Halfords.com crashes off the internet
Halfords.com is mostly unavailable today thanks to "a temporary administrative issue in our domain name renewal process". Visitors to the site this morning - including a vast number of Register readers - were met with a holding page for Network Solutions and an invitation to renew the domain. In the meantime the page contains …
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Rob Halford
I didn't know the Judas Priest frontman was so popular.
Having used Halfords.com
All I can say is the Service/site/back office is rubbish
Purchased a bike rack... Thank you for you order that will be delivered in six weeks....
Quick phone call to customer services I need it in 2 weeks. Sorry sir we can't find your order. Call back tomorrow.
Call to credit card company Yes Halfords has requested an amount from your card. Can I stop it? No not yet.
Next day a call to Customer Services. Sorry sir still can't find you order. Call back tomorrow
Automated email your order is being processed.
Call to customer services sorry sir still can't find you order. Maybe you should wait until the item is delivered and then return it to us for full refund.
Four days later and numerous phone calls. Order finally cancelled. Never again
Not us!
"It apologised to customers for any inconvenience"
Don't apologise to us, you better start apologising to the share holders, they're probably slightly more miffed!
administrative issue
"a temporary administrative issue in our domain name renewal process".
Which likely translates as: "We at halfords do not pay our bills on time, so our provider has stopped the service." They are lucky now that domains tend to have a grace period before other people can buy them, otherwise they could loose it.
I wonder what happens if I go into Halfords and say: "I'm taking this now but I will come back at some other time to pay you for it"
Oops
"a temporary administrative issue in our domain name renewal process"
Lemmi guess. Someone forgot to pay the renewal.
no auto renew
Definate Fail, why not slap on their auto-renew process.
Whoopsy
Technical Contact:
Pending Renewal or Deletion
P.O. Box 430
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
US
570-708-8786
Record expires on 14-Jan-2011.
Record created on 14-Jul-1997.
I don't need no stinkin' title!
Directautomotive (a supplier for our work) is down aswell today, it seems there's a few people not paying their bills this week.
It's really hypocritical that these big companies expect to get away with not paying their bills, yet their customers would never be able to.
Awful site when it does work
It's always been the last port of call for me. I can get practically everything they sell, cheaper elsewhere.
I was looking at bikes before Xmas. Plenty of cheap ones - none available within any decent travelling distance of south London.
I refuse to enoble a simple forum post....
funily enough I was looking at the Halfrauds website about 11.45 last night....
Did you know they no longer sell brake pads?!??! Not for cars anyway... plenty of bicycle ones were listed.
Do you think this was all related in some bizzare way? :-)
Auto Centre
I know Halfords have bought out a car garage chain - national autocentre i think. Will probably have to go to them for car parts
There's a good reason they no longer sell breakpads
People who are clever enough to fit brake pads are clever enough to buy them for 1/3 the price at their local motor factors
Six days late
According to the who.is information, the renewal was due six days ago. Perhaps that's how long it took their accounts payable department to organise a whip-round.
Absolute tripe anyway!
I used their reserve and collect service for a part for my bicycle (needed it straight away, so didnt have time to go trawling around bike shops).
Reserved it online and toddled over to the store (about 6 miles away), only to be told that "We don't have that in stock. Maybe it got stolen from the shelf". Aside from the fact that it is a pretty strange thing to steal (a bottom bracket, the bearing collection that goes inside the frame between the two pedals), when did it go missing and when was the last time you done a stock check?
Last week I went into the store to buy an Air Filter for my car. Checked the little book on the shelf, picked up the one stated, paid my £12 and went home to fit it. To find it was 2 inches short on each side. Called the store to be told that it must be an unusual model. Last time I checked, a Vauxhall Corsa is a pretty damn usual model of car. Funny how, if my car is so unusual that the local Vauxhall garage was able to sell me a GM OEM filter for £7 (cheaper than Halfords!!! at a GM parts dealer!!!!) just by knowing my engine size. Sounds pretty standard to me.
Bunch of useless twats.
The last resort
And only after I've called and got the item put aside, do I finally stump up for their over priced goods.
As for their web site, its shite even the search facility pisses me off as its one of those that erases the search results once clicked, grrr.
Not very collected?
Badbob wrote "Reserved it online and toddled over to the store (about 6 miles away), only to be told that "We don't have that in stock. Maybe it got stolen from the shelf"."
I've more than once done a "reserve and collect" to find when I went into the store they simply went from the "reserve and collect" desk and picked the item off the shelf and sent me to pay at the ordinary cash desk. On the last occasion I asked the cashier several times to show me where the goods were marked as reserved, but was simply told that they would have taken the labels off them when they took them off the shelf. Believe that if you like. What's the point in having a special "reserve and collect" desk if they don't reserve the goods and take them to the "reserve and collect" point?
Not ever using them again.
Out shopping one day and thought "I need some things for the car," Halfords was nearby. Went got my stuff, put it up on the desk to pay, all rang in.
"Would you like a bag sir?"
"Yes please."
"That will cost 2p."
At which point items for purchase were left on counter and I walked out. If you want me to buy from you allow me to carry my purchase home. The price of the bags should (and I am sure already is) be factored in to the cost of your merchandise (overpriced anyway).
Sorry off-topic Halfords rant. The one at the back please! No the blue one... that's it.
Re: Not ever using them again.
Yeah, what an outrage. Personally I would have grabbed some petrol and self-immolated right there in protest.
Re: bags
"Think of the trees!"
I do, so I always make sure I use one-time-use plastic bags rather than paper bags.
That way no trees are wasted, and I do my bit to keep those poor people who make plastic bags employed.
Consistency. I love it.
If nothing else, their back end is as consistent as the quality of their store staff.
Wonder how long.....
...you have to wait between clicking the buy button and getting to the pay screen. In the high street shop you have to wait about 10 minutes for someone to come to the check-out to take your money from you. Its almost like they don't want to actually sell you things.
agreed...
It's because they employ kiddies at minimum wage (and expect them to work over) - who have absolutely no interest in actually being there - let alone helping the Halfords brand.
A lot of companies seem to think this is a good idea?
Quite a few of those companies don't exist any more. How long for Halfords?
Fail
me and dad went in to get some bits for our classic astons that we know they stock (standard generic parts) just didnt know where in the store layout. Assistant persisted that he wanted to know make model and everything even though we just needed to be pointed in the right direction...so....
Staff: what car have you got
dad: Aston Martin DB6
Sales: Hmm
Sales: Right, thats under Jaguar
Me: AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA,
I now am in a hosting company and its supriseing who will forget or ignore the warning emails that are sent out months before hand.
Halfords is like pc word - have a look at there products, right so thats the most i should be paying for it, wheres wilko's/maplins?
According to Halfords
Where I went to get a generic radiator cap, Landrovers were not made before 1980.
This was the 50th anniversary year.
In Solihull
2 weeks after the parade through the centre of town
But
Where am I supposed to get my gungum to go with these jubilee clips and coke can?
Would recommend again!
They delivered my order twice and didn't charge me a penny.
Now that's what I call customer service!
PC World / Halfords
That's what happens when there are no competitors on the high street / on the trading estate. Imagine a world with only the cult of Jobs, or Gates or even Torvalds, or am I being unfair? Back on message, 1&1 always give me warning AGES in advance of renewal which gives me ample time to dump those speculative purchases.
1and1
Personally I have had nothing but trouble with renewals from 1and1.
Their email correspondence about all account issues/renewals/etc has been terrible.
Their email correspondence/spam on the other hand always seems to get through?
Do you suppose
... mail from Network Solutions was going to their customer services inbox? That would explain everything.
Seriously...
.. never known a company to manage its domains like I manage my underwear supply - only renewing after it runs out.
Halfrauds
With a trade card most stuff in Halfords is 50%-60% off the shelfprice... Still, EuroCarParts is a better place to get your car spares...
Yes the staff are all teenagers who usually dont know an alternator from a starter motor...
But, their Halfords Advanced workshop tools are really good... Independently tested their torque wrenches (made by Norbar) came out tops for accuracy, beating the top name brands by a wide margin...And the 150 piece socket set is lifetime guaranteed and unbelievably good quality (frequently on offer for 50% off... or permenantly 50% off with a trade card) for about 90 squids...
Staff: what car have you got?
Me: Aston Martin DB6
Staff: Are you nuts... you have an Aston Martin DB6 and you are buying parts for it in here...
Staff and all customers within earshot: AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
I agree
The store may be pretty naff, but their pro tools, sockets etc are good quality
At a sensible price................
On special offer of 50% off, plus Quidco credit for paying with a registered credit card, plus cashback on the credit card ....... their pro tools are worth having. Not much else is.
Excuse me, but what is Halfords?
Article needs a bit of context for people in the parts of the world where Halfords has not been heard of, webpage notwithstanding. I take it that they are a retail chain of some sort, and that they sell bicycles and some other goods.
info
How dare you live in another part of the world :)
Halfords is a store that sells car parts, motorcycle parts, cycles & parts, tools, car stereos, little fluffy dice, workshop manuals, etc, etc. etc.
Where on earth ................
is Shannon Jacobs? How can we compare Halfords to some other chain without knowing in what country to make the comparison.
Halfords strike me as being the most horrendous waste of a store. It could have been like the Canadian Tire chain, had it been reasonably managed. But it has not been. Mind you, Canadian Tire is mainly a very large scale franchise operation, so the local store -- usually several times the size of a Halfords branch -- is quite probably locally-owned.
Cynic
Well call me a cynic but maybe this was deliberate.
This is now being reported all over the press and I'm sure the halfords.com traffic will have increased as a result.
Seen this happen
I used to work for a womens (now sell mens as well) clothing chain, the chain also has small shops the sold accessories for the ladies. Our webhost were supposed to hadle the the domains, we had paid for the renewal but they never got round to it. We got a complaint about the website sellign sex toys, turns out the name had been picked up because it wasn't renewed took about a week to get it back, think it cost the webhost a large sum as well.....
and halfords.co.uk....
...which doesn't expire until September of this year, so you'd think they'd at least ensure that wasn't just redirected to the non-existant .com address and point it to their web servers while they renew their .com - even if only to apologise to being such f--kwits!
Expect the .co.uk will dissapear to a holding page in Septermber then!
Could be Worse...
In a retail park round my way, one of the stores forgot to renew the lease on their unit. Needless to say, the unit was given to a new store and the old one was told to "ship out by Friday". I expect the manager (or whomever was responsible) was looking for a new job that Friday!
next fail in 2021
See they've renewed it til 2021 now. Not that the DNS has propagated yet. and halfords.co.uk still redirects to the broken .com....
Its went to the dogs!
They've not been the save since the Burmah asset strippers flogged them off from Quinton Hazzel many moons ago
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