Beware CD-Wow!
I have made a number of orders from CD WOW over the past 2 weeks and everything has arrived promptly.
Lucky you.
It appears (to me anyway) that CDs are being shipped more quickly than DVDs and that DVD Box sets are being shipped last. Maybe they are trying to save on postage?
After 3 phone calls today I finally got someone who could look at my order history - the site was down the first two times. It appears that when the cdwow.com site says "Despatched" they don't actually mean "Despatched" unless it says "Despatched + Email Sent". "Despatched" without the email bit is a euphemism for "left the warehouse but not actually in the post yet".
So, my two DVD box sets ordered on 1st Dec, whose status says "Despatched" on 17th Dec, are actually sitting somewhere waiting to be posted. I expect them to be posted today - nearly 3 weeks after the order.
I don't hold out much hope for them arriving on time for Xmas.
Interestingly, the customer support staff read me the same lie about high order volumes meaning that the order history was slow to update. Seems like different stories are being told to different people.
On the positive side, they did agree that if the items don't arrive in time, I can post them back for a refund and that they will give me vouchers to offset my return postage. This is fair enough.
It's just the reason I ordered online was not to pay the excessive street prices. Not to mention the hassle of queueing up in town, parking etc. If they had emailed me about the delay in advance I could have ordered them elsewhere.