for the whole of the green to enjoy and trying on a strangers big sunglasses, because obviously if you're going to buy sunglasses in 2006/07 they HAVE to be big. That settled it, whether the ones I tried on were for girls or not, I looked good and what someone else can do I have to do bigger and better - it's just my nature. And so began my search for the perfect sunglasses.

I don't think it is fair to say I look up to celebrities and that they are my idols, but there are some things that celebrities do fashion wise that does impact me. That doesn't mean a celebrity is my hero. Obviously if something is going to be a trend, it's going to mean that celebrities are doing it, and whether it was P Diddy in his latest music video or Billi in the Big Brother house, that was just pushing my want for some big sunglasses even more. It's hard to really know where to shop for sunglasses unless you are an expert, so I think I put something like 'celebrity sunglasses' in a search on Google and that is how I came across Sunglasses-Shop.co.uk.

Not unexpectedly, if you're going to get big name glasses that big names in the world wear, you're going to have to pay even bigger prices. This is something that I was prepared to do, as I figured it's pretty much just a one-off purchase. Something I could enjoy all summer long, and hopefully the summer following, but people who know me know how bored I get fo things! It was very enjoyable to browse the site and see what I liked best, but with winter coming in I decided it was best to let it be and just get my sunglasses when the next summer rolled around, to see if the trend changed much then. That brings us to now, and a very eager Nathan logged back on to Sunglasses-Shop again as it was the best site I could find with the biggest range. This time, I was going to make my purchase.

My heart became set on a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, although there were a few pairs in contention for my affection, so it was no easy choice. For things like this I think one of the best things to do is get my mum involved, although she's not always right. The pair I set on were £74, although according to the site they RRP at £87, so not a bad discount. I couldn't find them anywhere at a cheaper price either, in fact a search on price comparison sites such as Kelkoo didn't help me a whole lot when it came to purchasing sunglasses.

There is a very independant and low key feel about the site, in that the colour scheme is pretty much just black and white, and whilst the site is fairly easy to navigate it wouldn't have taken a genius to create. The logo for the site, as you can see from the picture supplied on Ciao, looks like something that has just been put together on Microsoft Paint as well. It was actually I myself that suggested this product to Ciao, so I was very happy to see that they jumped on the idea, I was hoping there would be a few people who had used the site before and would jump in with their opinions, but I guess that is a lot to ask. There are plenty of rogue sites out their on the internet, so you never can be too careful when it comes to purchases like this. I guess I put style before brains with my purchase, knowing next to nothing about the site. A complete leap of faith.

As I have only recently turned 18 years of age, I don't actually have a card of sorts to make purchases off the internet personally yet, which has always lead me to use relatives cards. If I use my dads he always just gives me the card and lets me have my way with it, I guess I must be a very trustworthy son, but for some reason on this occassion I let my brother order the sunglasses for me (of course I had to pay him in cash beforehand). I'm not sure exactly what he did but he seemed to have a lot of problems with the checkout process and after many minutes of fighting with the machine he finally let out a cry of relief. He's a lot older than me, so I don't know what he finds so hard about purchasing off the internet as he is a regular user of it. I can only assume he is slightly retarded.

May 31st - Following my brother finally getting his card to work on the site, an email was sent out to confirm the receipt of the order. There was confirmation of the product we had purchases, the £3 shipping fee and an order number. (SS followed by 5 digits, I presume SS just stands for the name of the company). This email was not confirmation of the order though, that would follow later from a different company apparently.

June 1st - I received a phone call on my mobile because that is the contact number we had supplied asking for my brother, it honestly didn't click with me that this would be from SS because to be honest I've never had anyone phone me when I've ordered something off the internet. They didn't say what they wanted either. I then come online to see I have an email asking for my brother to contact the company so that they can confirm some details. Bit strange. My brother phoned them up and told them all they wanted to know, and said if there was any other questions they would send them with the order. What a weird thing to say.

June 8th - Having thought my order was more than likely on the way after the companies claim of 'allow 2 weeks for delivery, although delivery normally comes within 2 days' I get a shock email saying my order has been cancelled due to WorldPay not being able to confirm payment. What on earth did my brother do? They offered to try and carry out payment through PayPal, but I decided I was just going to reorder the product MYSELF.

June 11th - Put my second order through myself, this time using my dads card, although my dad and brother have pretty much the same type of card so I can only wonder what the problem was. Later that evening I receive an email from WorldPay confirming payment was successful. That's more like it!

So I figured things had finally worked themselves out and that my order would arrive any day now, but after having those problems with the site and the order taking a little longer than I liked it to, I decided it would be a good idea to contact them via email for the first time myself. To see if I got a reply or not would be very interesting, and see if I have just lost myself a lot of money by being a bit niave on the internet. About 48 hours after sending my email, I received a message back saying that unfortunately my order was out of stock currently but it would be sent as soon as it arrived. They were apologetic, but I thought it was very unprofessional of them not to alert me to the problem. There was no indication on the site that the product was out of stock when I ordered, and when I went on the site after receiving this email they were still displaying the item I had ordered as in stock! Very strange.

I decided to contact them again after a little while to see how things were coming along, and once again they took about 48 hours. That seems to be their timespan, which I'm not sure is that good. Whilst I'm glad they got back to me fairly quickly, they are not Tesco and they can surely not have that many emails to deal with. They told me my order would be with me in the next few days.

And in fact I received that last email yesterday, and what awoke me this morning? The doorbell ringing as my sunglasses were finally delivered! YES! THEY ARE A REAL COMPANY! THANK GOD FOR THAT!!!! 17 days, so that's 3 days longer than they claimed things should take at their longest, but I can forgive that seeing as it has been raining all week. Strangely enough today is a really sunny day in Cambridge currently as well (touch wood) so hopefully it won't take me too long to be able to get some good use out of them. Whilst the problem with my first order may have been down to my brother, I did not like the way they dealt with it and it was good of me to actually try again to use them. They also should have alerted me to the product being out of stock, and that's not really forgiveable. A very poorly organised company in my opinion. An apology note actually in with the order would have made me forget all that.

The product was packaged very well, and came by Royal Mail special next day delivery. Fragile tape surrounded the box and there was a little advertisement book for sunglasses in there as well. As for the Ray-Ban sunglasses themselves, well I know this isn't down to the company I purchased them from, but they are incredibly and truly worth the money.

Sunglasses-Shop do every brand of sunglasses imaginable, and they also do cheap £12 glasses that are supposed to look like the expensive thing. Some of them do a good job. There are also catagories for you to search by, like there's a catagorey called 'celebrity sunglasses' and if you go on there it shows you pictures of the latest celebrities wearing sunglasses incredibly recently and then offer you sunglasses that look very similar. You are also able to order by phone Mon-Fri, 9am-4pm, as well as there being a 'live chat' feature on the site that apparently allows you to talk to a member of staff. I'm not sure exactly how that works as I didn't use it, but it sounds interesting. It's a shame that a pretty good site lets itself down when it comes to customer service, the most important part.