A shop that combines the "
queueing" experience of shopping in the former
Soviet Union with the "
crap products" experience of same.
Argos is a very old chain of stores in the UK that operates around a
catalogue. They sell all kinds of stuff from
jewellery to
furniture and
electronics (but no, or at least few, clothes unlike their mail-order rivals). You pick what you want from the catalogue and either order it by mail, web or phone, or if you're feeling very bored go to one of their outlets and queue up for it.
They sell a lot of exclusive (as in, nowhere else would have them) products that are sometimes very useful and good value. For a lot of things however they are uncompetitive. Argos recently bought the troubled internet store Jungle.com. They are linked in some corporate fashion to the Great Universal Company.
Update: At this time (July 2002), Argos's website locks out Mozilla and Netscape 6 (and Galeon and K-Meleon and Compuserve) users. Needless to say I am never going to purchase anything from them ever again, and I would recommend that no-one else with a shred of common sense should either.