Holland & Barrett Ireland web-site

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mathepac

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On the recommendation of a friend I set up an account with Holland&Barrett from their Irish website and noticed a link to the PSI - Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland site.

Equally reassured and intrigued, I clicked on the link and it 404'd with the following message:

"Sorry, we couldn't find that page.

Try a search or browse our categories below"

I contacted their Irish help-line number, 1800 90 15 95, to alert them to the problem and after various to-ing and fro-ing, did I want to place an order? - did I want to contact my nearest store (shop, dammit, it's a shop!!) could I send a screen-shot (standard Garda parlance for not wanting to do anything) - the person I was speaking to took my email address and promised to have "someone" contact me.

So far a big fat nothing from them.

Would it not be a concern for them that they have dead links on the website and should consumers be concerned about this issue?

Is it about creating a (false) feeling of reassurance for would be purchasers just having it there?
 

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mathepac said:
Is it about creating a (false) feeling of reassurance for would be purchasers just having it there?
Click to expand...

I don't understand why you have put false in brackets. I would expect any potential purchaser to be capable of finding the PSI website if they needed it, once they have been directed that way. Clearly an innocent oversight and inefficiencies at correcting it. No need to worry about it.
 
Can I just get this correct?

You are not trying to buy a product on their website?
You are not even seeking information on any products they are selling?

You are getting excited about a broken link to the Pharmaceutical Society of Ireland on their website? So excited that you called their helpline?


mathepac said:
Would it not be a concern for them that they have dead links on the website and should consumers be concerned about this issue?
Click to expand...

No, it would not stop me anyway from dealing with them.

From time to time, I send organisations an email about links which don't work - but it's to help them and not to excoriate them.

We pay for a product on askaboutmoney which crawls the website and checks all links and deletes those which are no longer active. But that is because Google penalises sites in their results for having dead links.



Brendan
 
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Brendan Burgess said:
Can I just get this correct?

You are not trying to buy a product on their website?
You are not even seeking information on any products they are selling?
Click to expand...
No, that's not correct. I bought the product I was interested in from the closest bricks-and-mortar outlet, because it cost less in fuel than their delivery charge and I got it sooner. I also got it at the price advertised on the site, a 2for.

The dead link bothers me, because it worries me it might be less than innocent. If I had a dead link on my website, I'd thank whoever pointed it out to me and then either delete it or fix it. Why all the dancing around the issue and then no comeback, as promised?

I'll contact the PSI tomorrow to see what they have to say.

My concern is that the link on the web-site might give consumers false assurance that the IPS has some kind of oversight role with the website owners.

Concern for the consumers is my only motivation
 
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If the link worked and lead somewhere that explained some kind of relationship between the organisations, good stuff, I'm happy. The fact that it doesn't and that I got the runaround when I tried to point out the broken link, leaves me suspicious.
 
michaelm said:
It seems the last WayBackMachine snapshot where that link was working was on 01/03/2024 . .

PSI Guidance | Holland & Barrett

web.archive.org web.archive.org
It's only contact info for PSI. The link was likely broken during some update and nobody noticed. I think we can sleep easy tonight :).
Click to expand...
Curious that they ever had a page about the PSI at all given that they're not a pharmacy.
mathepac said:
Strangely no link, erroneous or otherwise, to the UK equivalent from their UK site
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Because they're not a pharmacy?

As it happens, a few other of their links don't work either...

https://www.hollandandbarrett.ie/info/who-we-are
https://www.hollandandbarrett.ie/info/B-Corp/
 
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ClubMan said:
https://www.hollandandbarrett.ie/info/who-we-arehttps://www.hollandandbarrett.ie/info/B-Corp/
Click to expand...
https://www.hollandandbarrett.com/info/B-Corp/
https://www.hollandandbarrett.com/info/who-we-are

Looks like they did a find and replace for com to ie without checking if all the pages were copied over to the Irish site with the same urls. Doesn't look like a massive conspiracy.
 
Thats question to answer. I assume about misleading association. But it's very thin link bordering on conspiracy in my book.

Broken links are not unusual.
 
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