Boo to Boots : The designers of the Boots commerce website have clearly never used it themselves. If they had, they would have realised that it is fundamentally not usable for any medical, but non-prescription, products.

Grumpy entered an order for non-prescription medication, which had around a dozen items on it. A few moments after completion, he received a mail that stated

“We’re sorry inform you that we are unable to supply your items at the moment and so your order has been cancelled. This may happen if you have ordered a large quantity of a popular product or if you have recently placed a repeat order for the same product. You have not been charged for this order.”

1 In fact, they did charge for the order, and the credit card used was debited immediately

2 Why could the circumstances described have not been checked at the time of order ? In fact, for products which were to be collected rather than delivered, there was a ‘stock check’ button, so it could be done.

3 However, the reason why the Boots site sucks is that it was not possible to determine what the reason actually was, and (more importantly) which item or items caused the failure. The only way to have checked this was to randomly remove them one at a time and re-enter the order for the remaining items.

4 Sadly, this didn’t work. Grumpy tried this, and his re-order was aborted, with a message that flashed up then disappeared. He received no confirmatory e-mail and – worse – he was charged for the item anyway.

Grumpy’s Boots are henceforth made for walking (See *** for youngsters), and all the way to Chemists Direct, who processed the order efficiently.

*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/These_Boots_Are_Made_for_Walkin%27