It’s that age old question. When you’re designing a website, do you have an opt-in or opt-out form?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I mean that question that says “Please tick here if you do not wish to receive details of new products”. Thats an opt-out, because you have to tick, to opt yourself out of receiving stuff. If it was something you had to tick to say “Yes I am happy to receive special offers”, that’s an opt-in.

Anyway, the long and short of this is that PC World seem to have been unable to make up their mind, and gone for both. As demonstrated by this gem of a form at the end of buying or reserving something:

Brilliant, isn’t it.

Better than that, they seem to have also signed up my relative for some sort of account, from the looks of the email that arrived in her inbox shortly after. All this to reserve one item to pick up in store.

And when we arrived to pick it up, it wasn’t in the reservation area, so they got one off the shelf. Which is the same experience of ring-and-reserve I’ve had now three times in PC World stores. First time they picked one off the shelf. Second time they checked the system, said they had 5, but couldn’t find any. It doesn’t work like Argos’ excellent ring-and-reserve service, that’s for sure.