Retailing: You're doing it wrong
So, I want to buy this book, right? First call is amazon - maybe they can get it to me early next week. Some sort of expedited shipping option (not really that sort of shipping; no, not this sort, either) option. "That'll cost a tenner", say amazon, though possibly because there were other things in the basket, "but would you like a one month subscription to some sort of free rapid shipping thing?" "Fleeb", I think, indecisively, at which point I realise I could go to a real bookshop.

Ah, but maybe I could reserve online, because I know the book I'm after, and who knows if they'll have it or not? (I've heard that they keep smaller stocks now, because of internet shopping).

First stop: Foyles. Erkgh, their website really could use some work. Waterstones's is much slicker, but both of them take the same attitude, which appears to be, no! You cannot pay us money! We are going to make this difficult! We are going to make you sign up, give a password, give postal addresses, even though you're not about to get anything posted to you! We want to be amazon! And, a credit card transaction? Do they want to encourage me to buy nothing else in the shop by having made certain I'd paid already? Boggle.

Waterstones's looks slicker, but doesn't look like they particularly streamline the reserve-and-collect-in-person process either. As I recall, argos do, but they're a special case because they already have an unorthodox no-showroom shop design, and anyway, they don't sell books.