The Nintendo DSi comes out in a matter of days and I’m sure that, come Christmas, it’s going to be nigh-on impossible to get hold of. So I thought I’d pre-order one now, in preparation for my daughters Christmas present (or sooner if she’s good!).

The two cheapest retailers appear to be Amazon and Dixons, at £145. However, I had an affiliate money off code of £5 for Dixons, making that £140.

So, I sign in to the Dixons website using the details I have stored in my password manager (KeyPass) and add the DSi to my basket. I put in the voucher code and it all works correctly. I now click to checkout and it asks for my password again, for security reasons. I, again, use the password manager to put the password in. It comes up to say the password is invalid. Eh? I try again. The same.

I now use the option to reset the password and set the password to what I had it noted down as. But, again, it won’t accept it.

Is it Firefox? I try IE and get the same results.

That’s fine, I’ll give their customer support a ring and see if I can get it sorted. Except the site has no number for doing such a thing. The nearest I can find is a number to ring for complaints – I try that and find it be a general purpose helpline for the site, which is what I was after. I explain the problem to the chap who answers and he says, “sorry, can’t suggest anything for that”. And that’s it. I explain that unless I can sign in I’m going to have to buy from elsewhere. But he insists there’s nothing he can do, suggesting that maybe I’m typing the password in wrong (yes, I explain how it’s cut & paste from a password manager). “Have you tried setting up your account again?”. At this point I gave up.

It may be £5 more, but I’m now ordering from Amazon.