Just my two pennies worth on Mothercare and their poor online service.

We ordered a car seat several months before the birth of our latest - indicated as in stock -, after about six weeks without an update we chased Mothercare to be told that the car seat was out of stock. Terrible customer service, awful customer representative, couldn't give a crap. Were told that it should be in stock shortly and heard nothing further.

Eventually chased them again about two weeks before the birth, told again it would be with us soon...and so it went on - several days and calls later we had nothing. It wasn't so much the innability to let us know when the car seat would arrive than the utterly terrible reps we had to deal with on the phone. Eventually had to drive down South of the river to pick one up from a store that had them in stock.

Anyway, put it down to a bad experience, and since I actually like the Mothercare brand (although thinking about it I'm not entirely sure why, the customer service in the stores is just as bad) when it came time to upgrade the car seat we ordered through mothercare again....item in stock on the website. Only to receive an email telling us that it's out of stock.

Oh well, at least we got an email this time. Not be using them again though. I don't understand how, in this day of huge online competition and rapidly diminishing brand loyalty how any company feels that it can maintain such low standards.