Not bad at all! I can see myself going bankrupt there! The only problem is the usual one with CDs - getting Mrs S to switch the TV off long enough for me to play them !

Snorri

Have you tried Amazon Snorri ? I find them pretty good, reliable and fast, but you have to pay for delivery. Not sure about their classical catalogue though. Re Mrs S and the TV, you may be better off buying a personal CD player LOL - good luck with your hunt - BTW, have used Play.com for games and found them superb!

Cheers

Amazon aren't bad - though the CDs can be a bit thin on the ground - but they are good at finding CDs which everyone else has listed as "deleted"!

Bought my DVD player from them (local shop wanted £220, four week wait, too), but Amazon delivered it for £120 in four days.

Currently awaiting an Amazon order of blank CD-Rs (even with postage, far cheaper than the local shop I used to use!).

The trouble with the local shops is that, because this is a small place, they think that everybody will keep going to them out of loyalty - so they take their time and add huge surcharges for transport. Most of them have not clued up to the fact that nearly everyone in Orkney has a computer now, and can get things cheaper and faster on-line!

Same thing happened when I was looking for a new hifi system - local shop quoted £600, with four-week wait. Richer Sounds (online) provided exactly the right separates, delivered, for £320, in five DAYS. I'd rather use the local shops, and if it had been only a fiver, and no wait, I'd have gone there. But the huge wait and the (near) 100% price hike was far too much.

In the meantime, I phoned Britannia, who blamed Royal Mail, and told me that the CD I was after is now out of stock - I'm now expected to wait another 10 days for a replacement to be despatched.

The reason Britannia is still in business after so many ****-ups is because they are part of Universal Music Group now (Decca, Polygram etc.) and, presumably, subsidized!

The only reason I've stayed with them this far is that their Christmas sales provide fairly cheap Chrissie pressies. Mostly, I get stuff from the shop I used to use in Edinburgh: I get a discount, and they're more like friends with a shop, rather than friendly shopkeepers (if you see what I mean!) and not like so many companies these days, only after your money and to hell with the service!

Snorri

I love Richer Sounds - we bought our very first DVD player from them, and have upgraded twice, the latest being an 80GB HD DVD recorder for £320, which I thought pretty good. We may have got this cheaper elsewhere, but as the shop is walking distance and I'm not the most patient person we went for that one.

Ooops! Forgot to say that I did have a personal CD player, until the dogs knocked it off the table and trashed it. Fortunately (?) it was a cheapo out of Woolworths, so I'll be after a replacement next week (and will dock the dogs' pocket money till it's covered! Which may be for a long time, as they are still paying for the crystal glasses they broke at Christmas! Dartington is not that cheap!)

Snorri

brittania are total p*sh!!! theyr so full of rhubarb n custard its unbelievable!! theyr one of those companys that really are too good to be true, u buy one thing and then they send you stuff every month, plebs and then they hit you with all sorts of excuses why they cant take the item back and you have to pay for it. total rip off merchants!!

Hah! If they send me anything I don't want, I just write "Return to Sender" on it and stick it in a mailbox. If there's postage to be paid, they can deal with it!

My CD did turn up, eventually, yesterday (only a month after they say they posted it), and it was worth it!

One thing that amazed me was that, before I went to replace the dog-trashed Personal CD player, I gave it another chance - and it seems to have recovered, it's not clanking any more!

BTW, Vicki - the personal CD player seems to be against Mrs S' "rules" as well. I got told to turn it off this morning! Apparently because I couldn't hear what she was trying to say. Odd that she doesn't talk to me any other time!

Seems to be the same principle as the hoover - she can only find the "on" switch when I do get music on the main CD player!

Snorri

LOL - Mrs S sounds just about like every other woman! Glad the portable has gasped for breath again....

No wonder there are communication difficulties! If Mrs S is typical, then almost anything a woman says can be translated as "I want....."

Me, I'm from the old school of thought - '"I want" doesn't get!'

Other examples:
"We need to talk" = "You need to listen" (so I don't)
"We need a new microwave" = "I want a new microwave" (plot bared here by the evidence that the old one is still working fine, for the woman we gave it to. So much for "need"

Funny how "I need a new CD player" didn't seem to carry the same weight!

Snorri
(B/S translator)