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Hopeless: M&S dips toe into e-commerce water

Plans one-year trial from non-existent store

Marks & Spencer's, the UK's snootiest High Street grocer, is throwing caution to the wind, joining the online shopping revolution after all. But don't get too excited -- online shopping is available only to the good burghers of Beaconsfield, Bucks (a very posh place indeed) and then to only 100 people. M&S will let them order groceries over the Net and in turn it will deliver goods (at a charge of £5 per delivery) until 9pm. And get this: "the company hopes to sign up another 100 people and run the experiment for a year before deciding whether to take the project nationwide", according to the Sunday Times. How lame can you get? It goes to show how difficult it is for a once-dominant company to re-invent itself. Tesconet, the online arm of Tesco, Britain's biggest grocer, claims 100,000 regular customers -- and rising. Iceland is putting on a pretty good show in the home delivery market, while Sainsbury's and Wal Mart-owned Asda are cranking up their operations. They will not be quaking in their boots. ® Check out Cash RegisterFor our daily Net Finance news Beaconsfield resident Mike Hill adds:I thought I should draw to your attention to the fact that that the original story in the Sunday Times :suggests that the orders will be delivered from the M&S store in Beaconsfield. THERE ISN'T AN M&S STORE IN BEACONSFIELD! I've lived there for 10 years, and can confidently state that there isn't, and hasn't been in the last 10 years, an M&S store in Beaconsfield. So either someone's pulling the :Sunday Times':leg, or they've got the story completely wrong! And no, I haven't been invited to take part in the trial...

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