Emotional Baggage - www.emotionalbaggage.co.uk

I'm not a general frequenter of sites selling handbags, but came across this when looking for a birthday present for my wife. I'm a bit picky about who I shop with online, but this very professional site has a reassuring air about it.

After plenty of digging around there were a number of options that I reckoned suited my other half's style so I bit the bullet and ordered. The process couldn't have been smoother and the bag arrived just when they said it would, nicely packaged (extra brownie points for me!). The only problem - I hadn't been as smart as I thought in my selection and was (very carefully) told I might have gone for something that wasn't almost exactly like one she already had!

Turns out that wasn't a problem. My wife contacted them and a very nice lady immediately offered to swap it and proceeded to spend some time helping my wife to pick something else she liked. Now that's what I call service and why I'm moved to write about it here.

Too many websites are badly designed and give unresponsive service so this was an eye opener. I may not be going back there myself anytime soon, but I know someone who will be...

Trawling the net for a handbag for Mother's Day, I found this site. Really nice, calming layout, and very easy to use. The bags are displayed very well, so that you can see the detail on them and open up a bigger picture if you want to. I was impressed by the range of bags - seems to be something to suit all tastes, and not just for people with large handbag budgets! I bought a leather Marta Ponti bag, and it is beautiful - exactly what I expected. Customer service seems really friendly and the bag arrived quickly, as promised.