Earlier this week I wrote about some inconsistencies in Amazon.co.uk’s apparent policy not to ship electrical goods, software or Xbox games to the Irish Republic.
At that point, I’d only identified that the Amazon check out was flagging some Xbox games I had in my basket as being unshippable but notall of them. As I had other things on the order that I wanted, I proceeded with it, expecting to get an email or something from Amazon explaining that they couldn’t ship the Xbox game (Ratatouille as it happens) to me because it was a class of software.
Imagine my surprise this morning when the postman delivered a package containing the game to me. Sheesh. I did notice, however, that the item description seems to categorise the Xbox game as ‘video’.
Either Amazon have miscategorised the product (an Information Quality problem which Amazon never suffer from) or their policy on shipments to the Republic of Ireland is a nonsense.
Electrical goods like toasters and blenders and TVs I’d understand, but software or games makes no sense at all unless there is some form of market carve up taking place. And if there is, then miscategorising products so they sneak through the net can only result in problems down the line.